Monday 17 October 2016

Day trips from Yeovil, Somerset



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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