Lynch Chapel of Ease, West Lynch

Lynch Chapel of Ease in the hamlet of West Lynch near the village of Bossington, was built c1530.  It was probably the chapel for the Manor of Bossington, which had been owned by Athelney Abbey since 920AD.  After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536-41 it was used as a barn until 1884-5, when it was restored by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland (11th Baronet and owner of the Holnicote Estate).  The chapel has a wagon roof. The windows on the north and south sides of the chapel are original but the east window was rebuilt in the 1880s. A porch was added c1904 in memory of Henry Goddard.

The chapel was restored again c1930 by Mr W.H.R. Blacking.  He built an organ gallery at the west end using wood from the old box pews, which had been removed from Selworthy Church in 1875.  The wood was also used for the panelling around the walls of the chapel.

Grid reference SS 900 476

Lynch Chapel of Ease

Interior of Lynch Chapel

East window of Lynch Chapel

Plaque in memory of John Allan Pilcher

Wellington Park

Wellington Park is one of the town's best kept secrets. It opened in 1903 to celebrate the coronation of King Edward VII.  It is a small formal park and is located at the south western end of Courtland Road.  It can also be accessed via Beech Grove but it is not well signposted. It covers an area of 1.8 hectares.  The site was given to the town by Fox Brothers and Company (a local clothmaker) in 1902.  They also paid for the buildings and landscaping and provided £100 a year for 5 years to cover the running costs. 

Fox Brothers commissioned the Exeter based company Robert Veitch & Son to design and build the park.  The park was designed by the German landscape gardener F.W. Meyer, who worked for Robert Veitch & Son for 30 years.  His design included a ha-ha, three Spanish colonial style entrances, a shelter, a bandstand and a caretaker's lodge,  Work on laying out the park began in July 1902.  The building work was carried out by Messrs Follett Bros of Wellington. The park was opened to the public on 2nd May 1903.

The park, which is Grade II* listed, was restored in 2000 with money from the Heritage Lottery Fund.  The park's current design is largely unchanged from its original layout.

Mature plane trees lining the walk on the north east side of the park

South East entrance on Courtland Road

North entrance on Beech Grove

Floral bedding

Floral bedding

Ornamental pond

Rockery

War Memorial - erected in 1921

Shelter

Bandstand

Caretaker's Lodge

Caretaker's Lodge

Plaque on the Caretaker's Lodge

Drinking fountain

Ha-ha

Grove of trees

Floral bedding

Floral bedding

Dandy - Weston-super-Mare Railway Station’s Charity Collection Dog

One day in around 1923 a stray spaniel wandered into Weston-super-Mare Railway Station.  He was adopted by the staff who worked there. They named him Dandy, provided him with a kennel and put a charity collection box around his neck.  He spent the next five years mingling with people on the station platforms.  By the time he died on 16^th January 1928, he had raised many hundreds of pounds for the GWR Widows and Orphans Fund.  He was buried at the end of one of the platforms. 

A memorial plaque to Dandy can still be seen mounted on the wall in the waiting room at the railway station.

Dandy the Spaniel

Dandy's Memorial Plaque

The Development and Production of Penicillin in Clevedon

Antibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria and fungi, which are capable of killing or inhibiting the growth of other microbial species. Before their introduction as medicines, there was no effective treatment for infections such as pneumonia, meningitis or rheumatic fever.

In 1928 Alexander Fleming, who was a Scottish bacteriologist working in London, first noticed that the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus wouldn’t grow in the parts of a culture, which had accidentally been contaminated by the green mould Penicillium notatum.  He conducted research on the mould and discovered that it produced a substance capable of killing many of the common bacteria, which cause infections in humans.  However he was unable to produce a purified form, which was also stable.

Further research was carried out in the late 1930s by British biochemist Ernst Boris Chain, Australian pathologist Howard Florey and others at Oxford University to produce penicillin in a form that could be used as a human medicine. By 1941 they had developed an injectable form of the drug, which was available for use in humans. During the Second World War development of large scale production of penicillin took place in the United States.  However it was also produced in Clevedon.

In September 1939 the Royal Naval College Medical School, which was working on the production of vaccines against cholera and typhoid, was evacuated from Greenwich to Barrow Gurney Hospital.  However, the site at Barrow Gurney didn't have adequate water, gas and electric supplies, so they moved to White House in Highdale Road, Clevedon.  

