the middle of some kind of utterly English Elysian fields, where all is sun and lush meadows, babbling brooks and thatched cottages, village greens and cricket matches. On all sides there are comfortable pubs and ample barmaids; the people are by and large sturdy and honorable. The soundtrack drips with a fine nostalgia: There is birdsong, and there are steam whistles, we hear a milk churn being loaded, the flap of a porter’s flag, distant peals of church bells, the lowing of dairy-ready cattle, and behind it all, as bass continuo, the amiable chuff of steam engines as they amble through cuttings and over level crossings and bustle back down the valleys to their sidings and their home.
But this is no fantasy of an imagined Englishness. The railway may have gone, but the world in which the Thunderbolt used to run is still there, south of Bath. It has been preserved in some kind of Betjemanesque amber—a patchwork of landscape six miles long by three miles deep, between the river Avon in the east and the village of Combe Hay, halfway westward along the long-disused railway line.
But its beauty peters out very quickly, and with sudden drama. To the west of Combe Hay the land becomes much less interesting, less pretty. A passerby in the train, were it still running, would—if traveling westbound—notice the change most easily, would see how the rural idyll between Limpley and Combe becomes slowly more tinged and tainted by the first indication of industry, of smoke, grit, iron, and rust. By the time the engine reaches Dunkerton, a couple of miles on, the smell of coal dust hangs in the air, and by the next station, Dunkerton Colliery Halt, there is (or was—it has long been demolished) the winding gear of a mine. And then from there to the west all is coal, all is industry, all is grim. It takes a small effort of imagination to recall that only ten miles back down the line, back to the east of Combe Hay, there was pretty landscape—landscape of a loveliness from another world.
The reason, as so often, is the geology. The hills around Combe Hay and Midford Halt, by Midford and Limpley Stoke itself, are the outcrops of what is called Bath stone, a warm, honey-colored oolitic limestone of the Middle Jurassic. A reporter for the Somerset Guardian understood this well when, in May 1910, he wrote of a railway journey that “there is not a more prettily situated line in the locality of Bath…the run through the Oolite from Combe Hay to Monkton Combe is the most interesting part of the track, because the traveller has lovely views all the time.”
The oolitic limestone dips gently eastward, much as did the red marls that Smith found in the Mearns Colliery. What this meant to a traveler heading west on the Camerton & Limpley Stoke Line—the map shows it passing in an almost direct westerly direction for most of its route toward the terminus at Camerton and the junction at Hallatrow—is that he or she would pass—or chuff or clank—steadily downward through the geological table, because of the steady dip of the rocks. From the start at Limpley Stoke station he or she would pass much of the way through the Jurassic, from Middle to Lower. Somewhere around Combe Hay Halt he or she might have noticed having entered the outcrop of Triassic rocks. By the time the train has reached Dunkerton Colliery, the traveler will be in the thick ofthe Upper Carboniferous, and of the coal.
This much we know today, and a great deal more besides. In William Smith’s time, however, very little was known—and anyone who made that westbound journey from Limpley Stoke to Camerton in 1792 might well have marveled at the change of scenery but would have had precious little understanding of which rock was which; which type might be older or younger than any other; and which appeared where, when it did, and why.
Anyone, that is, except for William Smith. For seven seminal years these few square miles of gently graduated English loveliness were to
But this is no fantasy of an imagined Englishness. The railway may have gone, but the world in which the Thunderbolt used to run is still there, south of Bath. It has been preserved in some kind of Betjemanesque amber—a patchwork of landscape six miles long by three miles deep, between the river Avon in the east and the village of Combe Hay, halfway westward along the long-disused railway line.
But its beauty peters out very quickly, and with sudden drama. To the west of Combe Hay the land becomes much less interesting, less pretty. A passerby in the train, were it still running, would—if traveling westbound—notice the change most easily, would see how the rural idyll between Limpley and Combe becomes slowly more tinged and tainted by the first indication of industry, of smoke, grit, iron, and rust. By the time the engine reaches Dunkerton, a couple of miles on, the smell of coal dust hangs in the air, and by the next station, Dunkerton Colliery Halt, there is (or was—it has long been demolished) the winding gear of a mine. And then from there to the west all is coal, all is industry, all is grim. It takes a small effort of imagination to recall that only ten miles back down the line, back to the east of Combe Hay, there was pretty landscape—landscape of a loveliness from another world.
The reason, as so often, is the geology. The hills around Combe Hay and Midford Halt, by Midford and Limpley Stoke itself, are the outcrops of what is called Bath stone, a warm, honey-colored oolitic limestone of the Middle Jurassic. A reporter for the Somerset Guardian understood this well when, in May 1910, he wrote of a railway journey that “there is not a more prettily situated line in the locality of Bath…the run through the Oolite from Combe Hay to Monkton Combe is the most interesting part of the track, because the traveller has lovely views all the time.”
The oolitic limestone dips gently eastward, much as did the red marls that Smith found in the Mearns Colliery. What this meant to a traveler heading west on the Camerton & Limpley Stoke Line—the map shows it passing in an almost direct westerly direction for most of its route toward the terminus at Camerton and the junction at Hallatrow—is that he or she would pass—or chuff or clank—steadily downward through the geological table, because of the steady dip of the rocks. From the start at Limpley Stoke station he or she would pass much of the way through the Jurassic, from Middle to Lower. Somewhere around Combe Hay Halt he or she might have noticed having entered the outcrop of Triassic rocks. By the time the train has reached Dunkerton Colliery, the traveler will be in the thick ofthe Upper Carboniferous, and of the coal.
This much we know today, and a great deal more besides. In William Smith’s time, however, very little was known—and anyone who made that westbound journey from Limpley Stoke to Camerton in 1792 might well have marveled at the change of scenery but would have had precious little understanding of which rock was which; which type might be older or younger than any other; and which appeared where, when it did, and why.
Anyone, that is, except for William Smith. For seven seminal years these few square miles of gently graduated English loveliness were to
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