all the ebullient modernity of weston is looked down upon by the immemorially old, from that overhanging vantage-point, worle hill, where the ancient camp and fortress of worlebury, dwelling-place and stronghold of many ancient peoples, shows traces of occupation by a race who flourished some four thousand years since. worlebury passed through many hands, but the last people who sheltered there died in ruthless battle thirteen centuries ago.
worlebury rises to a height of 357 feet above weston, and although modern villas here and there impinge upon it, and the spire of holy trinity church and the unlovely backs of houses are a thought too insistent from these grey ramparts of prehistoric times, it is in many ways as remote from the seething crowd beneath as its height would imply. the camp of twenty acres is divided into two unequal parts by a ditch. it is conjectured that the larger portion was the place of refuge, and the smaller the actual fortress, of the race who constructed it. the whole is irregularly enclosed by ramparts of 79loose pieces of limestone and rocky banks, roughly of live successive ranges, but here and there, in places thought weakest, of as many as seven. on the side facing the sea, where the limestone rocks of worle hill go precipitously down, and artificial defence was not required, there are no ramparts.
this hilltop was until about 1820 a barren spot, quite innocent of trees, but the plantations made at that time by the smyth-pigott of the period have by now resulted in a crown of beautiful woodlands of larch, oak, and other trees. amid these woods the extraordinary ancient ramparts of loose limestone fragments, the broadest of these defences about a hundred feet across, glimmer greyly, like petrified rivers. the flakes and knobs of stone, broken up and placed here in such immense quantities and with incredible labour, vary in size from about that of an ordinary brick to three times those dimensions, and are as clean and sharp to-day as though but recently quarried.
it is not an easy matter to climb over these successive banks and ditches, and it is quite evident that those who at different periods stormed these defences and slew those who occupied them, must have been determined people, little daunted by the losses they must needs have suffered in the advance. the early defenders were men who used the sling for chief weapon of defence, and great numbers of slingers’ platforms—little flat spaces contrived in strategical 80positions along the sloping sides of the hill—remain, like so many primitive artillery emplacements; while quantities of their ammunition—pebble-stones that are not in the course of nature found on the crests of limestone hills—may be picked up.
the first people, it is thought, who seized this hilltop, were belgic tribes from over seas, who, landing in the shallow waters that then spread where the meadows below kewstoke are now, or in the lakelike bay on whose side weston now stands, fortified the summit and held it as a base from which to make further advances. the natives of these parts, whose lands those ancient raiders coveted, were chiefly lake-dwellers, living on the many islets that then studded these marshy seas and salt-water lagoons, or housed on pile-dwellings ingeniously constructed in the waters themselves. larger communities of them lived for safety inside stockades, whose fragments have been discovered of recent years at meare, in the neighbourhood of glastonbury, where evidence of the conflicts that followed the appearance of the raiders was found, in charred remains of wrecked homes. evidence was not wanting that this was a conflict in which both sides suffered, and among the remains of a stockade unearthed recently was found the trophy of a woman’s head, which the science of ethnology proved to have been that of a person belonging to the raiders’ tribes. thus it appeared that the lake-dwellers had seized and murdered one of their 81enemies’ women, and had fixed the head upon a stake of their defences, by way of derision.
those who first seized worle hill, and made the camp of worlebury, evidently intended to stay, for they constructed many well-like dwelling-pits in the hilltops. some of these remain. they are about four feet deep, and had originally a surrounding wall, about two feet high. a roof of boughs and twigs, kept in place by flat slabs of stone, completed a specimen dwelling. we know so much for a certainty, because in excavating examples of these houses the original roof has been found, with the boughs and twigs and the flat stone slabs that had been especially brought from the lias strata of nailsea by these ancient folk. plentiful signs remained that at some period this camp had been rushed and every dwelling burnt out, for charred barley was found, together with remains of burnt logs and wattle-work roofing. under the remains of these roofs were pebble-stones, part of the ancient occupants’ sling ammunition; and relics of their last meals, in the shape of bones of birds and rabbits. some flint arrow-heads also were discovered, and, secreted behind a rocky ledge in one of these pits, some iron ring-money. so, on some day of red ruin, at a date no man can give, the first camp of worlebury was destroyed.
