Any Muddy Bottom

by Geoff Body

  Customs men – riding officers, surveyors and land waiters among them – lived in the small Uphill village, along with seamen and pilots, and at one period a revenue cutter was based in the pill. Many other residents had links with the tiny harbour from the coal merchants and local farmers to the quarrymen and brick workers whose output was loaded away from there. The core coal and cattle business was supplemented by occasional luxury goods from Europe and Ireland, transhipped from deep sea vessels. By the nineteenth century some 16,000 tons of coal and culm were being brought in annually, some for local sale and some to feed the busy limekilns nearby. With salt and timber it largely displaced the old livestock business. Stone from the quarry went in quantity back to Wales and for Somerset sea walls, with fish, salt, cheese and bricks, other important traffics, also being stored and handled.

  Uphill was not easy of access. With the help of the tide and the right wind from the west or south-west the approach was relatively straightforward, but other wind conditions might mean having to warp an arriving vessel along the main river and all the way up the pill. Unless there were three men, one had to alternate between the winch and the tiller. When the wind was off the Axe, the vessel entry would be stern first using the anchor as a drogue and dragging a variable length of chain for control, a process known as ‘drudging’.

  The Enclosure Act of 1813 led to the addition of a public wharf to the previous assorted landing areas. Despite the difficulties of water access, larger vessels began to arrive and their cargoes fed not only the immediate vicinity, but also the growing settlement at neighbouring Weston-super-Mare. There were occasional excursion tug and steamer visits and all sorts of ideas for expansion, including a cross-channel link to Wales. Even without these the Uphill Wharf was a busy little place where Gould’s Wharf and Harbour advertised that ‘vessels arrive with Welsh and Forest coal every Spring Tide’. There were salt and timber stores too, with the equally busy quarry, kilns and brickworks just a short distance away.

  At least one small vessel was built at Uphill, the 18-ton sloop Hope, launched in 1802. Eventually, however, the many years of activity ended, the quarry and brickworks closed and the growth of rail and then road transport reduced Uphill to leisure boating use and the adjacent beach to a last resting place for hulks.

  Now a quiet haven for small craft, this small pill at Uphill was once busy with coal boats arriving and loads of stone and bricks being dispatched.

  Along the main course of the River Axe a wharf at Lympsham dealt mainly with coal for the adjacent farms and local sales, although some vessels were fortunate enough to obtain an outward load of locally-quarried stone. In later years a small Dutch steamer brought in chippings for use on the local roads. The last ketch to bring its cargo of coal up the difficult river approach was the St Austell. Skippered by Captain R.V. Hocking, she marked the end of the tradition of manual unloading by basket and winch and for delivery in the locality at 9d or 10d a hundredweight.

  Prior to the building of the sluice at Bleadon and the 1841 opening of the Bristol–Taunton railway line, some upriver movements also went further on, again with cargoes mainly of Welsh or Dean coal.

  7. THE PARRETT ESTUARY

  The shipping profile of the Somerset coastline from Brean to Stert Island is a fascinating one. The long sandy strand through Berrow to Burnham-on-Sea, now the domain of holiday accommodation and entertainment, saw the occasional cargo landed for the inland villages and, probably, a few illicit arrivals as well.

  At Burnham itself Irish cattle boats used to call at the long causeway wharf built primarily for vessels from South Wales, but in-bound traffic there mainly comprised the excursion steamers since the freight arrivals of coal, rails, timber and the like went a short way up the River Brue to the railway wharf at Highbridge. Supplies of fuel and rails for the owning Somerset & Dorset Railway and the lines with which it was associated or connected came in this way in considerable quantity.

  Off the entrance to the River Parrett the tidal range can be as much as 40ft on spring tides, half that on neaps. This is among the highest variations in the world and limits access upriver to some twenty days a month for vessels drawing up to 10ft and to ten days for those with a deeper draught, up to 15ft. On the plus side, the strength of the tides helps to keep the river scoured, but variations in tide strength, the amount of rainfall and other variables result in a constantly changing channel along its lower course. When tides are high the best channel is normally the floodway and when they are low the ebbway offers the greatest depth.

