The village of Kilve lies down along a lane leading to the right from the road just past Holford, and rambles disjointedly down to the rugged little church. Church, ruined priory, and a large farmhouse stand grouped together in the meadows, beside the little brook called Kilve Pill, a quarter of a mile from the low blue-has cliffs of the muddy and boulder-strewn lonely shore sung by Wordsworth, as “Kilve’s delightful shore.” Kilve church is as rude and rugged as some old fortress, and probably its tower was originally designed with a view to defence. It is constructed of very rudely shaped blocks of blue limestone, many of them of great size, mortared together in rough fashion. For the rest, it is a small aisleless building, chiefly of Norman date, with a south transept-chapel of Perpendicular character, and a simple Norman bowl-font. Giant, widespreading poplar trees adjoin the Priory farmhouse and the ruins of the Priory, or Kilve Chantry. This was a foundation by one Sir Simon de Furneaux, in 1329, to house five priests. The particular reasons that induced Sir Simon to establish his chantry in this lonely spot do not appear, for the history of the place is vague; but whatever they were, they did not appeal to Sir Richard Stury, to whom the property came, some sixty years later, on his marriage with Alice, the last of this branch of the Furneaux family. He abolished the establishment, and the building stood empty for centuries, or was used as a barn by the neighbouring farmer. Another use, not so much spoken of, was as a storehouse for smuggled goods. A long succession of farmers at the Priory farm were, in fact, more smugglers than farmers. The church-tower was said also to have been used by them. The present roofless condition of the buildings is due to a fire, many years ago, supposed to have been caused by a conflagration of these smuggled spirits. [Illustration: KILVE; THE CHANTRY.] In these latter days, now that many townsfolk on holiday seek quiet, secluded spots, there are few among the rustic cottages of Kilve that do not house visitors, and nowadays the Priory farm is in summer as much a boarding-house as farmstead; while amateur geologists may be found at low water on the “delightful,” if muddy, shore, searching for “St. Keyna’s serpents”; or, in other words, ammonites, which, with other fossils, abound in the blue lias clay. They are “St. Keyna’s serpents,” because the saint, coming to Somerset, transformed all the snakes of these parts into stone!