St Peter, Staple Fitzpaine

A day spent out and about south from where I am staying and I visited a good number of churches and visited Ilminster and the Blackdown Hills.

Staple Fitzpaine is where the story begins. In 1408, Hawise Fitzpaine has to leave her home as daughter of the Lord Of The Manor to go to Hampshire to marry William Mauditt, a man she barely knows. The story opens with her final day in Staple where she goes on a long walk from the village to Staple Hill (over 1,000feet) and back and reflects on what she has to and might face as her life changes.

Staple Hill in real life does of course exist and belongs to the Crown and the Forestry Commission. The views up there are fantastic and were good today. If anywhere in Somerset looks like home, it's there as the geology is similar and there are flints lying about and the immediate scenery is similar.

This church Hawise would not have known if she had existed. The bulk of it dates from the late 15th to 16th Century and this tower is one of the finest in Somerset. It is what one would call a Somerset tower and was completed at the beginning of the 16th Century. This was when the Gothic Style had reached its zenith.

Staple Fitzpaine is a snall village about 5 miles south of Taunton. It is a somewhat scattered settlement, but the Greyhound pub and the church and former school are clustered around a crossroads. Like much of Somerset that I have been to since I arrived, it is a very agricultural county. In almost everywhere I've visited there has been the all pervading smell of manure! Most of it has been cows, but I had the distinct smell of pigs at Cricket Malherbie this afternoon!