Letter from Berringford 16

Skye Cottage

Berringford

1 April, 1979

A day trip to Wells

It’s All Fools’ Day.  Nothing untoward has happened here yet, thank goodness, and it is now 11.30 and so there is just half an hour to go before midday, which I believe is the deadline for pranks and tricks.  Let’s hope the peace lasts.  I shall feel happier when the church clock strikes 12.

Our trip to Wells took place a couple of days ago. Theresa came again, and she was in good spirits.  It does us all good to get out of the house! When we outside with some object in view, some trip to make,  and we are with other people, how much better we all feel!  She will be OK, I think. We were the same six as for the trip to Bath: my uncle, the vicar, Theresa, Stan, Henry and me.  They asked me to go along again, and I was happy to go, like Chaucer when he joined the group of pilgrims at the Tabard for their three-day journey to Canterbury.

Wells has one of the most beautiful cathedrals in England. In fact, Wells is little more than the cathedral and the houses that surround it.  As you approach the city you see the cathedral like a mother hen with the old buildings of the Liberties and the shops of the High Street like little chicks pecking around nearby.  Wherever you are in the city, the cathedral looks down benevolently telling you that things are OK and that everything is in its place and the world is on its course.   

There is a clock on the wall of the north transept and we spent some time standing beneath it, making polite conversation while waiting for it to strike the hour.  It was made in the 1390s, just when Chaucer was writing the Canterbury Tales.  On the hour the knights on horseback go round and round above the clock. The same unfortunate knight is knocked off his horse every hour and has been for centuries.  The poor man never learns.  Surely one day he should be allowed to win and to stay on his horse.  Still, he never gives up, which is something, I suppose.  Nil desperandum!

There is another clock over the north door outside and this is connected somehow with the mechanism of the indoor clock with the knights. I remember in the early sixties when it was repainted in bright colours, and many people of Wells, used to the faded greys and dull browns, complained and called it the dart board. I have read that something similar is happening with George Washington’s house, Mount Vernon. It is being painted in the bright colours it originally had and all the people are saying that it looks like a fairground.  But the new colours are faithful to the vivid colours it had before.  How we all hate change!

Near the clock, and I am talking about the one inside again now, the one with the knights on horseback, there is a figure sitting in a niche high up in the wall.  His name is Jack Blandiver.  He kicks the bells with his heels to mark the quarter hours and on the hour he strikes the bell in front of him with his hammer. Over the centuries he has looked down at all the people who are looking up at him. How the clothes of his audience must have changed as fashions came and went! What did he make of all the changes, perched up there on his stool? 

Something similar happened in the 1960 film, ‘The Time Machine’, where Rod Taylor sees the fashions change on the mannequin in shop window over the road as he whirls forward through the centuries in his machine. My uncle commented on this.  He doesn't go to the cinema much but he did see 'The Time Machine'.

In the poem ‘Dorigen’, Roderick, Dorigen’s husband went:

‘To the city of Wells where the water springs,

Where the great cathedral stands,

The mass of stone already weathering

Through autumn rains and winter winds.

There the old clock ticks away the days

And knights ride round and round

And joust every hour upon the hour

And every hour the same knight falls

Throughout the measured centuries.

Higher up upon the wall,

Jack Blandiver perches in his chair,

His stiff hands ring the bell

And he kicks his heels to ring two more,

As the quarter hours go ticking by.

He tells the people waiting there

That they are later than they thought.’

The north corner of the great West Front is the coldest place in Somerset.  It may well be the coldest place in the whole of south-west England! It is always a windy spot.  It is chilly in summer but in winter it blows a freezing gale and people rush past head down and clutch their raincoats at the collar.

We went to the Bishop’s Palace. Here swans swimming in the moat ring the bell by a small window in the gatehouse. When they ring the bell, someone opens the window and feeds them. We saw the swans and we saw the bell but no swan rang it. Perhaps today this is no more than a story.  Who would have the time to sit patiently in the gatehouse room with a plate of crusts from breakfast waiting for the bell to ring?  The palace is more open now than before. In the 50s it seemed to us like an impregnable castle.  The drawbridge was down but the gates were always shut and no one went in or out.  Now we can see into the gardens at least.  Thank goodness we live in more democratic times.

At this point my uncle declared he could not continue without a good cup of tea and as every else felt exactly the same we went to some tea rooms in the square and ordered three pots.  How would we manage without tea at the end of the afternoon?   

After tea we walked with new energy up Vicars Close. This is a quiet medieval street, still intact. There is an archway which leads to the two rows of houses with their tall chimneys and tiny gardens and then at the top of the street some winding steps took us into the Liberties.At this point the vicar and Stan said hat they had to return at full speed to the tea shop in the square. They had had three cups each and older men can only last so long after three cups!

They left us hurriedly and the rest of us walked up the Liberties.  These are the old streets north of the cathedral where all the cathedral dignitaries used to live but whose buildings are now mainly used by the Cathedral School.   Opposite the cedar trees is Cedars House and behind that is the playing field.  How many 440s have I run there! Uphill to the Wellingtonia tree, then a sharp left and down under the oaks to the finish at the bottom of the field.  No Olympic track this, but a winding course negotiating the trees on the side of a hill!

We met up in the square soon after, just before it started to get dark, and climbed into the minibus. I think everyone enjoyed their day.  I had spent ten years at school in Wells.  It is strange to go back to the same places and see the same buildings but without the friends and the noise and the bustle.  The visit was my own time machine.