Slowly making our way home....Nov 4, 2019

 Loved this painting hanging in our room:

Moving to Glastonbury today, so went off to find Tintern Abbey on the way.  It dates from 1131 and is a Cistercian Abbey w/ Gothic Architecture .  The Black Death affected this abbey in 1348.    I supposed one of the main reasons I wanted to visit was because of William Wordsworth poem from 1798--“Lines written a few miles from Tintern Abbey on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour.”   

The 19^th c. Scottish writer, Catherine Sinclair: “Descriptions of Tintern Abbey should be written on ivy leaves, and with a poet’s pen, for no other do justice to the air of solemn grandeur and religious melancholy reigning within its delicate cloisters.”  

Then, while trying to find the church is Christon, and being met with Road Closures everywhere, we saw two swans flying over the highway!

More little roads through little towns:

a castle near Christon:

Then on our way through the Cheddar Gorge.  The legend in this part of the coiuntry is that Joseph of Arimathea came here aloing this old path traveled by tin and metal merchants and he brought his nephew, Jesus, with him as they made their way to the Priddy mines.  

We visited the Parish Church of St. Laurence in Priddy for the same reason.  There is a saying here:  “As sure as our Lord was at Priddy…” and the kids sing a song with the line: “Joseph was a metal merchant.” 

Perhaps not surprisingly for an isolated settlement at the centre of a mining district, Priddy's history is littered with lawlessness and rough justice. In 1225 a Priddy man by the name of John Swete-bi-the-bone murdered Richard the Shepherd and went on the run. He was outlawed and his chattels were seized but there is no record of him being caught. The miners - or 'Little ol' Men' - would often resort to their own justice and were for many years a law unto themselves - this was the 'wild west' long before Columbus discovered America.

Set against such a rowdy and violent backdrop it should be pointed out that Priddy folk maintained their skill in 'step dancing' long after it died out elsewhere in Somerset. Step dancing has been described as a first cousin of clog dancing and an uncle of tap dancing and it was alive and well in Priddy up until the 1950s.

Ray thinks this is the strangest thing I’ve ever asked to see, but it’s a Sheep hurdle— a lambing pen and to fold sheep.   In the centre of the village of Priddy is its famous Green with the iconic thatched structure of ash sheep hurdles.

Locals believe that so long as this stack remains in place, the villagers will retain the right to hold their local events on the Green. Traditionally, the story goes that the Sheep Fair was moved from Wells at the time of the Black Death in 1348. Whilst this is possibly true, some experts believe that Priddy Sheep Fair is actually a great deal older than that and probably dates back to Iron Age times when hill dwellers lived in turf walled villages - or earth houses. Thus Priddy in those days may well have supported quite a large population, which constructed earth works, hill forts, barrows, Henges and even the odd Roman amphitheatre.

As a human settlement Priddy most certainly predates Wells. Priddy Fair is held on the Wednesday closest to 21st August each year and locals believe that the first rain after the event heralds the onset of winter. So important an event was the Fair in medieval Somerset that it was selected as the first place in the County to have the 1352 Weights and Measures Act published - forcing traders to discard their private 'yardsticks' in favour of uniform standards of measurement.

Priddy folk also hold firmly to the belief that Joseph of Arimathea visited the village to trade in metal and on one occasion brought his nephew Jesus of Nazareth; 'as sure as our Lord walked in Priddy' is an old local saying. This legend is commemorated in the words of William Blake’s Hymn 'Jerusalem' in which the Mendips provided the 'mountains green' whilst Priddy, some say, provided the 'dark satanic mills'. The Romans exported Lead from the village along Pilton Drove (now Pelting Drove—run S from the Green) and Axbridge Street (prob B3135).

(When travel writer Arthur Mee visited the village in the 1930s he wrote that the fountain in Priddy had never run dry. It is still in situ, next to Fountain Cottage on the Green but sadly no water is flowing. For the thirsty traveller however, help is at hand because Priddy has a variety of splendid hostelries to meet their needs. On the Green itself is the 15th Century 'New Inn' - a free house catering for drinkers, diners and over-nighters. Round the corner is the Queen Victoria, (just as you head S down Pelting Drove on your R) which is over 300 years old.. 

With all this talk of mining, we decided to try to find evidence of the Mineries.   Lead was being worked as far back as 300 to 200 BC.   The area east and north-west of the village shows extensive patches of "gruffy ground". The word "gruffy" derives from the grooves that were formed where the lead ore was extracted from veins near the surface. The relatively easy opencast extraction of lead was a strong attraction for the Romans. Lead ingots found in the neighbourhood have been dated to AD 49. 

This quote from Capt relates the Mendips mining area to Joseph and Jesus. "Traditions among the hill folk of Somerset relate that Joseph, after first seeking tin from the Scillies (islands) and Cornwall, came to the Mendips and was accompanied on several occassions by the boy Jesus. At the parish Church of Priddy, high on top of the Mendips, they have an old saying: 'As sure as our Lord was at Priddy.' And a carol sung be the children of Priddy begins: "Joseph was a tin merchant, a tin merchant, a tin merchant, and goes on to describe him arriving from the sea in a boat."

You have to go to Priddy by the old lead mines of the Mendips, or to Pilton, the reputed port from which much of the lead was shipped, to hear the local traditions of the visit of Christ or the Christ Child.

The lead mines near Priddy in the Mendips were certainly in existence before the Romans began to exploit them about 50 A.D., and the need for this metal would account for Joseph’s connection with Glastonbury and the district. If I were to venture to reconstruct a trading voyage of the tin merchants from materials available, I should say that it probably began at Tyre or Joppa, that the merchants disembarked at Narbonne, that they travelled overland from thence to Morlaix, re-embarked for the crossing of the Channel to the Fal, and, after calling at various trading places along the Cornish coast, proceeded to their terminus in the Severn estuary.

In connection with Joseph, we must remember that he was almost certainly a decurion in the Roman Empire. “Nobilis decurio” is St Jerome’s translation in the Vulgate of St Mark’s “honourable counsellor” (A.V.), and I believe he meant what the Latin words mean, not a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, but a member of a provincial Roman Senate. We hear of decurions in charge of mining districts, which is very striking. It is interesting to see how this title has been misunderstood, not only by most modern Biblical commentators, but also by the Arthurian romancers, who, thinking it was a purely military term, call Joseph “that noble soldier of Pilate.” Hence King Arthur and his nearest of kin boast of their reputed ancestor, not as the wealthy trader that he was, but as the founder and paragon of chivalry, and, according to John Hardyng (c. 1450), the original bearer of the “arms of St George”. 

Here is the area where the Priddy mines were located.  See the humpety-bumpety ground.  I had hoped to walk around in this area, but recently I had read that it is dangerous to do so for you can fall down one of the deep shafts without even realizing you were near one.

The Priddy area was an important lead mining area from Roman times right up to the beginning of the 20th century. The ore, principally 'galena', was won from veins in what is now Stockhill Forest.  This is a Modern forest over old lead workings with easy going trails and forest walks.  Numerous closed depressions pockmark the area and the remains of the lead workings with spoil heaps, pits, leats and reservoirs are still clearly visible in the valley between North Hill and the Stockhill car park.     

This area lay between two mining ownerships known as 'liberties' with the Bishop of Bath and Wells the interested party in one and the Waldegrave family in control of the other. A degree of caution is still required when walking in this area: it is prime 'Adder' country and there are still unfenced and rather deep holes in the ground!

Next we went to the Deerleap Viewpoint where we could see the Tor and for miles in the distance.  It was easier to believe that all this was watery marsh land in ages past from this height.

We then decided to go off to find Farleigh-Hungerford Castle.  On the way, we got in a Cow traffic jam:

We also went by this church that the sign said was historic.  Its registry began in 560, but the current building dates from 1441 and was built by Carthesian monks.  Near the altar it has a stone seat where the criminals who were taking sanctuary here would sit.

Hungerford Arms Pub

Farleigh-Hungerford Castle--with hopes of going in, we arrived to find a CLOSED sign!  Again, disappointment:

Farleigh Hungerford Castle was begun before 1383 by Sir Thomas Hungerford (c 1328–1397) my 18th GGF. Born of a family which had achieved only modest influence in Wiltshire, Thomas prospered as chief land steward of Edward III's fourth son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Allegedly because of Gaunt's influence, he was elected Speaker of the Commons in the Parliament of January 1377, the first formally recorded holder of that office.

Essentially a symbol of his rising status, Sir Thomas’s building (which later became the inner court of the extended castle) was a fortified mansion ranged around a rectangular central courtyard, with a tall tower at each corner, in the ‘quadrangular’ style fashionable during the 1370s and 1380s.

The castle was built on the site of an earlier, possibly 13th-century manor house, which Sir Thomas had bought in 1369. Although the location lacked strategic importance or strong natural defences, it was remote from the influence of rival landowners, making it suitable for the seat of a potential Hungerford dynasty.

Indeed, Sir Thomas chose to be buried here rather than at his larger property in Heytesbury, Wiltshire. His fine monument survives in the castle chapel, which he built to serve as the parish church.