centuries passed, and the hilltop apparently was given over to solitude, and nature buried these relics of a desperate day under moss and grass. whether, as sometimes has been supposed, the 82romans at a later age stormed a british camp on this height, is at least uncertain. the only things roman ever found here were some coins, and they may well have belonged to the romanised britons who, after the withdrawal of the roman garrisons of britain, fell a prey to the more virile barbarians from the north of europe, and retreated before them, being driven mercilessly from one fortified post to another, and slain in many thousands. the last great struggle in worlebury took place at this period. arthur, the half-legendary king arthur of so many romances, the great warrior-king of more than three hundred years earlier date than alfred the great, had been at length slain, in a.d. 542; and the saxon onset, checked by his successes, was renewed. ceawlin, the great bretwalda of the powerful and rapidly growing kingdom of wessex, overthrew the britons at the bloody battle of barbury hill, near swindon, in a.d. 556, and in a.d. 577, with great slaughter, gained the battle of dyrham, between bath and bristol; all those parts we now know as gloucestershire and wiltshire, together with parts of somerset, being thereby added to the kingdom of wessex. soon after the battle of dyrham, ceawlin captured worlebury, where the britons had taken refuge, and the evidence of what was then wrought here was still visible in 1851, when arch?ologists systematically excavated and examined the turf that covered the ancient pit-dwellings. in one pit were found three skeletons, doubled up and 83lying across one another, evidently just as they had been flung there after the fierce onset of the storming party. the skull of one was cleanly gashed in two places, as though by a sword; doubtless in this case the “saexe,” the short sword the saxons used, and from which, indeed, their name derives. another had a wound in the thigh and an iron spear-head was found embedded in the spine. evidently this was the framework of a warrior who had been taken in the rear while engaging in executing a strategical retreat; or, as we used to say at school, “doing a bunk.” unfortunately he had not started early enough. the third skeleton was that of a bolder man of war, who had stayed to see it out and scorned to run, with the result that he received a huge stone in the skull, and his collarbone was driven up into his jaw. it was then too late to leave, and in fact his bones remained here for close upon thirteen hundred years, with these evidences of his ill-advised stand, plain to see. but his soul goes marching on.
other pit-dwellings contained skeletons, portions of rusted arms, potsherds of a rude type of earthenware vessels, and beads; many of them superimposed upon the infinitely older relics of the earlier defenders. many of them are to be seen in the collections of the somerset arch?ological society at taunton. there is prominently displayed the skull of a slaughtered warrior with no fewer than seven gashes in it. he must have been a bonny fighter, to have attracted all 84this hewing and slashing that at last put him out of action; or else the crowd concentrating their efforts on him wasted those energies that might with greater advantage have been distributed more evenly over the stricken field. we can know nothing of who he was. no monument was ever raised to his memory. but, although it may at first sight seem to be an indignity that his shattered skull should be exposed here, yet, when you more closely consider the rights and the wrongs of it, is this not his best monument—showing that he fought for all he was worth, and was only slain by overpowering odds? dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!
worle (locally “wurle”) itself is a detestable village of vulgar and poverty-stricken shops and out-at-elbows cottages, a blot on its surroundings. as weston rose from insignificance, worle, which was anciently its market-town and centre of supplies, sank into obscurity, and now the sole interest of the place is its pretty church, containing some good miserere seats. it was of old the property of worspring priory, and richard spring, one of its later priors, was at the same time vicar of worle. he resigned the priory in 1525. his initials are found carved on one of the misereres. a small stone in the churchyard is inscribed:
a maiden in mold
60 years old
joanna
1644
85the registers contain some curious items, among them, under date of 1609, the following note:
“edward bustle cruelly murthered by consent of his owne wyfe, who, with one humfry hawkins, and one other of theyre associates, were executed for the same murther, and hanged in irons at a place called shutt shelfe, neere axbridge, and the body of the said bustle barberously used, viz., his throte cutt, his legs cutt of, and divers woundes in his body, and buryed in a stall, was taken up and buryed in the church yard at worle, march xth. a good president (sic) for wicked people.”
apparently the degree of criminality of the unhappy edward bustle’s wife was not great, for she not only escaped this hanging which, according to the wording of the above note, she suffered, but married in the following october a certain bold man, by name nicholas pitman.
a violent, but unexplained, local antipathy to lawyers was formerly manifested at worle, by the contumelious drumming out of any member of the legal profession who chanced to be discovered in the village. some embittered page of local history is no doubt concerned in this now obsolete custom, but this is probably almost as far removed in the annals of the place as those distant ages when worle was by way of being a seaport. where the flat meadows now spread, maplike below the village, and where the great western railway runs, ships in dim bygone ?ons 86rode at anchor. proof of that forgotten fact was accidentally discovered of recent years, when, in digging the foundation of a new brewery, an ancient anchor was unearthed from the sandy subsoil.
