Unusual Tales of the West Country Local

by Diane Scott Lewis

For over a thousand years, the British public house or “pub” has been enjoyed by rich or poor as a gathering place for friends to share news—or to foment discontent, and of course enjoy alcohol.


In 1872, politician Sir William Harcourt said, “As much of the history of England has been brought about in public houses as in the House of Commons.”

Many public houses started out as different types of establishments. The Holman Clavel near Taunton in Somerset, dating from the fourteenth century, was at first a resting place for monks on pilgrimage. Charlie, a defrocked monk, (who apparently enjoyed his alcohol more than prayer) is said to still haunt the place by moving ornaments about or making items fly off the wall.

Another pub that began as a house of rest for pilgrims is the Shave Cross Inn, near Bridport in Dorset. At this site, a mysterious female saint (St. Candida or St. Wite) had her remains entombed in a plain stone chest below which were three wide openings. In the fourteenth century, pilgrims would stick their afflicted limbs in these openings, hoping for a cure. If they’d waited too long, and died, their bodies were removed by way of a coffin shoot, located supposedly where the pub bar is today.

The long bars we’re used to didn’t come around until Victorian times. Serving hatches were in some pubs, the precursor of the bar. Most establishments had pot-boys that scurried back and forth from the barrels carrying the brew to the tables. These boys carried the potboy’s beer tray or pot-board, which resembled a carpenter’s wooden toolbox. Inside were eight or ten beer pots and, on the top, clay pipes for those who wanted to smoke with their beer.

The seventeenth century Rose and Crown near Langport still has no bar, as the owners wish for it to keep its authentic charm.

The eighteenth-century Square and Compass in Worth Matravers, which started out as a pair of cottages, still has its serving hatch (and no bar).

During WWII the pub served the men of a secret RAF base that was developing radar right behind the establishment. When the Germans found out, in 24 hours the base personnel disappeared elsewhere for safety’s sake. And the pub lost 2,000 customers.

The Coach and Horses in Devon’s Buckland Brewer dates from the thirteenth century. Rumored to be haunted, on the ceiling of a bedroom above the bar hangs a hook directly above a trapdoor. Local hangings must have taken place here in the past.

The corner in the taproom, directly below the trapdoor, is so haunted that dogs refuse to go near it. Two cavaliers have been seen standing in a corner (the same sinister corner?) and a Roundhead has disturbed the sleep of visitors.

When food was short, beer was a source of nutrition for the poor and cheaper to buy than bread. In the 17th century, several ale houses were closed in Somerset to save on the grain being used to make beer. So the poor lost out on their "cheap" meal.

If drinkers today complain about the head on their beer (thus giving them less alcohol), in 1364 a dishonest West Country ale-wife was charged with the reverse. She sold quart pots into which she’d put an inch and a half of pitch at the bottoms.

Sources:
Martyn Cornell’s Zythophile
The Local, Ales and Tales of the West Country, 1999, by Chris Denham

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For information about me, my research and novels, please visit my website:
http://www.dianescottlewis.com

Ann Radcliffe, The Mighty Enchantress

by J.A. Beard

Reading, that oh-so-wonderful pleasure, was of course appreciated by many in Georgian England. The expansion of literacy among women during the period  also helped to provide new popularity for many types of fiction.

In the later decades of Georgian England, the rise of the Gothic novel particularly stands out. Crumbling castles, brooding noblemen, virtuous women terrorized by supernatural wickedness in the darkness. These are all part of the the early tradition of Gothic fiction. Fixated on atmosphere, the Gothic tradition was a mix of horror, melodrama, and romantic elements. Whenever Gothic fiction is considered, there's one woman who helped to shape and popularize the genre, Ann Radcliffe.

An excerpt:

While Emily gazed with awe upon the scene, footsteps were heard within the gates, and the undrawing of bolts; after which an ancient servant of the castle appeared, forcing back the huge folds of the portal, to admit his lord. As the carriage-wheels rolled heavily under the portcullis, Emily's heart sunk, and she seemed, as if she was going into her prison; the gloomy court, into which she passed, served to confirm the idea, and her imagination, ever awake to circumstance, suggested even more terrors, than her reason could justify.

Another gate delivered them into the second court, grass-grown, and more wild than the first, where, as she surveyed through the twilight its desolation—its lofty walls, overtopt with briony, moss and nightshade, and the embattled towers that rose above,—long-suffering and murder came to her thoughts. One of those instantaneous and unaccountable convictions, which sometimes conquer even strong minds, impressed her with its horror. The sentiment was not diminished, when she entered an extensive gothic hall, obscured by the gloom of evening, which a light, glimmering at a distance through a long perspective of arches, only rendered more striking. As a servant brought the lamp nearer partial gleams fell upon the pillars and the pointed arches, forming a strong contrast with their shadows, that stretched along the pavement and the walls.

-- The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794.

While not the first author to write what we would now consider a Gothic novel, Radcliffe helped to popularize and bring Gothic novels into the literary mainstream. For this reason, she's often considered the true definer of the genre.

Although she was wildly successful during her lifetime, she wrote only a book of poetry and six novels: The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), A Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), The Italian (1797), and Gaston de Blondeville (1826). If you're wondering about the large number of years between her fifth and sixth novels, the last was actually posthumously published by her husband.

Her works tended to focus on virtuous and imperiled heroines of breeding dealing with the aforementioned brooding noblemen, mysterious exotic castles, and supernatural elements. Radcliffe, however, in contrast to many other Gothic writers was rather explicit (with one exception, Gaston de Blondville, though as noted above, it would only be published after her death) in showing that the supernatural elements in her stories all actually had rational, non-supernatural explanations.

One of the continuing elements in her works is a heroine desperately resisting an onslaught of emotion and instead, eventually, applying reason to the situation. For the time, especially given many people's sentiments about women in general, this was actually somewhat feminist, though a type of feminism considered mostly acceptable by late Georgian society.

Indeed, her combination of sensible heroines, lack of true supernatural elements, and virtue allowed her brand of Gothic novels to be acceptable for the literary mainstream. Critics at the time hailed her as the "mighty enchantress."

Surprisingly, at the height of her popularity at the age of 32, she stopped writing. As she kept a rather low personal profile, it's not certain her exact reasons for quitting, but many literary historians attribute it to her personal disgust with the direction Gothic fiction was taken, particularly in terms of then-prurient disreputable supernatural content. For example, The Monk, published in 1796, gained some popularity. The novel features and references, among other things, demon pacts, rape, and incest.

Radcliffe's works remained popular and influential throughout the 19th century both in England and the United States. She would influence many other authors who would go on to influence their own literary descendants. So, even if she isn't a household name anymore, her influence lingers.

Her 19th-century popularity is easily attested by the direct references to her works in period works and later fiction. One of the more famous and familiar to modern readers would be the several references to her work, particularly The Mysteries of Udolpho, in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817), a parody of many elements popular in Gothic fiction and Radcliffe's books. I should note that Ms. Austen was far from the only one parodying Gothic excess at the time.

So, whenever you read a book where some young woman is running down a spooky mansion/castle corridor or watch a similar movie, take a moment to think of Ann Radcliffe.

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J.A. Beard is a scientific editor and the author of A Woman of Proper Accomplishments, which, though not very Gothic, does feature  a virtuous and rational Georgian young woman threatened by supernatural forces.