The Parish Church of St. Andrew in the village of Old Cleeve, West Somerset, and its noble view across Blue Anchor Bay.

Last Monday, as it was such a fine sunny day, my wife and I decided to visit the village of Dunster in West Somerset.  I drove across the beautiful Blackdown Hills to Taunton and then up the A358 between the delightful Quantocks and Brendons.   Once on the A39 we headed for Dunster, but after passing through Washford we decided to take a short detour along the narrow lanes to the village of Old Cleeve.

I had read of a famous epitaph on the gravestone of the local blacksmith, George Jones, who died in 1808, and wanted to see if I could find it in the graveyard at Old Cleeve’s Parish Church of St. Andrew.

Arthur Mee, in his The King’s England, Somerset (Hodder and Stoughton, 1968), writing of Old Cleeve states that: “It has a noble outlook, through the trees across the wide bay to where North Hill rises like a mountain from the sea.  Raised above the cottage roofs, the church has the best of the view, for which it took its seat 500 years ago.”

The Parish Church of St. Andrew in the village of Old Cleeve, West Somerset.

The view toward North Hill across Blue Anchor Bay from the churchyard of the Parish Church of St. Andrew in Old Cleeve, West Somerset.

I found the Church of St. Andrew on the hillside above the village and took some photos of the view across Blue Anchor Bay noted by Arthur Mee, but I could not find the grave of George Jones.  However, I discovered the blacksmith’s epitaph in Edward Hutton’s Highways and Byways in Somerset, (Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1923), and reproduce it verbatim below:

My Sledge and Hammer lie reclined,

My Billows too have lost their wind;

My Fire’s extinct, my Forge decay’d,

And in the Dust my Body’s laid;

My Coal is burnt, my Iron’s gone,

My Nails are drove, my Work is done.