Tucked away in the far west of the county of Somerset is Porlock Quay known as Porlock Weir. The picturesque quay wall constructed of local red Triassic and grey Devonian rock as well as some Welsh stone at the quay-head is a much painted and photographed subject along with the wooden groynes which extend the quay ‘wall’ through the pebble beach. The entire prospect of Porlock Bay opens up from the beach at the end of the quay with views of
the oak-wooded hogs-back hills of Exmoor which fall into the Bristol Channel to the west, and the full length of Porlock and Bossington pebble beach stretching out to the east against the back-drop of the bald and rounded Bossington Hill and the dramatic raised beaches of Hurlstone Point at its base.
The quays and dock
The main claim to fame is that for hundreds of years it had and has a ‘floating harbour’, constructed before Bridgwater’s nineteenth century ‘floating harbour’ and of course prior to Brunel’s up-grade of the one at Bristol; a watercolour from 1756 shows the floating harbour in action with lock gates closed (Ashford, 2014, 50). The motivation behind the construction of lock-gates to the inner harbour in the seventeenth century was perhaps not so cargo vessels could float at the inner quay when being loaded or unloaded, but to trap millions of gallons of water on certain spring tides so that a flood of water could be released to ‘scour’ out pebbles that had crept into the entry passage to the inner harbour by the inexorable west-to-east longshore drift that occurs on this shore.
The ‘sluice wall’ collapsed in 1650. It is not known when it was re-instated, presumably relatively quickly. Further improvements to the quay took place in the eighteenth century, a pictorial plan of the quay remaining from the early 1700s with some of the improvements marked upon it, then the strengthening of the ‘quay head’ in 1767 with stone from Barry (Ashford, 2014, 47-9).
History of trade
Fish weirs were found at Porlock from the fifteenth century, and it is one or more of those weirs which gave this location its name. In the early eighteenth century one of the weirs was named ‘Houseley’s Weir’ (Ashford, 2010, 44-7), probably named after Henry Housely who paid tax on Porlock land in 1625.
It is not known when quays were first built at the Weir but it is known through Bristol port books that in the sixteenth century, Porlock vessels and mariners existed and conducted maritime trade with the regional city. Other trade was a limestone trade supplying lime for building as far as Molland in North Devon, suggesting that Porlock had at least one operating lime kiln in the mid-sixteenth century which would have burned some of the coal known to have been landed at Porlock Weir at the time (Ashford, 2020, 77-81).
In the first half of the seventeenth century Porlock Weir was home to a minimum of 18 known fishing and trading vessels from three to about 40 tons. These vessels carried coal, limestone, wool for the west Somerset woollen industry (Ashford, 2007, 165-70), and butter from Wales to the Somerset coast, took barrelled herring to Bridgwater, sometimes brought back groceries and manufactured goods from Bristol and the Franke maritime family at the Weir conducted a trade with Ireland bringing back tallow, barrelled beef, skins, wool and cattle into Minehead. On one occasion, in 1634, a Porlock vessel was hired to bring back grain from Brittany to Minehead jurisdiction, probably to help relieve shortages of cereals in the county at the time (Ashford, 2020, 77-81). A Porlock manorial record from 1650 records that the sluice wall at the quay had collapsed, much to the detriment of local maritime trade (Ashford, 2010, 48).
The second half of the seventeenth century saw an increase in trade at Porlock. There were two, if not three, lime kilns fired by Welsh coal, much of which was brought in from Tenby. The Franke family owned at least one of the kilns in mid-century and continued to be dominant in Porlock maritime affairs. A tannery at Porlock run by the Kent family meant there was a trade in oak bark, animal skins and leather, some of the tanned hides being taken to Bristol in Porlock vessels which returned with iron, chairs, casks of wine, sugar, glassware, cheese, tobacco and pipes, soap and other groceries and manufactured goods (Ashford, 2010, 51-66). Increased magnitude in herring shoals which swam up the Bristol Channel towards Porlock in the late autumn and early winter kept Porlock fishing vessels busy as well as causing ‘fishing houses’ to have been built along the shoreline at the Weir, some of which remain whilst others were washed down by the sea in the eighteenth century (Ashford, 2006, 21-30). Porlock trading vessels transported the barrelled herring to Minehead and Bristol from where, from the 1680s, some were loaded on to international trading vessels of Minehead, Bridgwater and Bristol and were taken to the West Indies where the herring was sold as cheap food for slaves working on sugar and other plantations (Tattersfield, 1991, Appendix nine). In this way, Porlock folk benefitted indirectly from the slave trade. The most notable years for herring shoals included 1668 and 1677 when fishing vessels from the south coast of England rounded Cornwall to take part in catching the plenty (CSPD 1668 and 1677); no wonder that in 1683 Porlock Weir was known as a location where a ‘great many herring were taken and cured’ (Chadwyck-Healey, 1901, 37). The salt for the curing of these herring and for other food preservation including cheese making was brought to Minehead from Brittany, some of which must then have been ferried to Porlock Weir.
The early eighteenth century saw very similar trades continue at Porlock Weir, but the documentary record of port books cease from the 1740s so much less is known about Porlock’s trade from 1740 to 1790. Nevertheless, tanned hides were taken to Bristol in Porlock vessels in 1714, 1723 and 1771. For example; three Porlock vessels were employed in nine sailings to Newton, Glamorganshire with cereals aboard in 1733, a trade that continued later in the century; oats from Porlock were conveyed by sea to Bristol in 1736 and it is known that Welsh vessels paid keelage at Porlock Weir in 1737 and 1773, probably having off-loaded coal. An account of coal fetched from Tenby and landed at Porlock in 1767 exists showing vessels were ‘hobbled’ in and out of both Tenby and Porlock; seven men and a boy were employed to discharge the vessel at the Weir and four men took two days to ‘riddle’ the coal. Porlock’s Content was used to bring Welsh limestone to Minehead in 1766 (Ashford, 2010, 51-66). All this shows that Porlock was fully integrated into the regional supply chains servicing Bristol and South Wales, but there is no evidence so far found that Porlock vessels were involved in an international trade during the eighteenth century.
With regard to the nineteenth century, newspaper sources from about 1800, especially The Cambrian, detail vessel and cargo movements, not just customable ones, so nineteenth century trade can be reconstructed. Throughout the century and into the twentieth century coal was brought back to Porlock for the lime kilns and for domestic use; limestone would also have arrived for the limekilns. This was to be expected, but the papers detail a whole range of ‘exports’ from Porlock, mainly in Porlock vessels including the Fanny, to the industrialising South Wales, goods that supported industry, people and their town landscapes. Malt barley was exported in the early decades, iron ore from Luccombe in 1827 and 1838-9, oysters to Swansea in 1839, potatoes, sheep and cattle in the 1840s, pebbles from the beach to pave streets in Cardiff and Newport in the 1850s, pit-props from Porlock woods to Tenby and Newport in the 1860s and 1870s, grain and flour to Swansea in the 1880s and wood for the chemical industry in Swansea in the 1890s (Ashford, 2017a, 61-5).
Late nineteenth and twentieth century trade in and out of Porlock Weir is related from a first-hand visit in the early 1950s by maritime historian Grahame Farr when he discussed sea-going activity with Tome Ley, the father of the then harbour master and owner of some of the last trading ketches working out of Porlock. It seems the 1920s were the last busy decade with livestock, groceries, coal and pit props the main cargoes; coal continued to be brought by sea to the Weir for another 20 years until finally ended by road transport from Minehead station on upgraded tarmacked roads. The herring fishery was still alive in the early 50s but at a very low ebb (Farr, 1954, 157-9). Pictorially, John Gilman’s Exmoor’s Maritime Heritage is an excellent photographic reminder of the Weir, the vessels, the trade and the maritime families of this latter period with often encyclopaedic notes explaining the scene and its background (Gilman, 1999, 19-48).
The story of Porlock’s eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century oyster fishery and trade is intriguing, but incompletely told, nor might it ever be, mainly due to the lack of records of what was a trade in non-customable goods. That Porlock Bay had oyster beds, the location of which was fully charted in about 1710, suggests there would have been a trade around that time. Did its management fade and was its location forgotten? In terms of the written record, the next mention is that oysters were taken from Porlock to Swansea in
September 1839. This ties in with recollections given by 87 year-old William Pollard in 1946 that his uncle John experimentally dredged for oysters in Porlock Bay in the 1830s and found the beds (again). So developed a vibrant industry with dredgers built at Porlock and after the coming of the railway to Minehead deliveries to London commenced. In 1877 about 15 Ilfracombe herring fishing vessels came to dredge in the bay in order to benefit from the bounty (Ashford, 2017, 62). The Pollard family continued to be in the forefront of the fishery and its trade until the 1890s when Colchester and Whitstable dredgers arrived to strip Porlock Bay clean of oysters and kill the trade. Its revival commenced in 2013 when local people developed an oyster fishery in the inter-tidal zone near the Weir. (https://www.porlockbayoysters.co.uk/pages/our-heritage).