When the Royal Naval Medical School also began to produce penicillin in Clevedon in 1943, they needed more space than they had at the White House, so they moved to the house that is now 5 Elton Road, although at this time it was No 4 and was called Eastington House.  The rooms in the house were used for research and assay laboratories.  The penicillin was produced in a factory built on land behind the house. 

Penicillin was produced by growing the Penicillium notatum mould on a culture medium at a controlled temperature.  This was done in sterilised milk bottles.  40,000 were used at Clevedon, as each one only produced a very small amount of antibiotic.  Many local people were employed in the laboratories, in addition to the Royal Navy staff.  The freeze dried powder was packed and distributed to the armed forces and a few civilian establishments.  When reconstituted with sterilised water, it became injectable.

After the end of the Second World War the Royal Navy sold the Clevedon factory to Distillers Company Ltd.  They moved in at the beginning of 1947.  They worked on developing new antibiotics but in 1949 the research station was transferred to the Medical Research Council.  They continued research in to antibiotic alternatives to penicillin and also manufactured other drugs.  The Clevedon site closed in 1961 when their work was transferred to Porton Down.

Further Reading:

Clevedon Places and Faces: Rob Cambell (editor). Matador, 2010

Clevedon's Social and Industrial Heritage: Further studies in the history of Clevedon: Clevedon Civic Society, 1998

5 Elton Road, Clevedon

Plaque outside 5 Elton Road, Clevedon

Dolphins in the River Parrett at Combwich

I'm not referring to the marine mammals, but to man-made marine structures, which are not usually connected to the shore and which are used to assist in the berthing or mooring of boats.  They are constructed at the entrance to a dock or along a pier, quay, wharf or beach. They usually consist of a number of piles, which are driven into the bed of a river or the sea and these can be made of wood, steel or concrete.

There are mooring and breasting dolphins and I think there are both types at Combwich.

Breasting dolphins help in the mooring of vessels by sharing some of the berthing load.  They also prevent vessels from hitting quays and can also be used as mooring points to restrict the longitudinal movement of berthing vessels.

Vessels are secured to mooring dolphins using ropes. Mooring dolphins also control the transverse movement of berthing vessels.

The dolphins at Combwich Pill were constructed in the late 1950s or 1960s when Hinkley Point A or B Nuclear Power Stations were being built.

The inner dolphins and finger jetty were due to be removed in 2019, as part of the redevelopment of Combwich Wharf to accommodate ships carrying materials for Hinkley C Nuclear Power Station. They are to be replaced by two new breasting dolphins.

Dolphins at the entrance to Combwich Wharf

Combwich Pill dolphins at low tide

Entrance to Combwich Pill at low tide

Dolphins at high tide, December 2022

Sham Castle, Bathampton Down, Bath

The Sham Castle was built on Bathampton Down to the east of Bath city centre by Richard James (or possibly Jones) for Ralph Allen in 1762.  It is a Gothick folly and is only the façade of a castle - the back of the castle is flat. 

Ralph Allen (1693-1764) was an entrepreneur and philanthropist, who reformed the British postal delivery service.  He was born in St Columb Major in Cornwall but moved to Bath in 1710 to work for the Post Office. He used the money he made from his postal reforms to buy the Bath stone quarries/mines at Combe Down and Bathampton Down. He made a fortune from his Bath stone quarries and in the mid 1730s work started on the Palladian mansion Prior Park, which was built for him on a hill overlooking the city.  The mansion was completed in 1741.

Ralph Allen probably had the Sham Castle built to show off the qualities of Bath stone as a building material and/or to improve the view from his house in the centre of Bath. 

The Sham Castle was restored and presented to the City of Bath by Richard Osden Ottley and Arthur Edward Withey in 1921.

The front of Sham Castle

The central arch of Sham Castle

Sham Castle

Plaque above the central arch

The back of Sham Castle

The view from Sham Castle

The Anchors of Watchet

Watchet is a historic port and so it is no surprise that anchors have been used as decorations all over the town.  These are the anchors I have found so far but I am sure there are other around the town.  Some of them are real anchors, which have found a new use and other are purely decorative.

Enormous blue anchor by the side of the B3191 at St Decumans

I'm not sure why it is located here, rather than at Blue Anchor!

Large rusty anchor on display at the west end of the Esplanade, Watchet Harbour

Wooden anchor on the platform of the railway station

Anchor on display outside Watchet Boat Museum

This anchor was caught in local fisherman Steve Yeandle's own anchor in the Bristol Channel off Watchet.  It is probably about 100 years old and is the type and size that was used by the local sailing ketches.

