Local History

THE LOCK UP

 

The Lockup in the centre of Pensford

an octagonal building with perfect stone hemisphere as a covering, with ball finial.

VIADUCT

Pensford is dominated by the Railway Viaduct which was built in 1873, with its 10 arches, built with brown and grey stone and brick.  Pensford was the only place in the Chew Valley, apart from Keynsham, which had a railway station, but nothing remains of this now. The railway line and station were closed after the floods of 1968, which it was thought weakened the structure of the viaduct to make it unsuitable and unsafe. The last passenger train to Pensford had run only until 1959, when Dr Beeching performed his historic cuts to the railway services.

 

 

BRIDGE HOUSE

The  sixteenth century cottage by the Chew Bridge with its two pointed arches. The cottage, also mentioned by Pevsner, is timber framed with an overhang and a gable.  Below the overhang is a Georgian shop window of fifteen by four panes.

GEORGE AND DRAGON INN 

The George and Dragon is a historic public house mentioned at length by Pevsner. It has a front of three bays and three storeys. Windows with broad frames, straight door-hood on carved brackets. To the right is an additional projecting bay with segmental archway. The window above has a segmental hood formed by a raising of the string-course and at the top is a broken pediment. The door in the archway has the date 1752 made of nail heads.

 

CHURCH

Although Pensford is now larger that nearby Publow, this was not always so, for its old name was Publow St Thomas, and it was a chapelry of Publow. It was called this after St Thomas a Becket, to whom the church is dedicated.  Pensford Church, the St Thomas a Becket, with its west tower is a late perpendicular building with a Jacobean pulpit. The western doorway has a pre fifteenth century two-centred arch with fine mouldings. Inside the tower is a tierceron vault with very large circular centre and four small circles on the four diagonal ribs. The church was rebuilt in 1869. After the floods of 1968 the foundations were though to be unsafe so the church was no longer used for services.

The church has a C15 font with quatrefoils and roses and a jacobean pulpit of which every inch is carved with squares circles and leaves.

St Thomas' Church

 

TEXTILES

At the end of the fourteenth century, Somerset produced about a quarter of the woollens made in England. Wells, Bath and Frome were the centres of production, but Pensford was among the chief producers. At this time the output of Somerset cloth was equal to that of Yorkshire. Finer cloths, as opposed to serge and druggets, were produced in Pensford.  Leland describes Pensford as "a praty market townlet occupied with clothinge. Browne of London yn Limesstrete was owner of it.  The tounestands much by clothinge"

 

CHAPEL

There was once an old chapel but this was demolished in the seventeenth century and the chantry, anciently founded here by the St Loes, disappeared at the Suppression.

 

  Pensford chapel. sold in 1998 and  converted to a private house

The war memorial near the bridge remembers the Pensford men who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars

 

STATION

The last passenger train ran to Pensford in 1959.

http://www.lanternfilms.ukphotographers.com/rountrip.htm

This website gives details of a rail trip from North Somerset Junction to the Mendips, via Pensford station with photos of Pensford station and the viaduct in those days.

Publow

Publow anciently belonged to the St Loes of Newton, and later came into the hands of the Hungerfords, along with Compton Dando.

CHURCH

All Saints' church has a 15th century tower with a charming turret with arcading and tracery, and there are fine gargoyles. The only piece of pre-perpendicular design seems to be the chancel arch.  The rest is Perpendicular. There is a fine tall tower of four stages with set-back buttresses ending at the height of the bell-stage in diagonally set pinnacles, a tall panelled parapet, tall main pinnacles and a yet taller panelled stair-turret. w doorway with two-centred arch, decorated with fleurons, four-light w window, two tiers of blank two-light windows, and tall two-light, bell-openings with Somerset tracery. The tracery is still full of Dec reminiscences, and the whole tower looks C 14 rather than C 15. The most attractive motif is the blank windows below the bell-openings with the remarkably original detail of a transom made up of lozenges, one flanked by two halves. The tower arch towards the nave has a mould­ing of two broad waves. Two-storeyed S porch. Low arcade piers of the usual four-hollows section, double-chamfered arches. Two-light clerestory. To the 1. and r. of the chancel chapels open in one wide and one narrow arch, the former originally in all probability for monuments to stand in, the latter as passages. The N chapel is older, see the finely moulded two-centred 'pedestrian' arch. The arch opposite is panelled. The pulpit is Jacobean, with the usual blank arches. Big rosettes below.

New Millennium window - for details of its production see www.gilroystainedglass.com/workinproduction.html

 

 

BRIDGE

Publow has one of the five mediaeval bridges that cross the River Chew within ten miles.

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Chelwood

Chelwood came into possession of the Hungerfords of Farleigh by marriage. CHURCH

St Leonards church was nearly all built around 1850, but two corbel-heads of the nave arcade said to be C13. The font is Norman with tiny volutes at the edges and a top frieze of something like lambrequins. The stained glass has various C16 Flemish bits in south aisle window.PATTERSON'S FARM Positioned West of church, and dated 1639 on panelling inside. Mullioned windows with hood-moulds and a pretty plaster ceiling of thin ribs in one room

CHELWOOD HOUSE  Seven-bay 2 storeyed house of C17, ie still three gables but already sash windows, which are flat framed and slim in proportion.

Chelwood is one of the seven thenkfull villages in Somerset where all the men returned from the First World War, 4 went and 4 returned.

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Woollard

Woollard centre, showing the rebuilt bridgeWoollard had a mediaeval bridge with three pointed arches and double arch-ribs. This was rebuilt following the substantial damage caused by the floods of 1968.   By the bridge is the Bell Inn, with one pre-reformation window with arched and cusped lights and fine small-scale decoration in the spandrels.

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Compton Dando

St Mary's Church St Mary's Church has a date of 1735 on the chancel, but is mostly Victorian. Tower is Perpendicular with diagonal buttresses and two-light bell-openings with Somerset tracery. In the bottom part of the E window is a St Katharine wheel. West doorway has four-centred head and leaf spandrels and large W window over. Ths is of five lights with oversized panel tracery with a sex-foiled circle in the apex. The tower arch to the nave has a moulding with two broad waves. The naves south side has lower and upper windows, odd because there is no clerestery. N arcade of two bays has pier and responds with the standard four-hollows moulding, short and coarse piers, and capitals and abaci treated as a strip. Double-chamfered arches.Compton Dando church has a Roman altar was built into the south buttress of the eastern end to preserve it.

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Historical details from - 

• North Somerset and Bristol, Nikolaus Pevsner
• Highways and Byeways in Somerset, Edward Hutton
• Somerset, Arthur Mee