Letter from Edward Thomas to his wife, Helen Thomas. Archival reference: 424/1/1/1/1/205
Wells. 18, 2.13
Dearest, I dont know if your geography tells you much about my ride today. You see I was at Glastonbury and am now at Wells, sitting after an egg and apples in the coffee rooms of the Red Lion Temperance Hotel in the market square, one side of which is mostly a mess of old buildings connected with cathedral, pierced by 2 gateways - I went through one, found myself in a courtyard, most of it turf, with old buildings on 2 sides and a broad moat with a gateway across it and swans in the moonlit water. You can’t imagine how swans and water improve a cathedral. But it is a noble cathedral with a rich west front having a broad tower at each side - towers with no pinnacles or [illegible], looking as if cut short. But there is also a pinnacled tower with scaffolding looking so [illegible] high up in the moonlight that I though it was ornament, like the rigging of a ship, I followed my real plan of taking everything to the right so made a circuit of the cathedral and its buildings, and the moat, the rookery. All cathedrals having elms and a rookery I notice. The buildings were all just silent, deserted, the water is lovely. Wells is named from the springs in the Mendips here which supply the city with water that has never seen the sun. In this square the water runs continually from a drinking fountain.
I started soon after 10 - Clifford has a play to finish and leaves me much alone, so as it was a clear night and clear morning with a NE wind (which all night made the sound as if the earth were hollow and rumbling - like ice with thousands of skaters [illegible].)I planned this expedition. It was very cold and very bright with some dullish secluded clouds around the sun as if it might snow. On the Mendips there was some icy snow as thin as fish scales on a board in shadow places and walls and hedges. I started through Holt, Bradford, on towards [illegible] But turned off before reaching it, to Farleigh Hungerford, where the
2.
Hollow eyed round tubs and [illegible] Of the castle and built on green hillside opposite you as you dip to the [illegible] as far as Norton St Philip I knew the road - there is this fine old ruin which I successfully photographed. I dipped [illegible] from it past the church tower with tiers of windows and then up to a crossways where I suppose one Tucker was once buried, for the little urn is Tuckers grave sun’. I was riding Clifford’s bicycle because it has 2 speeds and I knew the road would be hilly, but unfortunately the breaks are bad and I had some swerves and had to walk partly down some hills. The neat village was Faulkland, which had a little green with chairs round it and a pair of stocks under a big elm, and a tall rough stone at each side of the stocks like stone policemen and a low one for the patient to sit on. There were a number of big stones about, including 2 smooth rounded ones like flat loaves, on a cottage wall. The weather kept fine and cold. Now and then I found cuts from [illegible] , [illegible] carrying coal from the [illegible] Colliery nearby - a long straight railway line brings the coal up to a roadside store where the farm carts to see filled . I could see 2 miles off below me on the right big old green tips of coal refuse. Then I dipped down to a valley in a hollow with a stream and a tall church tower with a blue clock face - [illegible] . Then up and down and I turned off in to the Fosse Way (which I followed from Cirencester to Stow on the Wold as last March) I had before me on a hilltop this mass of a [illegible], a church at Stratton On The Fosse, the church by a Catholic college. From there I had a charming run down into a village that might have been in Pembrokeshire with [illegible] roads and [illegible] houses and a stream and ‘[illegible]’ him - called Nettlebridge. Then I had to climb up to Oakhill where there is a famous old brewery and I had