Anchor on Sammy Hake's Cottage on West Quay

Sammy Hake's Cottage

Anchor displayed on a house close to Watchet Market House Museum

Anchor and cross - a small part of the enormous Pat Dennis mural painted on the concrete wall of the Old Mineral Yard car park in 2016

Boatman and anchor on the mural painted by Pat Dennis in 2019 on the garden wall of Esplanade House

Pebble anchor outside the Market House Museum

Anchor Street

Display of anchors in the Boat Museum

Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey

Thomas Poole was born in Nether Stowey on 14th November 1766.  His father Thomas was a tanner and farmer.  He wanted his son to carry on his tanning business when he died, so he denied him a proper education and sent him to work as an apprentice in the tanyard from an early age.  Thomas junior educated himself and taught himself Latin and French.  In 1791 he represented the west country at a tanners meeting in London and was elected by them to speak to William Pitt about the distressed state of the tanning industry.  He returned from London as a supporter of the French Revolution. 

In 1793 Poole established the Nether Stowey Book Society. The members of the group met at The Globe Inn and bought books and exchanged books.

Thomas Poole was introduced to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for the first time in August 1794 by his relative Henry Poole of Stogursey, who brought him to Thomas's house in Castle Street.  Coleridge was on a walking tour of Somerset with the poet Robert Southey.  Thomas and Coleridge became great friends.

In 1795 there was hardship in Nether Stowey when the price of wheat increased rapidly due to the war with France.  Poole, his mother and aunt created new recipes for cheaper loaves of bread e.g. using a mixture of wheat, barley, beans and potatoes or turnips.  In 1796 Poole built a new barkhouse in Tanyard Lane.

Coleridge asked Poole to find him a house in Nether Stowey and on 1st January 1797 he moved into a house on Lime Street in Nether Stowey with his wife Sara and their baby son Hartley. In July 1797 Poole arranged for William and Dorothy Wordsworth to rent Alfoxton House on the edge of Holford.   Also in 1797 Poole met the Staffordshire potters Josiah and Tom Wedgwood and he and Josiah became lifelong friends.  Through his friendship with Coleridge and Wordsworth, Poole met several other influential people of his day: the essayist and poet Charles Lamb; the radical speaker, writer, poet, painter and political reformer John Thelwell; the essayist, critic and philosopher William Hazlitt.

Poole met the scientist and inventor of the miners' safety lamp, Humphry Davy in 1799 and Davy later became a regular visitor to Nether Stowey.

Poole went on a tour of Europe in 1802.  In Paris he met the revolutionary and writer Thomas Paine (author of The Rights of Man) and was also presented to Napoleon Bonaparte. In the same year he met the civil servant John Rickman in London and in 1804 he compiled statistics for Rickman that were to be used to implement the poor laws.

In 1806 Poole founded the Nether Stowey Female Friendly Society.  Members paid what they could afford and in return they received financial support when they were sick, gave birth, were widowed or in their old age. Poole met the essayist Thomas de Quincey in 1807.

In 1807 Thomas tried unsuccessfully to reopen the Dodington copper mine, which had closed down in 1891.  He tried again in 1816 and built two new engine houses but the mine closed for the last time in 1821.

Poole donated a piece of land and paid for the building of a village school in Nether Stowey in 1812-13.  The school was large enough to educate up to 200 local children.  It was used as a school until 1979 when a new one was built and the building now houses the public library.

From 1814 until his death, Poole was a justice of the peace for Somerset.  

To encourage local people to save money and give them access to banking services, Thomas founded the Quantock Savings Bank in Lime Street, Nether Stowey in 1817.  The bank was in business until 1884.

Thomas Poole never married.  He lived in a house now called Poole House in Castle Street, Nether Stowey until 1802 when he gave the house to Thomas Ward, who was his partner in the tanning business.  Poole bought another house in St Mary Street, now called The Old House.  He lived there until his death.  He amassed a large library of books. Many people in the Nether Stowey area were suspicious of his radical views.  Although he was a great philanthropist and had many friends, he had a short temper and could sometimes be abrupt and overbearing.

Thomas Poole died of pleurisy in Nether Stowey on 8th September 1837 aged 72.  He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's Church in the village.

Portrait of Thomas Poole in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton

Poole House in Castle Street, Nether Stowey

The Old House, St Mary Street, Nether Stowey

Quantock Savings Bank, Lime Street, Nether Stowey

Quantock Savings Bank, Lime Street, Nether Stowey

Old School, Nether Stowey (now the public library)

Thomas Poole's gravestone in St Mary's churchyard

Thomas Poole's Memorial inside St Mary's church