A Miscellany of Mosaics

On my travels around Somerset I have come across the following colourful mosaics.  Some of them aren't strictly true mosaics but they have a similar format.

In March 2002, with the help of a youth worker and a professional artist, the West One Youth Club in Crewkerne designed and created a set of mosaics outside what is currently the West One Surgery in West Street, Crewkerne.  The project was funded by the National Lottery and Crimebeat.

West One Mosaic, Crewkerne

West One Mosaic, Crewkerne

West One Mosaic, Crewkerne

Plaque on the West One Mosaic, West Street, Crewkerne

Diamond Jubilee Mosaic, St Thomas Street, Wells

Brick mosaic on the back wall of Taunton Canoe Club in Priory Bridge Road, Taunton

This photo was taken on a very snowy day in March 2018

To celebrate the Millennium, the children of Brookside School in Street created this 140 Smiles "mosaic".  The figures are self-portraits by the children from Years 3 and 4 in 2000.  They were helped by ceramic artist Julia Gatrill.

140 Smiles, High Street, Street

Victoria Park, Taunton

Pastoral scene mosaic on the public toilets, Wheddon Cross public car park

Winsford Village Hall

In October 2001 George Caton and the Osborne family discovered a large  Romano-British mosaic floor at Lopen near Ilminster..  They contacted Somerset County Council's archaeological team and over the next three weeks the mosaic was fully excavated, cleaned, recorded and then covered over again to protect it from the elements.  An 8 roomed villa was revealed, which is thought to date from about 360AD. The mosaic is believed to be the work of the Saltire School, who were based at Corinium (now Cirencester).  The designs used in the mosaic included large squares, saltires, a dolphin, a cantharus (two handled cup), flowers, fish, heart shaped leaves and guilloche (plaits or braids). 

The loose tesserae, which were found in the soil around the mosaic were donated to the village by the land owners and used to recreate a section of the mosaic.  Volunteers washed and sorted the pieces and Nicholas Durnan and Gina Wright placed the 3,000 or so pieces into lime mortar to create a cantharus.  It was completed in 2002 and is now on display on the floor of All Saints Church in Lopen.  The surround is made from Ham Stone.

Cantharus Mosaic, All Saints Church, Lopen

Lopen Church Mosaic

Seasons Mosaic, Grove Park, Weston-super-Mare

Grove Park, Weston-Super-Mare

Wrington 

Aller Dragon on the side of Aller Village Hall

Aller bus shelter

This mosaic includes historic characters from the village's past e.g. King Alfred, his wife Ealhswith, their son Edward, the Viking leader Guthrum and the Aller Dragon.  The mosaic and the one of the Aller Dragon above were apparently made by local potter Bryan Newman but I have not been able to confirm this or find out when they were made.

Aller bus shelter mosaic - right hand panel

Aller bus shelter mosaic - left hand panel

Yin and yang mosaic in the sensory garden at Vivary Park, Taunton

Dragonfly pebble mosaic on the side of the River Tone near Firepool Lock

St Decuman pebble mosaic, Watchet

This pebble mosaic, which is located outside Watchet Library, commemorates the arrival of St Decuman in Watchet by boat from Wales in the late 7th century.  It was created in 1996 by Maggy Howarth of Cobblestone Designs.  St Decuman brought his favourite cow with him, which can be seen in the photo above.  He came to evangelise the people of West Somerset but he wasn't welcomed by everyone and was beheaded.  Being a saint, this wasn't a problem to him, as he washed the blood from it in the waters of a holy well and put it back on his shoulders.

Compass rose in the St Decuman pebble mosaic, Watchet

St Decuman's severed head

Sword used to cut off St Decuman's head

Swan mosaic plaque on the former Swan Inn, 2 Silver Street, Wiveliscombe

Mosaic on the wall of the toilet block of Ilminster Recreation Ground

Heart pebble mosaic dated 1614, 

St Andrew's Church, Old Cleeve

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee mosaic, 2012, 

Priorswood, Taunton

East Coker Roman mosaic

This is on display in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton.  It shows two hunters returning home with a deer slung on a pole between them.  It probably dates from the 2nd half of the 4th century AD.  A Roman villa was discovered near East Coker in 1753

Low Ham Roman mosaic

This is on display in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton.  It is the oldest object in Britain to tell a complete story and dates from around 350 AD.  It tells the tragic love story of Dido and Aeneas.  This was recorded by the poet Virgil in c25 BC.  The mosaic was found in the bath block of the Roman villa at Low Ham.  It was discovered by a local farmer Herbert Cook in 1938 when he was digging a hole in which to bury some dead sheep.  It was excavated 1946-48 by Lionel Walrond, Steven Dewar and C.A. Ralegh Radford.  The 120,000 tesserae were made from local materials, including lias limestone and fired clay.

Mosaic seat, Minehead Seafront

This is the first of 8 seats spelling out the word Minehead.