Leisure and tourism
Looking for the picturesque, the poet Coleridge walked about and beyond Porlock Weir in the late 1790s including in August 1797 when he toiled up to Ash Farm in the adjoining parish, Culbone. After an opium-induced dream he wrote his famous poem, Kubla Khan, but, in doing so, he was famously interrupted by ‘a person from Porlock’, a term now synonymous with having a train of thought broken (Lawrence, 1970, 103-4). The following June Coleridge and his friend Hazlett were apparently walking at Porlock Weir when allegedly they spoke to a local fisherman who told of a boy who had drowned there the day before (Wu, 2008, 18). A year later in August 1799 Coleridge’s poet friend, Robert Southey, visited Porlock and Porlock Weir and on a wet day penned a sonnet on Porlock and its environs mentioning the Bristol ‘channel grey circling it surges in thy level bay’ of Porlock. Just a month later the Reverend Richard Warner of Bath visited Porlock Weir and its environs; he saw the views, local trading sloops and tasted Somerset ale at the quay, all of
which he publicised in 1800 (Warner, 1800, 91-103). Whether these literary travellers catalysed others to visit is interesting to contemplate for in the summer of 1813 a party of English travellers arrived in their vessel at Porlock Weir, disembarked and stayed for a couple of days in and around the Weir before embarking again and sailing on to Minehead and then Cardiff. Whilst at the Weir and West Porlock they discovered that the local fishing community was struggling with the demise of the winter herring shoals (Ashford, 2014, 54). The Acland family of Holnicote kept their leisure yacht, The Lady of St Kilda, at Porlock Weir in 1834; taking the local gentry and clergy on a trip to Lynmouth in August they were delayed at sea overnight in a storm and were fortunate to all return safely the following day. With reference to steam packet excursions, very soon after the development of steam vessels, one was planned from Newport and Cardiff for 10 August 1826 and the Ogmore railway published a trip to Porlock and Lynmouth from Porthcawl in August 1866 (Ashford, 2017a, 61, 64). These steam powered excursions are likely to have been increasingly common as the nineteenth century progressed.
Wrecks and drownings
Two small vessels were wrecked in Porlock Bay in the 1560s; though their origin is not known, one had a piece of ordnance so might have been an international merchant trader. In 1675, a storm in the Bristol Channel caused a longboat to be swept from a naval vessel, the Norwich, onto the shore at Porlock. It was broken up by Porlock men much to the consternation of the navy. The storm in the Channel must have been considerable since none other than Samuel Pepys wrote to the ship’s captain expressing pleasure that the captain and crew were not lost (Ashford (forthcoming)). Wreckage was recorded at Porlock and claimed by the Luttrells of Dunster, who long had rights over wreckage along this coast, in 1763, 1770, 1771, 1784, 1804 and 1811 (Hancock, 1903, 36). In November 1843 a schooner went down in Porlock Bay and burials of two victims of the tragedy took place at Porlock on different days towards the end of the month (Ashford, 2017, 62). Two Porlock men, Henry Pulsford and Richard Bale, drowned off Lynmouth in October 1784, as a memorial stone in Porlock churchyard testifies; seven years later George Rawle of Porlock fell out of a boat and drowned; he was buried at Porlock as was Nicholas Snow in 1827 who drowned off the Weir as his vessel was returning home from Watchet.
Smuggling
The real questions around smuggling are not who were the smugglers, what did they smuggle and when did they smuggle it, but who wasn’t involved, what wasn’t smuggled and where didn’t smuggling take place. No supposition and guessing, no folk tales, romance and tradition here, only the bare facts as far as they are known. Whichever goods the exchequer demanded a duty regarding them and whatever cargo had embargos upon it were goods that could be smuggled. It was the role of the customs port authorities to collect duty, and Porlock fell under the jurisdiction of Bridgwater in the medieval period and under the sub-port of Minehead from Tudor times. Cereals were smuggled out of Bridgwater in the medieval period (Ashford, 2017b, 97-8), beans and cloth and corn in the sixteenth century and coal and lead were smuggled out of Bridgwater jurisdiction in the early seventeenth century. Alum was smuggled into Watchet in the early seventeenth century and peas were smuggled out. Wool and horses were smuggled into Minehead in the seventeenth century and the whole of the Bridgwater and Minehead customs district was so corrupt in the early 1680s that wholesale sackings of customs officials were necessary all along the Somerset coast (Stephens, 2012, chapter 3). Despite the customs service overhaul wine, brandy and satin was smuggled into Bridgwater in significant amounts and in a very organised way in May 1687 (Shaw, 1923, 31 October 1687).
With particular regard to Porlock, in 1748 smugglers John Campbell and his wife were conveyed in an Ilfracombe Skiff from their Guernsey brigantine anchored in Lundy Roads to Porlock Weir, landing at five in the morning on Sunday 27 October. It is presumed smuggling was discussed as contraband was landed near the Somerset/Devon border the next day (Ashford, 2014, 21). In 1756 a naval vessel sailing near Porlock surprised a suspiciously behaving Irish wherry near Gore point at the Weir. The wherry took off after a warning shot but only a few packs of damaged tea and some brandy kegs were discovered after a coastal search (Smith, 1989, 105). At some point in 1772 the Two Sisters of Porlock was the vehicle by which tobacco and rum were to be smuggled into Aberthaw. Edward Michael, the master, tried to bribe a customs official with a jar of rum (Waugh, 1991, 179). Then, in September 1791, 31 ankers of contraband spirituous liquors were found in a Porlock house. The authorities took months deliberating whether to proceed against the householder (Somerset Heritage Centre, Luttrell papers). The following century, in January 1835, Porlock’s Prudence and Jane was seized in Fowey harbour as attempts had been made to smuggle 143 bales of tobacco which were hidden under a cargo of barrels of tar; master John Luckey and mate William Tucker were arrested (Ashford, 2017, 62).
On a tragic and different note, seven men of the ‘preventative service’ who lived at Porlock, but were not born there, were rowing their boat on an anti-smuggling patrol in Blue Anchor Bay on 21 March 1822. Their vessel hit a fishing stake and was holed; the lieutenant and two other men were drowned (Taunton Courier, 22 March 1822).
Places to visit
The picturesque Weir area fascinates visitors with the outer and inner harbour and the thatched cottages on ‘Turkey Island’, likely to have been a corruption of ‘the other quay’ or in Somerset ‘T’other Quay. The fishermen’s cottages have been the inspiration for artists and photographers for hundreds of years. Several small businesses are to be found in and around the Weir which cater for the tourist and a much photographed Second World War pillbox at an impossible angle on the beach testifies to erosion since the 1940s. The Ship Inn at the Weir echoes the maritime past and Porlock churchyard, further east, has several gravestones dedicated to eighteenth century mariners. The location is in Exmoor National Park and there are beautiful oak woods that surround the village through which the south-west coast path passes.
References
Ashford, P (2006) ‘The rise and fall of the Bristol Channel herring fishery with especial reference to Porlock, Somerset, 1580-1830’ in The Mariner’s Mirror 92, 21-30.
Ashford, P (2007) ‘The west Somerset woollen industry, 1500-1714’ in Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 151.
Ashford, P (2010) ‘Porlock Weir’s quay and trade development’ in Webb A, A Maritime History of Somerset 1 (Taunton).
Ashford, P (2014) ‘Four hundred years of travel via the Somerset coast’ in Webb A., A Maritime History of Somerset 2 (Taunton).
Ashford, P (2017a) ‘Maritime Porlock’ in Exmoor Review 58.
Ashford, P (2017b) ‘A Somerset mercantile community: the customs district of Bridgwater 1320-1500’ in Webb A, A Maritime History of Somerset 3 (Taunton).
Ashford, P (2020) ‘New revelations: Porlock’s maritime trade 1559-1659’ in Exmoor Review 61.
Ashford, P (Forthcoming) A Seventeenth Century Somerset Maritime Miscellany (Forthcoming).
Chadwyck-Healey, C (1901) The History of Part of West Somerset (London), 37.
Farr, G (1954) Somerset Harbours (London).
Gilman, J (1999) Exmoor’s Maritime Heritage (Exmoor Books).
Hancock, F (1903) Minehead (Taunton).
Lawrence, B (1970) Coleridge and Wordsworth in Somerset (David and Charles).
Shaw, W (Ed.) (1923) Calendar of Treasury Books 1685-1689 8 (HMSO).
Smith, G (1989) Smuggling in the Bristol Channel 1700-1850 (Countryside Books).
Stephens, W (2012) The Seventeenth-Century Customs Service Surveyed: William Culliford’s Investigation of the Western Ports 1682-4 (Ashgate).
Tattersfield, N (1991) The Forgotten Trade (London), Appendix nine.
Warner, R (1800) A Walk Through Some of the Western Counties of England (Bath).
Waugh, M (1991) Smuggling in Devon and Cornwall 1700-1850 (Countryside books).
Wu, D (2008) William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man (Oxford).
General Reading and websites
Corner D. Porlock in Those Days (Exmoor books, 1992), chapters 4-6 and 13.
https://www.exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk/Whats-Special/culture/literary-links/robert-southey
https://www.exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk/Whats-Special/coast
https://www.thebestofexmoor.co.uk/blog/porlock-weir-visitors-guide/
Philip Ashford, February 2022.