Stained-glass head of a knight (c 1370), said to represent Sir Thomas Hungerford, from Farleigh Hungerford parish church--this is my 18th Great-Grandfather!

aerial views:

Knight of Farleigh crest:

In the crypt beneath the marvellous castle chapel are eight sinister-looking lead caskets. Known technically as anthropoid coffins, they contain the remains of Sir Edward Hungerford III (d.1648) and the family of his successor, Sir Edward Hungerford IV (the ‘Spendthrift’), who had to sell Farleigh in 1686.

Sir Edward III’s monument in the chapel itself shows him in hook-nosed splendour, fully clad in Civil War armour (he had a rather feeble record as a commander on the Parliamentarian side), but he actually lies in one of the coffins in the crypt below. These coffins contain embalmed bodies, pickled in spirit, and their body-shaped forms enabled the physical remains to be kept together after death, and preserved intact, ready for resurrection at the sounding of the Last Trumpet.

Never intended for public display, these are exceptionally unusual survivals of one of the odder displays of Stuart codes of family love, as expressed through funerary custom.

Farleigh was sold for salvage in 1705, and many of its turrets and walls were levelled. By the 1830s it was becoming a regular destination for the picturesque traveller, in pursuit of chivalric reverie. In 1846 the future Emperor of France, Napoleon III, was among them.

The coffins of Farleigh offered a particularly macabre dare for the most foolhardy of visitors. Holes were drilled into the lead, and samples of the corpse-infused spirit were offered to bolder thrill-seekers, for tasting.  That is so gross!

The effigy of Sir Edward Hungerford III on his tomb in the castle chapel

Misfortune and scandal dogged the Hungerfords and their castle during the struggle for the English Crown between the royal Houses of York and Lancaster, known as the Wars of the Roses, and the early Tudor period.

Robert – the 3rd and last Lord Hungerford (c 1423–1464) – and his eldest son, Sir Thomas (c 1439–1469), were both executed for their adherence to the Lancastrian cause, and in 1462 the castle was confiscated by the Yorkist regime.

In 1486 Sir Walter Hungerford II (c 1441–1516) regained ownership of the castle, as a reward for his personal support for the victorious Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth in the previous year. Walter’s son Sir Edward rebuilt the east gatehouse; but after his death in 1522 his widow, Agnes, was hanged for having murdered her first husband – Sir Edward’s steward – and having burned his body in the castle’s kitchen furnace.

Sir Walter Hungerford III (1503–40) imprisoned his third wife, Elizabeth, in the castle for nearly four years and frequently attempted to poison her. She survived only by drinking her own urine and eating food secretly supplied by local women.

Walter Hungerford III became the local agent of Henry VIII’s minister Thomas Cromwell, and was created Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury. He was, however, later convicted of treason, witchcraft and the then capital crime of homosexuality, and was executed alongside Cromwell on 28 July 1540. Afterwards the castle was again confiscated by the Crown.

  In 1657, Sir Edward Hungerford gambled the castle away. 

I'm just glad that my connections to the Hungerfords ended with the birth of Catherine Hungerford in 1438 to my 16th GGF, Robert II (1400-1459).  All these horrific acts were committed later down the line in that brance of my tree--the closest connection would be a 1st cousin 16 times removed.  

Next up was Pilton Parish Church of St John the Baptist.   

Inside was the church banner which shows Joseph of Arimathea arriving in a boat with young Jesus.

The Tor pops up and surprises you all the time:

Poems and songs relevant to today's sites:

Song-- Joseph was a tin man  by Maddy Prior

Joseph was a tin man
Came far across the sea
He came to buy my tin
His nephew came with him
A lad from Galilee
I'd meet them at the quay
They'd always stay with me
"Romans have no sway here"
He always used to say
"At home they kill for fun
Hang men out in the sun
On crosses every day
That is the Roman way
All rebels they will slay
This is a perfect place here
For free men to walk"
On nights with breezes cool
He'd sit by a pool
And his nephew would talk
In the evening they'd walk
And quietly they'd talk
He hated going back there
"I'll return one day" he said
"This is the land I love
And this is where I'll live
When my work is done" he said
"When I'm done with tin and lead
I'll come back here" he said
I hear he's on the marsh now
With a church of wattle daub
He's found his sacred place
All wisdom and grace
And God and his word
He's living undisturbed
Or so I have heard
Yes, Joseph was a tin man
Came far across the sea
He came to buy my tin
His nephew came with him
A lad from Galilee
A prophet, seemingly
The man from Galilee

I saw three ships

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning.

Pray, wither sailed those ships all three,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
Pray, wither sailed those ships all three,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

Then let us all rejoice again,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
Then let us all rejoice again,
On Christmas Day in the morning

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning.

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning

Jerusalem--Blake's poem

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

Song:                                                                                                   Jerusalem Hymn

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountain green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.