WIVELISCOMBE, a market town 6 m.  N.W. of Wellington, with a station on the G.W.R. branch to Barnstaple.  Population, 1417.  It is a dull and uninteresting, but clean and comely little place.  Of antiquities it has none, except traces, to the S. of the church, of a bishop’s palace, built by John Drokensford in the 14th cent., some windows of which have found their way into neighbouring houses.  The church is a tasteless building, erected in 1829, with a showy semi-Italian interior.  It has an odd-looking S. aisle, containing a somewhat dilapidated monument, with recumbent effigies of Humphrey Wyndham and wife, 1622-70.  In the churchyard is a time-worn cross, with an almost defaced effigy (cp.  Fitzhead).  In the main street is a modern town hall and market house.  The town lies pleasantly in the lap of the surrounding hills, which furnish many a pleasant ramble.  A mile from the station, on the way to Milverton, is a British camp, and a Danish camp is said to have existed on the site of a neighbouring mansion. Waterrow is a hamlet a couple of miles to the W. on the Bampton road, lying at the bottom of a picturesque combe, through which flow the beginnings of the Tone.

Woodspring Priory (formerly Worspring, and perhaps containing the same element as Worle) is about 5 m.  N. of Weston, and is best reached from Kewstoke, either by the shore as far as Sand Point, or by a lane that leaves (L.) the road to Worle.  It was a priory of Austin canons, who were established here in 1210 by William Courtenay, whose mother was the daughter of Reginald Fitzurse, one of the murderers of Thomas a Becker, whose death the foundation was originally meant to expiate.  The remains, now used as farm buildings, consist of a church, a chantry, a court-room, and a barn.  The church, dedicated to the Trinity, St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr, is approached through a Dec. arch (14th cent.), which leads to an outer court at the W. of the building.  On the W. wall, flanked by angle turrets, will be seen the outline of a Perp. window, and three niches with nearly obliterated figures.  From this outer court an inner court is reached, having on the N. of it the S. wall of the church (with two large windows), at right angles to which the dormitories extended (the mark of the gable is still visible on the wall).  Beyond the E. wall of the court are supposed to have been the chapter-house and the prior’s residence.  At the E. of the nave of the church is the tower, which was originally central, the chancel having been destroyed.  It is 15th-cent. work, but is believed to case an earlier 13th-cent. core.  The vault has fan tracery.  N. of the church are the remains of the chantry (now a cider cellar), originally founded by Robert Courtenay, father of William, showing on the outside three Perp. windows and buttresses, and containing the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury, with a ruined piscina on the pier of one of the pillars.  S.E. of the church is the court-room (now a cow-house), which is sometimes styled the refectory, but erroneously, since there is no fireplace.  It is assigned to the early part of the 15th cent.  The barn (14th cent.) has Dec. doorways, rounded buttresses on either side of the main entrance, and remains of finials.