Frome in Wessex
The George at Norton St Philip
Abstract
© 1998. Contents Updated: Thursday, 26 October 2006
- Historic Murals found at The George at Norton St Philip
- Samuel Pepys in Norton St Philip, Friday 12 June 1668
- Other Famous Visitors to Frome and its Area
Historic Murals found at The George at Norton St Philip
Norton St Philip is a small town about five miles away between Frome and Bath. It is noted for its historic public house, The George, a grade 1 listed building which has had a continuous license as an inn since 1397 AD, when it was a favourite of the merchants trading the local wool. The pretender to the throne, the Duke of Monmouth used it as his base before the battle of Sedgemoor—the last battle fought on English soil.
For the whole of 1998 the pub has been closed for renovations, the owners, the brewery Wadworths, having plans which some thought might spoil its character. That remains to be seen now that the alterations have almost been completed, but what is of great interest is that workmen have discovered two murals dating to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The paintings which feature floral designs were found in a bedroom and in a corridor and are thought to have been the work of travelling artists. Wadworths have promised to preserve the murals by building wooden panelling around them to protect them while allowing them to be seen by visitors.
In the room there are two layers of painting. The earliest from the fifteenth century has a swirling pattern on a red background with black and white floral designs. Better preserved are the sixteenth century mural which has an inscription near the top. It is about ten feet square and has been made to look like fake panelling.
The George is a film star having appeared in Pride and Prejudice and Tom Jones. I believe it had a fleeting appearance more recently in The Remains of the Day. It was scheduled to reopen in October, and now it is, of course, open.
Samuel Pepys in Norton St Philip, Friday 12 June 1668
Samuel Pepys will have stayed at The George according to in his diaries. Pepys was travelling on holiday by coach to the West Country with his wife and friends. Having stopped overnight at Salisbury where he admired the minster (Salisbury Catherdral) and Cathedral Close, he takes a journey to see Stonehenge and wonders about the purpose of the great stones. He has time then to look at some tombs of the family of his patron, Edward Mountagu, before the party embark again at 6 pm across a smooth plain (Salisbury plain) till night taking what is today designated the A36. They stop by chance at some unnamed inn where the landlord turfs out a pedlar to provide Pepys and his wife with a bed. Sam was a much grander man than a pedlar. He continues:
…but good beds, and the master of the house a sober, understanding man, and I had pleasant discourses with him about this country matters, as Wool and Corne and other things. And he also merry, and made us mighty merry at supper, about manning the new ship at Bristol, with none but men whose wifes do master them; and it seems it is become in reproach to some men of estate that are such hereabouts, that this is become common talk.
By and by to bed, glad of this mistake, because, it seems, had we gone on as we pretended, we could not have passed with our coach, and must have lain on the plain all night. This day from Salisbury. I wrote by the post my excuse for not coming home, which I hope will do for I am resolved to see the Bath, and, it may be, Bristol.
12. Friday. Up, finding our beds good but we lousy; which made us merry. We set out, the reckoning and servants coming to 9s. 6d.; my guide thither, 2s.; coachman, advanced 10s. So rode a very good way, led to my great content by our landlord to Phillip’s Norton, with great pleasure being now come into Somersetshire; where my wife and Deb mightily enjoyed thereat, I commending the country, as endeed it deserves.
And the first town we came to was Brekington where, we stopping for something for the horses, we called two or three little boys to us, and pleased ourselves with their manner of speech, and did make one of them kiss Deb, and another say the Lord’s Prayer (hallowed be thy kingdom come).
At Phillip’s Norton I walked to the church, and there saw a very ancient tomb of some knight templar, I think; and here saw the tombstone whereon there were only two heads cut, which, the story goes, and credibly, were two sisters called the fair Maids of Foscott, that had two bodies upwards and one below, and there lie buried. Here is also a very fine ring of six bells, and chimes mighty tuneable.
Having dined very well, 10s., we come before night to the Bath; where I presently stepped out with my landlord, and saw the baths with people in them. They are not so large as I expected, but yet pleasant; and the town most of stone, and clean, though the streets generally narrow. I home and being weary, went to bed without supper; the rest supping.
In the morning Pepys visited the Cross Bath which he noted was full of “fine ladies” but comments that “it cannot be clean to go so many bodies together into the same water”. Nevertheless he takes the waters and after resting goes on to Bristol.
Imagine just being amused to find you are lousy after a night in an hotel bed. Bugs and lice were commonplace but perhaps Pepys was amused because it was retribution for his getting kicked out the poor pedlar, who left them some of his pets for their unkindness. It is interesting that Pepys’s party were amused by the country accents of the boys. After thirty years of Grange Hill and Albert Square convincing young people they should talk Cockney, today he’d think he was back in London! Brekington is Beckington.
To put the costs in perspective, Pepys began his civil service career on a salary of £350 a year, an extremely good salary probably worth more than £100,000 today, and 10s. for a meal for four was much more than the wage of a day labourer. Pepys had an understanding wife. Deb was his mistress. Is the headstone of the Siamese twin girls still to be seen at Norton St Philip? The other tomb was that of a lawyer not a knight.
Other Famous Visitors to Frome and its Area
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism first visited Frome in 1753 and then he made further visits in 1763, 1767, 1774 and 1778 when he wrote:
We had a lovely congregation in Frome both in the evening and at 5am in the morning.After a visit on 17th September 1789 he wrote:
I preached in Frome to a much larger audience.
Born in June 1703, Wesley was one of 19 children. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford, gaining a bachelor degree in 1724, and after a spell in America, he laid the foundation stone of his first Methodist chapel in 1739. He travelied an estimated 200,000 miles, preaching more than 40,000 sermons before his death in March 1791.
Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, came to Frome during the 1720s, and the author and politician, Benjamin Disraeli, who was a guest of Lord Bath during the summer of 1874, came to Frome with Lady Bath to visit St John’s Church on lOth August of that year. Disraeli, who was born in 1804, became Chancellor of he Exchequer in 1852 and was Prime Minister in 1868 and from 1874 until 1880. He died in 1881.
William Cobbett, the journalist and politician, visited Frome in 1826 as part of his famous Rural Rides, a description of a tour of the countryside on horseback. He saw men “making a fine road into the town,” presumably Bath Street. He wrote and published more than 20 million words of English, including a history of England in 36 volumes.
