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⇒ Cover ⇒ Preface ⇒ Introduction ⇒ The visit ⇒ Weymouth map c.1930 ⇒ Portland map c.1930 ⇒ Works quoted ⇒ Postface |
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A visit to Weymouth with John Cowper Powys [ ⇒
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A PORTLAND INNThe "Sea-Serpent's Head" was created by John Cowper's imagination, it never existed in reality. His description of the path followed by Sylvanus setting off to find Sue the night of the wreck situates it on the cliffs overlooking West Bay close to Blacknor Point, on the seaward side of the hamlet of Weston. The cliffs can be seen in the background of the photograph. The structure described by John Cowper of "huge square blocks of Portland stone... in the form of a massive fortress" is quite similar to that of the Cove Inn below. Here is Llewelyn's description: On a fair summer's morning how wonderful to stand on the famous sea-bank looking out over Dead Man's Bay, with wide-benched deep-water fishing-boats on every side, and the pebbles under foot spotted and blackened with fisherman's tar; the air smelling of green waves, of wind and sunshine; and with vast nets spread out everywhere to dry, loaded with cork floats five times larger in size than those that dangle on the puny spider-web Weymouth nets, brown nets with a mesh so stout that they could drag to shore an entangled mermaid for all her petulance. And the old stone tavern called the Cove Inn which stands at the top of the beach - was there ever such an hostel?  The landlord once told me that during the worst winter gales the sea invariably reaches to its stone porch and goes pouring down on each side of the house to the sheltered village street below. What a view presents itself from its sarcophagus-like doorway in fine weather - the great sea beach with its wide-sweeping curve of twenty miles, the broad flecked acres of the West Bay; and everywhere old weather-worn benches, old stone seats, where generations of aged fishermen, with bleared eyes still as keen of sight as the eyes of shags, are content to sit for hours scanning a sea and horizon familiar to them for the past seventy or eighty years. Llewelyn Powys, "Portland", Dorset Essays, The Bodley Head, London, 1935 |
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