  Despite the millions of tons of mud in Bridgwater Bay there is full shipping access to the Parrett Estuary via an inward course south of Gore Buoy and north of Stert Island. The outwards channel takes a more northerly course after rounding Stert. A pilot needs to be taken aboard off Burnham, except in the case of small regular visitors, newcomer vessels being guided to the boarding point by VHF radio.

  Upstream along the Parrett, Combwich retains the roll-on roll-off facility built to handle materials brought in for building the Hinkley nuclear power station, but bricks and produce are no longer loaded in the pill, nor loads transferred to barges for the hobblers or tugs to tow onwards. Some 8 miles along comes Dunball Wharf, notable as the last of Somerset’s traditional harbours to survive. In recent years up to seventy cargoes of sand from Bridgwater Bay sites like Culver Sands have been received annually at the sand wharf adjoining the former railway quays. From the 1990s modern-generation vessels of up to 225ft were still berthing there to discharge their sand.

  A more intimate view of the port of Bridgwater can be found in the letters of Captain Norman Curnow who left the sea to become the harbour master there in 1953. Looking back on the thirty-five years before his last pilotage job, Captain Curnow described the activity in the Parrett harbours in a letter he wrote from New Zealand in 2000:

  I came to Bridgwater from sea work in 1953 and I was working there until 1988. Between 1960 and 1980 the port was very busy indeed. There were six working wharves, namely Combwich Wharf, Walpole Wharf (British Petroleum), Bibby’s Wharf, Dunball Wharf, Bristol Road Wharf (later Silvey’s) and Bridgwater Docks. There were around 3,000 ships per year and we had six pilots.

  When I came to Bridgwater there were several schooners still at work e.g. Result, Agnes, Emily Barrett, Kathleen & May, J.T. & S. (an Irish vessel whose initials stood for John Tyrell & Son of Arklow, predecessor of Arklow Shipping run by Sheila Tyrell).

  Dunball supplied coal to R.O.F. (Royal Ordnance Factory) by rail. Ships on that trade were Roma and Radstock (Captain Holder). Trade to Dunball picked up when the main docks closed. Bridgwater Port & Navigation Authority made a bid for Dunball Wharf but it fell into private hands, Bridgwater Warehousing, Ashmeads of Bristol and later Watts & Co.

  Dunball Wharf exported scrap metal (Coopers Metals of Swindon) and imported sand (ARC), fish meal, timber, rock asphalt (Sete), rock salt (Carrickfergus), fertiliser, animal feeds, coal, cement from Poland, Nestles milk from Londonderry.

  There were 100 tankers a month to Walpole and every nut and bolt for Hinkley ‘A’ came by sea on Gardener’s ships and Holdersmith to Combwich Wharf. The size of ships averaged 700 tons deadweight.

  Bridgwater itself was, of course, the original and most important hub of Parrett shipping despite the access limitations, eased somewhat once steam tugs appeared. It was a greatly varied and busy port and, like Dunball, had rail access for the onward movement of cargoes. Prior to the railway age it was a major transhipment point for goods barged inland along the Parrett to Langport and along the rivers Yeo and Isle tributaries and the Westport Canal. This was the feeder route for a whole network of inland distribution, especially from Langport, just as the Tone Navigation and then the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal fed Taunton and its surrounding areas.

  Burnham-on-Sea

  Such maritime activity as took place at Burnham before the nineteenth century was almost entirely confined to the small fishing vessels working off its smooth sands and in th
e waters of Bridgwater Bay. The railway era, coupled with the aspirations of local developers, was to change all that.

