Boring pictures after the lock down …. no. 6.... waiting for someone to pass ..... Somerset

So, now that the end of lock down is upon us, here is the the new series

Boring pictures after the lock down, invites everyone who is out and about to offer up their own photograph. *

The only qualifications are that it should be by you and be boring.

Location;on a road in Somerset

Picture; our Theresa's road from the collection of Theresa Simpson Hall

*Boring pictures after the lockdown, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Boring%20pictures%20after%20the%20lockdown

At the Old Pump House ………… Somerton

Somerton is a town in Somerset with a history going back to at least 733AD.

It has had a market for much of its existence, was the centre for making gloves in the early 19th century,  boasted a brewery and in the early part of the last century had a Marconi radio station.

And it also had one of these, which fits nicely in the series on lost and found street furniture.

It was taken by Ron Stubley and I like it.

Ron sent it across after seeing a story based on Ann’s Loves research into petrol pumps which was a school project in 1964.

There will be someone who can date Ron’s pump, explain how it worked and offer up more on its history.

But that is for another time.

Location; Somerton

Picture; “an old petrol pump” date unknown, from the collection of Ron Stubley

Our little village .......... stories from the West country by Lois Elsden

Uphill is a very small village just south of Weston-super-Mare on the coast of the Bristol Channel where the Axe flows into the sea.

This area has been inhabited since Neolithic times; there were caves containing 40,000 year-old flint tools and worked and butchered bones of animals including the woolly mammoth and cave lion, there is a Bronze Age field system on nearby Walborough, the Romans are likely to have used the Axe to ship out minerals mined on the nearby Mendip Hills, and the area has been home to fishing and farming families over the millennia.

So… there is a lot of history in Uphill, but I want to explore the little village’s industrial past. If you visit Uphill you'll think it a delightful and peaceful little village with nothing to hear but birdsong and the tide coming in. There are a few businesses here, two pubs, a restaurant, a sign-writers shop, an osteopath, the village shop... there's the boatyard and marina and camp-site and a little tea-room. The only through traffic is going down to the beach... so really we are a quiet little place.

It wasn't always so; there’s a wharf in Uphill which was busy for boats bringing coal and sheep from Wales, for example, and boats departing loaded with limestone and lime. There was also a quarry; Uphill is on the last of the Mendip Hills, a limestone range of undulating uplands, and limestone in past times was a valuable commodity.

Limestone was used extensively for building, and with the arrival of railways it was used for ballast (railways came to Weston in 1841); it was also made into lime by being burned in a kiln. Lime was used to 'sweeten' acidic arable land; it was used as a whitewash, in the steel industry and as mortar for building. It was particularly used from the mid 1700's and limestone was quarried here in Uphill from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Not only was the limestone quarried, but lime was made in a lime-kiln here at the quarry. The kiln was fed with Welsh coal, brought into Uphill from across the Bristol Channel, and no doubt the same ships took the product away.

You can't imagine that a kiln would make much more than a roaring noise, but getting the limestone to put in the kiln was very noisy... the quarrymen weren't just there with pick axes and chisels, they had gunpowder and later dynamite. For safety reasons the explosives were kept in a special store, set into the rock face, built of limestone and with a special metal door, known as “a sacrificial wall’ which acted as a safety valve if there was an accident, the door would blow out, rather than the powder house itself blowing up.

The powder-house probably went out of use by 1930 and now there is little left to see, just some tumbled walls and stone shelves against the cliff face, overgrown with ivy, brambles and nettles... and we can only imagine the noise of the industry, the explosions, the crashing rocks, the wagons rolling backwards and forwards, now all is peaceful in Uphill!

Location Uphill, Somerset

Pictures; Uphill, 2016, from the collection of Lois Elsden

*Lois Elsden, http://loiselden.com/2016/01/31/student-days-take-2/

A rant, a hotel in the city centre and a lesson on where not to stay

What constitutes good value for a stay in an 18th century hotel in a historic city in the south west?

Now this is not to be a rant by tired and grumpy of Tiverton that I have already done when the booking company requested feedback on the said hotel.

No this is more a reflection on another conversion of a private residence into a hotel.

Yesterday I was down in a peaceful Cornish valley with an old farm cottage which by degree over the last half century has been converted into a fine place to stay.

And the following day we were in a city centre hotel.

We had booked both places on line as we moved around Cornwall and so after a long journey north we were hoping for a place which matched the inn in the valley.

Now this hotel had all plenty going for it.

It was in a parade of stylish period houses close to many of the tourist attractions with some pretty stunning views.

Sadly the 18th century property had been converted to maximise the number of visitors that could be packed in and the rooms we slept in were woefully run down.

The paint around the doors was chipped, the cord to the once elegant sash window was broken while the seat of an arm chair in the first room we looked at was torn and the varnish on the wooden sill below the mirror was peeling.

To be fair the room was clean and the beds comfortable, the plasma TV big, and the staff did their best to make our stay a happy one, but the carpet bubbled in places and the shower was a little tired looking.

What saddened me was that there appeared to be an expectation that because we were in the heart of the city the state of the room was acceptable.

Now I am a realist and fully understand market forces, and the  argument of supply and demand but cannot reconcile a bubbly carpet, chipped paintwork and broken sash cord in what from the outside looked smart inviting and elegant.

All of which makes me reflect that this once fine period building had been badly converted, was shabbily maintained and sadly did not do justice to what it had once been.

Was I angry?  Yes.  Should we have found somewhere else?  Perhaps.

But we arrived late into the city and I doubt that we would have found any where else at that time and would have still had to pay something for the room.

As it was the cost was as much as that other hotel in the peaceful Cornish valley which was immaculate.

So I am cross because I don't think it was what we thought we were getting, angry that such a fine old building was not what it had once been, and a little concerned that someone somewhere thought that the rooms were OK to be marketed.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson