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Places in Somerset "H"
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Cupped in a maze of narrow lanes, the village has a row of handsome
stone
houses and a medieval cross with a carving of St John the Baptist. The
buttresses of the local church carry ‘scratch’ dials, a primitive
form of sundial. Hinton House is a large, rambling building of various
periods, the oldest parts daring from the 17th century. |
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A lane past the tiny church leads to Alfoxton House (now a hotel),
which the
poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy rented in 1797. With
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, they roamed the Quantocks, enjoying the incomparable
countryside for a brief spell that produced some of Wordsworth’s
finest poetry—"Lyrical Ballads", by Wordsworth and
Coleridge, was published in 1798. Leaving Alfoxton House on the right, a
track leads past some cottages to Holford Combe and a stream; a footpath
then leads up through woods to the roof of the Quantocks. This was a
favourite walk of Wordsworth’s—’Upon smooth Quantock’s airy
ridge we roved’. |
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