  No sooner had the Somerset Central Railway taken over the route of the moribund Glastonbury Canal and opened its line to Highbridge in 1854 than it was experimenting with a ferry service across the Bristol Channel to Cardiff. Suitable though a railway wharf at Highbridge might be for freight traffic, a passenger ferry service would be better from Burnham and would save the awkward section up the River Brue to Highbridge. And so an extension of the line was sanctioned in 1855 and three years later a long access pier stretching out from the front at Burnham was opened, much to the chagrin of Bridgwater which had strongly opposed the idea.

  Although referred to as a pier, the new structure was just a simple 900ft causeway protruding from the esplanade and sloping down at 1 in 4 to the water. It was linked to the nearby station by a single line whose metals were extended to and across the esplanade and along the pier itself. While the underlying concept remained that of dealing with freight at Highbridge and passengers at Burnham, the station–pier rail line at the latter point was intended to permit the movement of wagons to shipside if needed and might also have been intended for a more comprehensive transfer link with the station.

  The passenger ferry service between Burnham and Cardiff began with a sailing of the 121-ton Iron Duke on 3 May 1858. She arrived at 10 a.m. with a load of passengers from Cardiff and they were followed by several hundred from Bristol. The Cardiff visitors had a difficult job when it came to board for the return trip as the tide had receded. This highlighted the new pier’s berthing problems which the creation of the railway-associated Burnham Tidal Harbour Company was intended to resolve. To limit the considerable effect of the tidal variations at Burnham a channel was dug along one side of the pier, with a wooden mooring structure along its outer side. An adjacent sluicing pond helped to clear away silt, along with a little help from mud scrapers, both afloat and on foot. This done, and using a permutation of four vessels of its own, the BTH reinvigorated the steamer service from 1860.

  By 1863 negotiations had led to the newly-formed Somerset & Dorset Railway becoming part of a route link-up which would permit the introduction of a Cardiff–Burnham–Poole–Cherbourg–Paris service. This began in May 1865, but less than two years later S&D financial problems led to the cessation of this facility although the service across to Cardiff continued until 1888.

  With no facilities other than its inlaid rail track the pier at Burnham was not really suitable for non-passenger business and lowering and raising wagons along the 1 in 4 slope would have been a cumbersome process. The odd load of building materials for local use did come ashore, as did some livestock from the periodic Irish cattle boats, the beasts occasionally escaping and causing some hectic moments.

  The ‘pier’ at Burnham-on-Sea with a paddle steamer arriving in the deep channel ready to take on board a quite considerable crowd of excursionists. Nearby small fishing vessels are going about their daily business.

  Burnham occupied a strategic position overlooking the access to the Brue and Parrett rivers and early visitors would have seen a succession of vessels entering or leaving those waterways or at anchor waiting for the tide. There was a harbour master’s office on the seafront and this was also the base for the river pilots. The town had a lifeboat from 1836, the gift of Sir Peregrine Acland who had his own connection with the sea in the harbour built at Lilstock. The variety of shipping off Burnham can be gauged from the record of rescues embracing four schooners, three barques and a barquentine, four ketches, two trows, a sloop and a smack.

  Over the years there have been no less than three lighthouses at Burnham, all still to be seen. Entrepreneurial clergyman Rev. David Davies built the first to replace the age-old practice of exhibiting a lantern on the church tower to guide shipping off Stert Point, a service for which shipmasters paid a small fee. The Davies lighthouse was sold to Trinity House for a substantial sum and replaced first by the Low Light on the sands north of the town and then by a traditional building further inland.

  The Low Light, Burnham’s second lighthouse, was a simple affair erected on the wide sands to the north of the town. (Roy Gallop)

  Highbridge

  For the small Highbridge community the nineteenth century immediately brought change. At one time the River Brue had been one of the water access routes for supplying Glastonbury Abbey and small craft had used the river to trade up to the bridge that crossed it as part of the road link between Bristol and Exeter, but such movements and those further inland were few, small and irregular. New drainage legislation, which first prompted plans for a new wharf for the town, isolated a short section of the old river through the town, but this got a new lease of life as the site chosen by the Glastonbury Canal for a sea lock outlet to the estuary. Opened in 1833 the canal did not last very long and after the canal’s demise and replacement by the Somerset Central Railway, the seaward section of the old river beyond the sea lock was seen as the right location for the new railway’s ambitions to develop seaborne traffic to feed its metals.

