Up a narrow lane is a tiny chapel with a stone
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mullioned window cut down into a semicircle at the top. A little stone
sundial over the entrance door, and the smallest burial-ground we
have ever seen, are worth notice for their quaintness. Farther to the
west is Wormwood Farm, whose ivy-clad gables give the house a
more homely look than most hereabouts. Higher up in a very bleak
position is Chapel Plaster Hermitage, an older building, whose little
belfry surely cannot summon many worshippers. It was a halting-
place of pilgrims to Glastonbury, and in Georgian days of lonely
travellers, who were eased of their purses by a gentleman of the road
named Baxter, who afterwards was hung up as a warning on
Claverton Down. Near the wood, the resort of this highwayman, is
Hazelbury House, a sixteenth-century mansion, much reduced in
size, whose formidable battlemented garden walls are worthy of a
fortress. It was once a seat of the Strodes, whose arms are displayed
on the lofty piers of the entrance gate. On the other side of the Great
Bath road is Cheney Court, another gabled mansion which has been
of importance in its day, and within half a mile, Coles Farm, a smaller
building, alas! fast falling to decay. Its windows are broken and its
panelled rooms are open to the weather. We ploughed our way
through garden, or what was once a garden, waist-high with weeds,
to a Tudor doorway whose door presumably was more accustomed
to be opened than closed. At the foot of the staircase was a little
wicket gate leading to the capacious cellars. Somebody had scrawled
above an ancient fireplace close by, a plea against wanton mischief;
but that was the only sign that anybody was interested in the place.
But we learned something from an intelligent farmer who was picking
apples in one of the surrounding orchards. It was very sad, he said,
but so it had remained
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for years. The owner was abroad, and though various people had
tried to buy it, there were legal difficulties which prevented it. "But why not find a tenant?" we asked. "That would surely be better than allowing it to fall to pieces!" He shook his head. "'Tis too far gone," he said, "and there's no money to put it in repair." So Coles Farm, situated in the midst of lovely hills and orchards, gives the cold
shoulder to many a willing tenant.
It is a precipitous climb from here to Colerne, which across the valley
looks old and inviting from the Bath road. But the place is sadly
disappointing, and Hunters' Hall, which once upon a time was used
as an inn and possessed some remarkably fine oak carvings, is now
a shell, and scarcely worth notice.