Market Place, Frome
Frome, a thriving market town of some 11,000 inhabitants, on the E. side of the county, with a station on the G.W.R. line to Weymouth. Though its surroundings are pretty, the town itself is an ill-arranged collection of steep and narrow streets, one of which—Cheap Street—deserves notice for its quaintness. The spaciousness of the market-place redeems the narrowness of the streets. With the exception of a little faint-hearted sympathy shown to Monmouth, Frome has never helped to make history. Nowadays it does a brisk trade in woollen cloth, and possesses some large printing-works, breweries, and art-metal works. The visitor would do well to make his way at once to the church, which is practically the only thing in Frome worth seeing. It is a building of much greater dignity within than the exterior suggests, and has been restored on a very elaborate scale by a former incumbent, the Rev. W.J. Bennett (1852-66), a figure of note in the early Ritualistic controversies. The tower, crowned with a spire, is somewhat eccentricly placed at the E. end of the S. aisle. The interior is remarkable for its heterogeneous mixture of styles and its multitude of side chapels, of which St Nicholas’s, the Lady Chapel, and St John Baptist’s are on the N., and St Andrew’s on the S. A Saxon church was built on the site by St Aldhelm, and possibly a couple of carved stones built into the interior of the tower may have belonged to it. This was succeeded in the 12th cent. by a Norm. church, of which a doorway remains, leading from St Nicholas’s Chapel to the Lady Chapel, and perhaps a piscina opposite the latter; in the 13th cent. the chancel arch, the lower part of the tower, and the eastern half of the arcade were erected The rest of the arcade was added in the 15th cent. The abrupt change in the mouldings is very noticeable. The Lady Chapel, originally Norm. (see above), was rebuilt at this time, as well as St John’s Chapel (now the organ-chamber). The chapel of St Nicholas (the baptistery) dates from the 16th cent.; the old glass in it bears the rebus of Cable, the founder of it (K and a bell). St Andrew’s Chapel is said to have been founded in 1412 (though it looks like Dec. work). Interesting features are (1) piscinas above the rood and in the S. aisle, (2) a memento mori in the Lady Chapel (said to be a Leversedge of Vallis), (3) brass (1506) on tower wall. The rood-screen, the statues at the W., the medallions above the arcade, and the Calvary Steps outside the building are all modern. In the churchyard, beneath the E. window, is the tomb of Bishop Ken, who, after his “uncanonical deposition,” lived in retirement at Longleat, and, dying in 1711, was buried at his own request “just at sunrising in the nearest parish church within his own diocese.”
GLASTONBURY, a small market-town of some 4000 people in the centre of the county, 6 m. S. from Wells. It has a station on the S. & D. line from Evercreech to Bridgwater. The site of Glastonbury is almost as conspicuous in a Somerset landscape as its name is in Somerset history. Its huge conical tor, crowned by a tower, rises like a gigantic sugar-loaf from the surrounding plain, and is visible to half the county. The neighbourhood is a happy hunting-ground for the antiquary, and one of the “regulation” sights for the casual tourist. No one can be said to have “done” Somerset who has not seen Glastonbury. Its associations are romantic as well as historical. Though the modern town is commonplace enough, poetry and piety, fact and fiction, have conspired to make it famous. Here was the cradle of British Christianity. In this “deep meadowed island, fair with orchard lawns”—the fabled Avalon—blossomed the flower of British chivalry in the persons of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. It was when a Glastonbury monk that Dunstan made his vigorous onslaught on the powers of darkness. And it was this “parcel of ground,” already consecrated by the bones of St Patrick, King Edgar, and St David, which became the favourite burying-place of mediaeval saints and heroes. The legend which accounted for its early pre-eminence is even in these sceptical days worth retelling, for from its popularity the future importance of the abbey sprang. Joseph of Arimathaea was despatched by St Philip along with eleven companions “to carry the tidings of the blessed Gospel” to the shores of remote Britain. Providential winds wafted them across the waters of the Severn Sea, and at length the wayworn travellers landed at Glastonbury, then an island. As their leader, like Jacob, leant in worship on the top of his staff on Wearyall Hill, the rod took root and became a thorn tree, which blossomed every year as surely as the Feast of the Nativity came round. The “Holy Grail” (the cup of blessing from the Last Supper), which Joseph brought with him, he buried at the foot of Glastonbury Tor, and from the place of its sepulchre gushed forth the Bloody Spring, which may be duly inspected to this day. The pilgrims made more friends than disciples, and the king, after a dilatory conversion, set apart for the maintenance of the newcomers “twelve hides of land.” Here the evangelists possessed their souls in patience and built for worship a little shrine of wattle and daub, which was many generations afterwards found intact when fresh missionaries came to re-evangelise the islanders. Round this vetusta ecclesia gathered the subsequent glories of the monastery. This long-cherished tradition enshrines sufficient fact to justify Glastonbury’s claim to be “the only tie still abiding between the vanished Church of the Briton and the Church of the Englishman.” Its authentic history begins with its foundation as a monastery by that ecclesiastically-minded layman, King Ina (688-726), who built a church here and dedicated it to St Peter and St Paul. Dunstan, himself a Glastonbury man, by the austerity of his conduct and the vigour of his administration, made the fame of this early religious house. With the coming of the Normans grander ideas prevailed. Abbots Thurstan (A.D. 1082) and Herlewinus (1101-20) both projected buildings of some pretensions, but Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, abbot in 1126, was the first great builder. Henry’s church was a fabric of much magnificence, but it completely perished in a fire in 1184, and Henry II., in one of his occasional fits of piety, charged himself with its rebuilding, and entrusted the work to his chamberlain Ralph, who, upon the site of Joseph’s legendary shrine, erected the present beautiful chapel of St Mary (c. 1186). With the death of the king the work languished, for no funds were forthcoming from the empty pockets of his “lion-hearted” successor; and it was not until 1303 that the great church whose ruins still survive was finally dedicated. Even then the fabric was not complete. It took two centuries to add the finishing touches. Abbot Sodbury (1322-35) vaulted the nave, and it was left for one of his successors, Walter Monington (1341-74), to fill in the vaulting of the choir. Not content with the already considerable dimensions of the church, Monington extended the chancel two bays eastwards; and Abbot Bere (1493-1524) added another chapel, and propped the tower by inverted arches. Characteristic traces of the respective periods may still be observed. Until the Reformation the abbey had a career of unrivalled influence and splendour. It yielded precedence only to St Albans, and the abbot was said never to travel abroad with a retinue of less than 100 retainers. Such wealth was not likely to elude the comprehensive grasp of Henry VIII. Glastonbury was involved in the general ruin of the monasteries. The fate of its last abbot, Richard Whiting, is one of the tragic stories of the time. Though a “weak man and ailing,” he refused to surrender the property of his abbey. But Thomas Cromwell had a “short way” with passive resisters. In his private “remonstrances,” amongst other jottings was found, “Item—The Abbot of Glaston to be tried at Glaston, and also executed there.” In accordance with this pre-arranged programme Whiting was arraigned at Wells, November 14, 1538, on a quite unsupported charge of treason, and in the great hall of the palace sentenced to death. The next day he was drawn on a hurdle to the tor, and there hanged, and his head fixed on the abbey gateway. After this judicial murder the monastic property at once fell to the Crown.