Corfu Blues and Global Views: Castle Cary and Lodge Hill (Somerset Songlines)

From Highways and Byways in Somerset, Edward Hutton (Chapman and Hall, London, sixth edition, revised, 1955), p.218. The first edition was published in 1912 by Macmillan and Co. I agree with Hutton's description, except for the comment about Alfred's Tower, a folly perhaps, but a landmark which has always meant a lot to me

"Castle Cary is a most delightful place...on the summit of Lodge Hill...the view is the thing. In the centre Glastonbury Tor, on the right at further distance Brent Knoll; on either side hills over hills- the whole length of Mendip from Crook's Peak to Creech, the Poldens with Butleigh monument, the Quantocks from Cothelstone to Channel, the hills of Curry and Ham, the Blackdowns with the Wellington monument, and the Brendons backing on Dunkery some forty miles away. What a view!"

From "Somerset" by S.E. Winbolt (Penguin Guides, 1939, revised 1949).

The View from Lodge Hill:

"Cary's crowning glory is the wonderful view from the hill at the back of the town...as one steps from the shelter of a thick hedge to the stile at the very edge of the ridge a panorama with few equals in England breaks upon the delighted gaze. Towering heavenward in the very centre of the picture is Glastonbury Tor....A volume could be written upon the things of interest to be seen from Lodge Hill, but here it must suffice to add that the whole of the landscape which lies before the spectator is hallowed ground, the land of kingly legend and romance, the land of Avalon and Camelot...the supreme spectacle to be obtained within ten minutes walk of the town- a view of which the native never tires and at which the visitor never fails to marvel."

"Castle Cary and District", Somerset Folk Guides, Folk Press Ltd (undated, after 1926?).

"The small market town of Castle Cary lies in the most beautiful country in Somerset. From Lodgehill, just above its climbing street and vanished castle site, strange hills looking like beached whales rise up from the endless levels below- Corton Denham, the height of Camelot at Cadbury, the Tor of Montacute, Hamdon Hill, Glastonbury Tor, Brent Knoll. In the far distance are the blue Quantocks and Severn Sea."

"Castle Cary, Somerset", Unwrecked England, Candida Lycett Green, The Oldie, October 2001 (Candida Lycett Green is the daughter of John Betjeman).

See also: "There's a Call from Castle Cary"

and "John Mackie, Castle Cary Dialect Poet"

"Some volk do goo to zee the zights
Athirt the sea to vur-off lands;
An' climb the white-capp'd giddy heights,
When scenes so veair be close at hand.
Thik view once zeed who can vorget
Vrom Lodge Hill down to Zomerzet?"

From R.R.C. Gregory's "Poems in Dialect" (1922):

From Douglas Macmillan's, "Spring Morn on Lodge Hill" from "By Camel and Cary" (1921):

I grew up in Castle Cary, in a house on Cary Hill, near the top of Lodge Hill, not far from the site of of the old castle.

A poem by Douglas Macmillan:

Two old Castle Cary songs:

Down Hell Ladder Lane

Down Hell Ladder Lane one warm summer evening,

My love and I went a-walking, not talking at all.

We sat down together on the stump of a tree-trunk,

Just listening to the birds as the night it did fall.

In silence we sat there till the sun it was sunk low,

Behind the pine-trees on the brow of the hill,

But an unwelcome guest came a rudely intruding,

The cold evening breeze broke love’s golden spell.

She shivered with the cold and asked for a covering,

So I gave her my coat and we started to talk.

Before I knew that the evening was over,

We were walking again up Hell Ladder Lane.

Moving House

My mother’s moving house today-

My childhood home for twenty years;

And I’m so far, so far away,

I cannot hide these childish tears.

I’ll never see my room again,

Nor my favourite chestnut tree.

The move is made, I won’t complain,

I’ll throw away my front door key.

My father’s grave neglected now,

The old home town is home no more;

Were he alive, would he allow

Strangers to walk in the door?

It’s farewell to the wedding bells

Which sounded on a summer’s day;

There are certain things one never sells

One should not even give away.

My toboggan and my cricket bat,

Old photographs and things like that.

But I hope you’ll be happy, I want you to be,

And I’ll try to imagine your house by the sea.

(written in Nairobi, Kenya, about Castle Cary and the move to West Bay, Dorset)

Newcomers' guide to living in Castle Cary and Bruton (The Guardian)

"Great and many are the divisions in C. Cary, and some almost irreconcilable. Send us Peace O Lord! With Thee O Lord all things are possible" ( The Diary of Parson James Woodforde, Sept. 14, 1768).

My Somerset Songlines

(Glastonbury Tor, top left, Alfred's Tower, top right;

Castle Cary and Bruton (centre);

Cadbury Castle, Queen Camel and Sparkford (bottom left);
Wincanton (bottom right)

Wincanton was at the outer limit of 'my territory' or Somerset songlines. Here's a poem by Jeffrey Boss ("The Manoeuvring Sun"(Bristol, undated):

Wincanton

The twilight closes: points of light

Leave undisturbed the bough-framed night,

Where church tower, gravestones, cloud-streaked sky,

The street in which I do not live,

Fall gently from my drinking eye.

A bitterness disturbs the grace

Of beauty where one has no place."

John Leland on Camelot (from The Itinerary):

"At the very south ende of the chirch of South-Cadbyri standith Camallate, sumtyme a famose toun or castelle, upon a very torre or hill, wunderfully enstrengtheid of nature, to the which be 2. enteringes up by very stepe way: one by north est and another by south west. The very roote of the hille wheron this forteres stode is more then a mile in cumpace. In the upper parte of the coppe of the hille be 4. diches or trenches, and a balky waulle or yerth betwixt every one of them. In the very toppe of the hille above al the trenchis is magna area or campus of 20. acres or more by estimation,.wher yn dyverse places men may se fundations and rudera of walles. There was much dusky blew stone that people of the villages therby hath caryid away. This top withyn the upper waulle is xx. acres of ground and more, and hath bene often plowid and borne very good corne. Much gold, sylver and coper of the Romaine coynes hath be found ther yn plouing : and lykewise in the feldes in the rootes of this hille, with many other antique thinges, and especial by este. Ther was found in hominum memoria a horse shoe of sylver at Camallate. The people can telle nothing ther but that they have hard say that Arture much resortid to Camalat".

From Cadbury Camp, in 'Somerset Essays', Llewelyn Powys (1937):

"I have not been to Cadbury Camp since my schooldays, but I remember it as clear as though I were looking at it on an old engraving above a parlour chimney-piece...Malory's narrations have an innocent way of sliding out from under accepted proprieties. They are profoundly amoral. 'Goose if I had you upon Sarum plain I'd drive you cackling home to Camelot' ".

Hell's Ladder Lane, footpath from top of Cary Hill to Higher Hadspen

Symbolic Tree
"Zoo I do like noo tree so well
'S the girt oak tree that's in the dell".
(William Barnes)

The King John Oak, Hazlegrove House, Queen Camel/Sparkford
When I was at Hazlegrove, the tree was 32 feet in girth
at 5 feet from the ground
and was approximately 1000 years old
(source "A History of Hazlegrove House", R.P.A.Lankester, 1958)