Wyvern Mosaic, Magdalen Lane, Taunton

Dead Poets

Some of Britain's most famous poets have connections to Somerset:

• Siegfried Sassoon and T.S. Eliot are buried in Somerset. 
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth both lived in the county for a few years.
• Alfred Tennyson and William Makepeace Thackeray both visited Clevedon

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1722-1834) was one of the great Romantic poets.  He was born in Ottery St Mary in Devon on 21st October 1772.  Samuel and his wife Sara (nee Fricker) spent the first few months of their married life in a cottage on Old Church Road in Clevedon in 1795. In 1797 they moved to a cottage in Lime Street, Nether Stowey, where they lived for three years.  Samuel went for long walks in the surrounding hills and countryside.  His epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is said to have been inspired by Watchet Harbour. While he was writing Kubhla Khan in a laudanum induced haze, he was famously disturbed by "a man from Porlock."  Frost at Midnight describes the interior of the house at Nether Stowey.  In 1800 the Coleridges moved to Keswick in the Lake District.

Coleridge Cottage in Nether Stowey is now owned by the National Trust and it is open to the public.

Cottage on Old Church Road, Clevedon where the Coleridges stayed

Coleridge Cottage, Lime Street, Nether Stowey

Plaque on Coleridge Cottage in  Lime Street, Nether Stowey

  

Statue of the Ancient Mariner and dead albatross, Watchet Harbour

Plaque on the Unitarian Chapel, Dampiet Street, Bridgwater

Plaque on the Unitarian Chapel, Mary Street, Taunton

In 1795 William Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge for the first time in Bristol.  They became good friends and in 1797 William and his wife Dorothy rented Alfoxton House near Holford, which was only three miles away from Nether Stowey where Samuel Taylor Coleridge was living.  Wordsworth and Coleridge went for many walks in the Quantock Hills, along the coast and on Exmoor.  However, due to rumours about some of their radical house guests, the Wordsworth's lease was not renewed after a year and they moved on, first to Germany, before settling at Grasmere in the Lake District in 1799.

Alfoxton House

Alfoxton House

Looking very sad and semi-derelict in January 2019

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-1967) was one of the leading First World War poets.  He was born in Kent and educated at Cambridge University.  In 1914 he joined the Sussex Yeomanry and in 1915 he was posted to France. He was wounded in April 1917 and while he was convalescing at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh he met Wilfred Owen.  Sassoon returned to active duty in 1918, first in Palestine and then in May he returned to France.  In July 1918 he was wounded in the head and that was the end of his military service.  He wrote angry but compassionate poems about the First World War. Some of his best war poems were published in Counter-Attack and Other Poems in 1918.  

After the war Sassoon wrote more poetry, but also prose and autobiographies.  In 1957 he became a Catholic.  He died on 1st September 1967 at his home in Heytesbury near Warminster in Wiltshire. He was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew's Church in Mells, close to the grave of the Roman Catholic priest Father Ronald Knox, who he greatly admired.

Siegfried Sassoon's grave in the churchyard of St Andrew's Church, Mells

St Andrew's Church, Mells

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born in St Louis Missouri but he moved to England in 1917 and became a British citizen in 1927.  One of his Eliot ancestors had lived in East Coker before immigrating to America in the 1660s.

T.S. Eliot's best known poetic works include The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, The Hollow Men, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and Four Quartets.  Four Quartets is a set of four long poems, the second of which is entitled East Coker.  He also wrote several plays and essays.

T.S. Eliot died of emphysema at his home in London on 4th January 1965.  At his request his ashes were interred at St Michael's Church, East Coker.  There is a commemorative plaque to him on the wall of the church, which quotes some lines from Four Quartets: "In my beginning is my end" and "In my end is my beginning."

 

T.S. Eliot's memorial plaque in St Michael's Church, East Coker

T.S. Eliot's memorial plaque in St Michael's Church, East Coker

St Michael's Church, East Coker

In the mid-18^th century the author William Makepeace Thackeray was a frequent visitor of the Elton Family, who lived at Clevedon Court.  He is best known as a novelist but he did also write some poetry.

Alfred Tennyson had a close friend at Cambridge University called Arthur Hallam.  Arthur’s mother was a member of the Elton family of Clevedon Court.  Arthur, who was a poet and essayist, was engaged to marry Tennyson’s sister Emily but he died suddenly in Vienna in 1833 at the age of 22.  His body was brought back to England and he was buried in the family vault at St Andrew’s Church in Clevedon.  In 1850 Tennyson wrote a poem called In Memorium in tribute to his friend.  In the same year he made his first visit to Clevedon.  The house on Old Church Road in Clevedon, where he is said to have stayed, is called Tennyson House.   A nearby road is called Tennyson Avenue.

Tennyson House, Old Church Road, Clevedon

Tennyson Avenue, Clevedon