Explore England
Sally Shalam enjoys spring in Somerset
SHAFTS of sunlight glancing across dewdrops on hedgerows, swathes of snowdrops and the sound of birdsong make springtime a delightful season in which to discover Somerset – and its softly hued jewel, Bath, in the valley of the River Avon, is a perfect place to start.
Added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in 1987, the city’s history stretches back to Roman times, when it was known as Aquae Sulis. They built a bathhouse complex in which to enjoy the health-giving benefits of naturally occurring mineral springs, and a temple to the goddess Sulis Minerva.
Today, the well-preserved Roman Baths (normally open daily) are encircled by the handsome, golden stone of 17th- and 18th-century buildings for which the city is no less celebrated. What the Romans began, the Georgians continued, building a city for enjoyment and relaxation.
Even the briefest stroll in the sweeping grandeur of the Royal Crescent or The Circus, passing the elegant curvature of townhouses once occupied by fashionable society, is a reminder of the uplifting effect great architecture can have on the soul.
The city’s most famous resident, Jane Austen, described life in Bath in two of her novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, though we also know from a letter to her sister, Cassandra, that she didn’t care for the city much. Her books, however, have done a great deal to entice the modern-day visitor.
They come in their millions, from as far as Japan and Korea, the USA and Australia, to see its Roman legacy, and its contemporary equivalent, the Thermae Bath Spa, which opened in 2006, as well as the streets and landscapes which Austen knew so well. Indeed, Austen’s life and works are celebrated with an annual festival in which city-dwellers parade in period costume, and also at the Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street, close to where she once lived.
The Holburne Museum, an imposing Grade I listed mansion in Sydney Pleasure Gardens, packed with fine and decorative art, is a stone’s throw from the house on
Great King Street in which William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 (now the Museum of Astronomy). The grand Assembly Rooms, built for 18th-century “assemblies” when polite society would gather for balls, concerts or simply to play cards and socialise, is now a suitable home for the Fashion Museum. Close by is the Museum of East Asian Art on Bennett Street, which gives on to the perfection of The Circus, designed by John Wood the Elder and completed by his son, John Wood the Younger, in 1768.
Exploration between any of these will inevitably acquaint you with
Bath’s elegant shops, such as the Bath Hat Company on Walcot Street or independent department store, Rossiters on Broad Street, but also its green spaces. For as well as the honeyed stone which gives Bath its romantic appeal, this is also a verdant city characterised by parks, sweeping vistas and London plane trees.
Wander through Royal Victoria Park and the Botanical Gardens, created in the late 1800s, or visit the 18thcentury pleasure gardens found beside the Holburne Museum; or below iconic Pulteney Bridge, stroll in the manicured serenity of Parade Gardens which unfurl beside a stretch of the Avon. From here you can see the soaring beauty of Bath Abbey, and traversing Pierrepont Street you pass through a lattice-work of little passages of almost continental charm, tucked into which is a wealth of tiny galleries and cafes including Sally Lunn’s historic eating house and 19th-century Guildhall Market, before reaching the Abbey churchyard. Here
lies the famous Pump Room where lunch or afternoon tea can be taken in memorably elegant surroundings.
Where Bath is a smart introduction to Somerset, much of the county is characterised by gentle pastureland, ancient market towns and more than a little touch of magic. Glastonbury has long been thought of as the Isle of Avalon where, in Arthurian legend, Excalibur was forged and King Arthur was buried. With its dramatic tor shaped by Neolithic terracing and nearby holy Chalice Well, it actually was an island until the Middle Ages, thanks to its location on the watery plain of the Somerset Levels.
Early on a spring morning, as fingers of light are spreading across the sky, the surrounding wetlands create ethereal mists which lift over St Michael’s Tower which crowns the tor. This almost tangible spirituality results in the town’s proliferation of crystal shops and healing centres, drawing those of a pagan persuasion every bit as much as the music fans who flock to Glastonbury Festival, held every couple of years at Worthy Farm in nearby Pilton.
Sadly, most festival-goers disembarking at Castle Cary station won’t get to see the attractive market town beyond, home to an old lock-up
beside the early Victorian Market House and to one of the last remaining horsehair weaving companies in the world, John Boyd Textiles. Nor will they potter among the shelves of Bailey Hill Bookshop, or breathe in the organic fragrances at apothe-cary. The only mud they will experience will be that for which Glastonbury Festival is famous, missing out too on a chance to slither about the Somerset Levels. This coastal plain and wetland area stretches south from the Mendip Hills to the Blackdown Hills and has much to offer the wildlife watcher.
From October until early March it is the place to see magnificent starling murmurations, which usually start shortly before sunset when the birds return to the Avalon Marshes, a landscape rich in black peat and green pasture. They also create a spectacle when they leave the reeds in the mornings. There is a clutch of nature reserves across the Marshes with a visitor centre open daily at the heart. Whether you want to spot kingfishers or little egrets, marsh harriers or reed buntings, here you can plan your visit.
The natural wonder of Somerset continues with the limestone grandeur of Cheddar Gorge, reached via lonely roads which criss-cross the wild expanses of the Mendip Hills, an Area
of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) where grassland, bluebell woods and rocky outcrops offer much for the walker and climber. At Stockton Woods, near the Mendip village of Priddy, you can pick up the Monarch’s Way, a long-distance footpath (from Worcestershire to West Sussex) which traces the route taken by King Charles II on his escape from Cromwell after the Battle of
Worcester in 1651.
There is drama, too, at Wraxall in north Somerset, where you’ll find the dreamy Victorian Gothic Tyntesfield, named after the Tynte baronets who once inhabited this part of the county. Its gardens are a natural expression, in colour and seasonal variety, of the opulence of the house, although it is not large by National Trust standards. A visit can easily be combined with Clevedon on the Severn Estuary for its pretty Victorian pier and a chance to browse British craft at Midgley Green on Alexandra Road.
The smallest city in England lies at the southernmost edge of the
Mendips. Wells is a pocket-sized beauty whose cathedral, seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, has an awe-inspiring West Front carved from local limestone, interior 14th-century scissor arches and medieval astronomical clock whose jousting knights appear when the clock strikes every quarter.
The quaint charm of the medieval houses in Vicars’ Close, stunning tulip displays in the Bishop’s Palace Gardens and well-preserved marketplace adorned with café tables deliver a perfect day, perhaps rounded off by slipping back inside the cathedral for choral Evensong.
If Wells has an ecclesiastical air, nearby Frome and Bruton’s embarrassment of riches are more earthly. In Frome’s historic heart, Catherine Hill, more than a dozen independent shops lean into one another on the steep cobbles snaking a path between them.
Eleven miles away, in Bruton, modern artisan makers are showcased at The Hole & Corner Shop on the high street which is also a destination for clothing and cafés. The well-loved At the Chapel, a bakery, winestore and restaurant, is housed, as its name suggests, in the soaring dimensions of a former chapel.
On the edge of town, Hauser & Wirth, a contemporary art gallery created from Grade II listed former model farm buildings (and location for the film Chocolat) has a hip café, Roth Bar and Grill. There is no better