The important thing about making day trips (assuming that
one has access to four wheels, or two with an engine) is that the time on the
road is kept as short as possible and a reasonably high proportion of the day
is spent at the places one wants to go to. From that perspective, a visitor to
England’s West Country could do a lot worse than make Yeovil their base.
Yeovil is in south Somerset and very close to that county’s
border with Dorset. It is a “crossroads” town, where the east-west A30 crosses
the north-south A37, although visitors travelling down from London are more
likely to use the much faster A303, which passes within a few miles of the town.
Yeovil also happens to be where two rail routes cross, those from London to
Exeter and from Weymouth to Bristol. Day tripping is therefore made easy even
if one does not have a car.
Yeovil is not without interest in its own right, but the
visitor is likely to want to explore beyond the town’s boundaries before long.
One day trip could be to potter through the country lanes that surround the
town and connect it with a host of attractive villages with fascinating names,
such as Ryme Intrinseca, Hardington Mandeville and Chilton Cantelo. One village
that should not be missed is East Coker, to the south of the town, which is not
only exceptionally pretty with its thatched hamstone cottages, but was also the
inspiration for the second of T S Eliot’s “Four Quartets”. The poet’s ancestors
came from the village and his ashes are buried in the village church.
The area is notable for several large historical country
houses, some of which are open to the public. A day trip could take in one or
more of these, along with a drive through the villages.
Montacute House, four miles to the west of Yeovil, is one of
the finest Elizabethan mansions in England. It was built between 1598 and 1601
for Sir Edward Phelips in the English Renaissance style and is noted for having
the longest “long gallery” in the country. The house is full of period
furniture and textiles and there are fine formal gardens and parkland walks to enjoy.
Another house from this period is Barrington Court, only
eight miles from Montacute. The gardens and outbuildings are particularly
impressive, including a stone-walled kitchen garden and the “white garden” in
which all the plants have white flowers.
Another house to visit in the area is Lytes Cary Manor,
former home of the medieval herbalist Henry Lyte. There are also the gardens of
Tintinhull House to the northwest of Yeovil.
An attraction of a very different kind is the Fleet Air Arm
Museum, seven miles north of Yeovil. This is the world’s second largest museum
devoted to naval flying and includes more than ninety aircraft and 30,000 other
artefacts, plus two million documentary items. Not every item has a direct
naval link, with one of the aircraft being the first British-built Concorde
airliner.
Five miles east of Yeovil, over the border in Dorset, is the
historic town of Sherborne that can trace its history back to Anglo-Saxon
times. Sherborne Abbey has traces of Saxon and Norman architecture but most of
what can be seen today dates from the 13th to 15th
centuries. This beautiful building, in golden-yellow hamstone, has many
interesting features both inside and out, including the tombs of two Saxon
kings.
Sherborne has two castles. The “old castle” is a hilltop
ruin of a 12th century building that was severely damaged during the
English Civil War. The “new castle” is a fortified manor house built by Sir
Walter Raleigh in 1594, although he did not have much chance to enjoy it as he
was imprisoned in the Tower of London for most of his life after 1603. The
house can be visited on Saturdays but the extensive grounds are open for most
of the year.
There are several possible day trips that call for a bit
more time on the road but are well worth the journey. One of these is to
Stourhead, about 25 miles from Yeovil. Although Stourhead House is well worth a
visit, it is the world-famous landscaped grounds that most people come to see.
Henry Hoare (1705-85) inherited the estate from his father and proceeded to
create a landscape based on the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Poussin. A large lake was created, around which the
land was carefully planted with exotic trees and shrubs and various temples and
grottoes were built to afford “classical” views as one walked around the lake.
With the trees at full maturity, today’s visitors can see the grounds as their
designer never could.
Almost due north of Yeovil is Glastonbury, reached after a
journey of about 20 miles. The best approach is via Somerton and across part of
the “Somerset levels”, a mysterious yet beautiful area of countryside that was
reclaimed by draining the marshes in medieval times. The sight of Glastonbury
Tor with its solitary tower can be seen from many miles away, and the view from
the top, if you have the time, is well worth the effort.
The town of Glastonbury has a “new age” feel to it, as if
the 1960s hippies never left (in point of fact, some of them never did!). It is
associated with ancient myths and legends, including those of King Arthur and
Joseph of Arimathea, who is said to have come to Britain and founded a chapel
at Glastonbury. The “Glastonbury thorn” that grows on Wearyall Hill (but which
was vandalised in 2010) was supposed to be a direct descendant of the thorn
that grew when Joseph thrust his staff into the ground. Glastonbury Abbey was
built in medieval times and its ruins, which purportedly contain the graves of
King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, are a peaceful place to visit.
Further on still (six miles beyond Glastonbury) is Wells,
which is England’s smallest cathedral city. The cathedral, however, is
magnificent and well worth the journey. The astronomical clock in the north
transept dates from 1392 and is one of the oldest working clocks in the world.
A walk round the moat of the old Bishop’s Palace might be rewarded by seeing
the swans ring the bell by the bridge for food.
As mentioned earlier, what counts as a day trip depends on
how much driving you are prepared to do as opposed to sightseeing. Yeovil might
therefore be regarded as a base from which to visit attractions such as Roman
and Regency Bath, Dorchester and Maiden Castle, Cheddar with its caves, Longleat
Safari Park, Stonehenge and Salisbury. This is certainly a part of the world
that has so much to offer the visitor that he or she will be forced to make
some very difficult choices.
© John Welford
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