On Pawlett Hams where the grass is greener

There are some of us who have got around Somerset so much that we are inclined to think there is no corner of the county we do not know. But we get our surprises, and pleasant they are because there is something of secret garden magic about them, an aura of discovery as though we have entered a new world. It is more than familiar to those who live in it, of course, and its existence has not gone unnoticed by authorities whose business it is to collect rates.One of these moments of discovery occurred with me recently. I have travelled down the A370 and A38 to Bridgwater hundreds of times. On the way I have often noticed a signpost pointing to Stretcholt, but have not bothered to follow it. A little further on there is Pawlett. I have stopped at the Manor Hotel, Pawlett, on occasions for refreshment, but have never looked around Pawlett or looked into its history, never bothered to explore the byways of that rich grazing land, the Pawlett Hams, which lies between the village and a great loop in the route of the river Parrett.It had never occurred to me that Pawlett, perched on the slopes at the end of the Polden range, could have much of a history, and as for the countryside between it and the Parrett, what could it be but a vast stretch of dreary, low-lying flat land? Dreary it may be in winter, but not when the countryside leaps into summer.It has been claimed that the Pawlett Hams are the richest grazing land in the country, and when I travelled there recently it certainly seemed the grass was greener than elsewhere. The wildflowers and the growth hemming roadways that are no wider than they have been for centuries were so high that, swayed by wind, they almost nodded in through my car windows.Pawlett got its name from one of the oldest and most famous of Somerset families, the Paulets, great landowners and notably associated with Hinton St George and Nunney Castle. Historian Collinson says that 'Pawlet' was the Paulets' 'most ancient habitation in the county', and mentions a sale of part of their Pawlett estate by one of the family, Sir Amias Pawlett, to Richard Cooper.This Sir Amias made an enemy of Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey, described as 'an honest poor man's son', graduated at Oxford when 15 and was known as the 'boy bachelor'. He was elected fellow of Magdalen and became senior bursar. He was forced to resign because he applied funds without authority to build the great Magdalen tower. Befriended, he was presented with the living of Limington, near Ilchester, but fell foul of Sir Amias Pawlett who, historian Collinson wrote, "was so bold as to set Wolsey by the feet during his pleasure". In other words, he put him in the stocks. When Wolsey became Cardinal he sent for Sir Amias and after sharp words with him, had him put under what was the equivalent of house arrest in the Middle Temple for five or six years.Apart from the Pawletts, another famous family linked with Pawlett was the Gaunts. Study the Ordnance Map and you will see way out in Pawlett Hams a Gaunt's Farm. Gaunts has been named as a hamlet of Pawlett and it was Robert Gaunt, an ancestor of the famous John o' Gaunt, who in about the 12th century had the banks of the Parrett built up, and thus reclaimed from the sea the area that became known as Pawlett Hams.Although the Paulett family had its manor house at Pawlett, the building had not survived when Leland, touring the country to provide records for Henry VIII wrote of it: "The eldest Manor Place of the Poulettes in Somerset is now clene doune. But yet it berith the name of Paulette and is three miles from Bridgwater."The last lord of the manor of Pawlett was Lord de Mauley, whose family name was Ponsonby. He did not live at the village but appointed an agent to run the estate. It was Henry Smith-Spark, who held this position for 50 years from 1854 to 1904, who built the present manor house, enlarged from a cottage, and now a hotel.In 1932 the Hon Hubert Ponsonby decided to auction the estate. At the sale at Bridgwater the auctioneer suggested a starting bid of £100,000 for the Pawlett Hams and the Manor House This was not forthcoming, and he then said he would not submit the grazings in lots as Mr Ponsonby had decided to keep them. The Hon Hubert Ponsonby, who later succeeded to the title of Lord de Mauley, made a gift of a playground to the village for the children, and at his request a walnut tree was planted near the church gates as a memorial of the family's 100 years association with the village. The church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, has a Norman doorway, old oak pews, and a screen of 13th-14th century origin.Incredibly the remote Pawlett Hams are crossed by one of the country's oldest highways, one which for far off times was a busy one. It was a Saxon herepath coming over the Quantocks from the west, and crossing the Parrett by the Combwich passage. Combwich is almost in a direct line with Pawlett, and standing on the riverbank at Combwich you may look across and see the pathway leading from the other side of the former ferry towards Pawlett. Along this route came pilgrims on the way to Glastonbury, taking the trackway through Pawlett and over the Polden Hills.The Parrett mud, in places 20 feet deep, has silted over the 'hard', and it does not seem conceivable at low tide that at this spot there was ever a blue lias layer over which horsemen and wheeled traffic could pass. Even in the early part of the 19th century, however, waggons were being driven across, and comparatively large ferryboats conveyed cattle and passengers. The route of the trackway across the Pawlett Hams is shown on the ordnance map, and the insertion of 'White House Rhyne' is not without significance. The White House stood on the Pawlett bank of the ferry and in its day was well used as an inn by travellers. With the decline of the ferry it became unoccupied and fell into ruins.The Rev Richard Warner, of Bath, in his A Walk Through the Western Counties of England, published in 1800, describes crossing the ferry. He stayed overnight at a former Pawlett inn, the 'Shoulder of Mutton', near which Pawlett used to have an annual fair at which sheep and cattle were sold, and there were amusements.It was on September 6, 1799, that Mr Warner made the crossing and he stated that the ferry was about two-and-a-half miles from the 'Shoulder of Mutton'.Of the White House as it then stood, he wrote: "A comfortable little cottage, which though not a public house, holds out hospitality to the traveller, afforded us an excellent breakfast; after which, parting from my companion, I ferried over the River Parrett at that time quite at ebb, and not more than a quarter-of-a-mile across."Edward Hutton, whose Highways and Byways of Somerset was published in 1912, used the Combwich ferry to cross from the Quantocks country, commenting: "West Somerset now lies behind us with its glory in the golden sunset, and at Combwich we cross the broad and muddy estuary of the Parrett and find ourselves among the lowing herds on these fat Pawlett Hams banked so securely from the sea ...."Farming on the rich grassland of the Pawlett Hams has not always prospered. There were the bad winters when floods occurred. In the 1870s, with sheep suffering from disease through the damp and when there was general agricultural depression, the value of the land fell by 50 per cent. With today's improved drainage it is reckoned farmers can put their beasts out on the levels three weeks earlier in the Spring and leave them three weeks longer in the autumn than was possible upwards of 20 years ago.One of Pawlett's best remembered personalities is Albert Stone, who was 60 years a shepherd. During his 25 years' employment at Pawlett he cared for sheep and cattle not only on the Pawlett Hams but also on the 700 acres Pawlett Meads. He covered 25 miles a day accompanied by his two dogs, and at one time watched over 1,700 sheep. Farmers used to send their ewes and lambs to the area after the lambing season. His favourite dog, Toby, could enter a 33-acre field and round up all the sheep and bring them to the gate without a word of command.Interesting country the Pawlett Hams. You can follow its winding, narrow roadways from Pawlett to the hamlet of Stretcholt (named as Stretchill in Domesday Book) and which once had an inn, The Jolly Sailor. One of Stretcholt's former old inhabitants could recall being told by his grandfather about smuggling along the Somerset coast, and of an occasion when a press gang came inland from the Parrett and raided Pawlett to carry off some of its young men for forced service at sea.From Stretcholt the road continues over a bridge across that wonder creation of the last war years, the Huntspill River, and so to Huntspill, a village dominated by the 14th century tower of its church. Highbridge is next on the homeward route. Altogether, a pleasant, interesting outing in this district entailing what has become so important now, low mileage.