  Opening of the SCR line in 1854 was followed by the purchase of land to permit development of the riverside beyond its station. This was reached by an extension which crossed the Bristol & Exeter Railway’s main line on the level and then passed over the main Exeter road. The new dock was provided with wharf and unloading facilities which were extended as available finance permitted. Good use was made of these ship–rail transfer facilities and passenger traffic also increased when the railway was extended to Burnham in 1857. Five years later the Somerset Central merged with the Dorset Central Railway to form the Somerset & Dorset Joint company.

  With use of the wharf proving rather more profitable than the rest of the railway business, the original wharf area was added to and rail siding arrangements made with a number of businesses which were established in the triangle between the wharfside lines and the passenger line of the 1858 railway extension to Burnham. Highbridge Wharf was well provided with moveable steam cranes which ran on broad gauge tracks, but there were ongoing problems with silting caused by eddying where the old route of the Brue and the new cut joined downstream of the wharf. Special mud clearing operations were required from time to time and there were several cases of vessels having to be diverted because of access difficulties.

  Highbridge Wharf pictured in late Victorian years. At the head of the line of vessels are two schooners, high in the water having unloaded their cargoes, probably of Scandinavian timber. Beyond are several trows engaged in more local activities.

  With its locomotive and carriage works located on land on the inland side of the station the S&D railway had its own demand for steel and coal. The railway fleet of passenger and cargo vessels was initiated with the iron paddle steamer Ruby in 1860, but neither she nor her immediate successors lasted very long. Then, in 1873, the S&D purchased three wooden ketches for cargo carrying, the 59-ton Railway, the 69-ton Julia and the slightly larger 82-ton Richard and Emily. Thirteen years later, two of these were lost at sea, but Julia remained active until 1904 when she was replaced by another Julia which continued at work until the end of 1933. Locomotive coal was brought over from South Wales and other shipments from there and from the Forest of Dean arrived for local use or onward movement by train. Rails were shipped in, not only for the Highbridge Works and local track use, but also for onward transfer to the London & South Western Railway. Curiously, at one time the locomotive superintendent was also responsible for the S&D vessels.

  The iron screw vessel Alpha was added to the S&D fleet in 1879 and at one period was coming across from South Wales with a load of rails every two or three days. With the trend for track lengths used on the railway system to increase, she was twice lengthened to carry longer rails; in 1884 and then again in 1905. From 1904 the second Julia shared the workload and the 190-ton Radstock was added in 1925, the year Alpha was finally scrapped.

  Timber was another of the staple traffics a
t Highbridge Wharf, arriving from Scandinavia and Russia for the adjacent John Bland’s timber yard and sawmills right until the end of the shipping activity. Loads of grain and flour also arrived while in the outward direction bricks were dispatched from the local brickyard, also some cargoes of local produce and livestock, but inwards movements predominated and outwards sailings of the railway’s own ships were usually made in ballast. In the 1920s private sidings served the timber yard, a coal depot, cake mills and a fuel depot.

  Trade at Highbridge Wharf suffered a little with the rest of the coasting business when the Severn Tunnel opened, but remained very significant until the period of depression after the First World War. It picked up a little before the 1926 strike period and, like other harbours, Highbridge had a busy time during the second conflict, notably for the storage of war materials for the US Army. But then came another downturn and the end of shipping movements in 1948, with formal closure of the main and new wharves in the following year. Some local rail traffic lingered on for another few years with official closure of the railway to the wharf area in 1965. By the 1970s all the buildings had been abandoned although Highbridge retained its age-old link with the sea through the small boatyard established in 1927 by H.J. Kimber at the Clyce Wharf.