Lucky to live here

As we wandered back from the pub last night, a five minute wander down the deserted road which runs through the village, I thought how lucky we are to live here. The sea which is not far away isn’t the bluest of seas as we are not far from the Severn and Avon estuaries, we get a lot of rain because we are on the west coast, and during the day the village is swamped with cars from the two nearby hospitals and two schools… but really it is a great village!

Here is something I wrote about it last summer:

Our village of Uphill is quite tiny, and you would never think in former times it was a place where boats and small ships called, bringing in goods, and taking goods away. Probably since Roman times, if not before the River Axe and the sheltered mouth of it which is now Uphill, has been used to transport things such as minerals and grain, and bring in other goods, either from Devon to the South, Bristol to the north and towns and villages beyond it on the River Severn, but also from other countries, ie Wales and Ireland!

Local rumour has it that Irish raiders snatched St Patrick from the Mendip Hills, either here in Uphill, or further inland in Banwell, but there is certainly documentation showing that Uphill was sued as a port from the fifteenth century.

Into the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Uphill had its own quarrying and lime-producing industry… but more of that another time.

There was a wharf in Uphill, and was here within living memory although there is no trace of it now… all we have is a marina, boats tied up along the Pill (the little side-river from which Uphill get’s its name, Oppa’s Pill originally) and in a local name: