There are two villages along this road, Weston and Walton, both equipped with the “Gordano” suffix, lest they should, perhaps, be confounded with other Westons and Waltons. They are not remarkable villages, and the church at Walton has been rebuilt; so that the place holds no particular interest for the stranger. But the church of Weston-in-Gordano, a small Perpendicular building, retains in its porch an unusual and very interesting feature: a wooden musicgallery over the doorway, approached by a short flight of stone steps in the thick side wall of the porch itself. This gallery appears to have been used by the church choir in olden times, principally for the singing of the canticle for Palm Sunday, “Gloria Laus et Honor,” and for Christmas hymns; but it has, for centuries past, remained unused and is now merely an archæological curiosity. As the stranger approaches Clevedon, his attention cannot fail to be attracted by a singular castle-like group of buildings upon the skyline, on the right hand. This is the so-called “Walton Castle,” built in the reign of James the First by the Paulets, then owners of the surrounding lands, as a hunting-lodge. Castle-building after the mediæval style had long been extinct, but this lodge was designed, for picturesqueness’ sake, in that old manner. It is a flimsy and fast-decaying sham. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV CLEVEDON—LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS: COLERIDGE CLEVEDON is now entered by the modern suburban developments of Walton Park. Suburbs and light railways, and all the things they mean, do not come into the minds of those who have merely read of Clevedon and have not been there. Clevedon to these untravelled folk means Coleridge and Tennyson and Hallam, a certain “quiet cot,” a stately Court and a lone church on a hilltop, overlooking the Severn Sea. These are essentials; the rest is incidental. But when you come at last to Clevedon, you discover, with a pained surprise to which you have no sort of a right, that the position is altogether reversed: these literary landmarks and associations are the incidentals, and the essentials—well, _what_ are they? It would puzzle even an old-established resident of Clevedon to say. Nothing matters very much at Clevedon—except that half the houses are to let; and _that_ is a matter of moment only to the owners of them and to the tradesfolk. How do people make shift to pass the time here? They don’t care for literature: they don’t stroll the sands, for there are none; and they don’t walk, for it is a neighbourhood of atrocious hills, except on the way to the railway-station, the dust-destructor, and the gas-works.