Porlock
Porlock maps (2 available)
Map of Somerset
Beautifully hand-drawn and coloured, dating from around 1840
Personalised maps
Create an historic map centred directly on any postcode!
Porlock books (15 available)
- 8 photos on Porlock appear in 3 Frith books - View photos of Porlock
- Read extracts and see photos from these books on Porlock and Somerset
Porlock memories
Read and share memories of Porlock and Somerset inspired by Frith photos
Be the first to add a memory of Porlock.
You can also read memories of nearby places in Somerset below.
Somerset memories
Summer holidays
My grandparents lived in Porch Cottage in Luccombe.
I would often be taken to visit my grandparents but it was during the summer holidays I had the most fun.
Luccombe village is a magical place for a child and even more so in the summer months, it truly is one of the most beautiful places and the times I spent there are my happiest memories.
Karen Johnson granddaughter of Roy and Gladys Johnson.
A memory of Luccombe contributed by karen sankey
My childhood in Minehead
My auntie Mary used to run the donkeys on the beach. I spent each school holiday in Minehead Swimming Pool and remember the Juke Box in the cafeteria area very well. When I first moved to Minehead in 1953 I lived in the old Gasworks Cottage right on the front down past the harbour. I would be very interested if anyone has a photo of the Old Gasworks before it was demolished in the late fifties early sixties ? I had 10 aunts and uncles in the Webber family , most of whom have passed on now, and several uncles worked voluntarily on the Minehead Lifeboat, with Uncle Alf being coxswain for a number of years and uncles Jack and ...read more here
A memory of Minehead contributed by Barry Johns
wbardry@hotmail.com
P Aden :
I was at Butlins as well. (1962 - 1964)
I remember the big dipper thing; we used to call it The Mouse. I often went up on it.
I wonder what the camp is like now. Horrible dump, blasting out rap music probably.
A memory of Minehead contributed by First name Last name
My time at the camp.
I was born in Minehead, and have also lived in Dunster, Williton, Timberscombe and Rodhuish, and attended all the schools. I worked in Butlins Holiday Camp at Minehead from 1962-1963.
This was the first full year that the Camp was opened. Most of the time I was working the rides in the amusement park. I helped build the Big Dipper, which was 70ft high, but is gone now. Some nights I sang on the stage under the name of Elvis the 2nd, singing mostly his and Cliff Richard songs. When I was at the camp there was three Dance Floors, One for Rock & Roll, another for ballroom dancing, which once held the Come Dancing competition for the BBC. And the ...read more here
A memory of Minehead contributed by p aden
Extracts From Porlock & Somerset books
Standing at the bottom of the notoriously steep climb of Porlock Hill, the Ship Inn appears little changed today, despite the removal of its attractive rustic wooden porches. Note the lofty chimney rising high over the thatch. It was supposedly in this inn that the prolific writer, Robert Southey, a close friend of Coleridge and poet laureate from 1807, composed his verse on Porlock’s ‘verdant vale’.
An extract from from"English Villages".
Porlock’s church, dedicated to the 6th-century Welsh Celtic saint Dubricius, has a 13th-century tower with a later
shingled spire which is curiously truncated. It is said locally that its top was cut off and removed in the 19th century
to Culbone, where a short shingled spire rises from the nave roof (see picture 82194). Parsons Street, on the right,
has some large Victorian houses looking over the churchyard.
An extract from from"Somerset Photographic Memories".
This view, from Parson’s Hill between the deep tree-filled Hawk Combe and the A39, looks across the small town
below to Hurlstone Point. Between is the flat farmland running inland from Porlock Bay between the wooded
northern edge of Exmoor’s sandstone hills and the hills west of Minehead. Since 1923, Porlock has expanded to fill
the fields between it and the line of prominent white houses.
An extract from from"Somerset Photographic Memories".
The lanes and streets of Porlock wind delightfully between attractive whitewashed and thatched houses, including
The Ship Inn with its characteristic external chimney stack in the centre of the street front; the Lake poet William
Southey stayed here several times. These stacks are common in the West Country from medieval times to the 17th
century, and The Ship’s has a good 16th-century round flue.
An extract from from"Somerset Photographic Memories".
The Foot of Porlock Hill 1923
Porlock Hill used to strike dread into the
hearts of holiday-makers until relatively
recently. Grinding up with slipping
clutch and near-bursting radiators, it was,
I recall, one of the trickiest parts of our
summer holiday route in the 1950s to
North Devon and Cornwall, with its
hairpin bends and ascent of nearly 500
feet in a third of a mile.
An extract from from"Somerset Photographic Memories".