Martyr's bones met with the fate of the sacred
pile that held them, and not a stone is now left to tell where they lie.
    The natural picturesqueness and singularity of the town still remain; but
strange to say these qualities, which were noted by many writers in ages when
scenic beauty is said to have been unappreciated, are passed over in this, and
one of the queerest and quaintest spots in England stands virtually unvisited
to-day.
    It has a unique position on the summit of a steep and imposing scarp, rising
on the north, south, and west sides of the borough out of the deep alluvial Vale
of Blackmoor, the view from the Castle Green over three counties of verdant
pasture - South, Mid, and Nether Wessex - being as sudden a surprise to the
unexpectant traveller's eyes as the medicinal air is to his lungs. Impossible to
a railway, it can best be reached on foot, next best by light vehicles; and it
is hardly accessible to these but by a sort of isthmus on the north-east, that
connects it with the high chalk table-land on that side.
    Such is, and such was, the now world-forgotten Shaston or Palladour. Its
situation rendered water the great want of the town; and within living memory,
horses, donkeys and men may have been seen toiling up the winding ways to the
top of the height, laden with tubs and barrels filled from the wells beneath the
mountain, and hawkers retailing their contents at the price of a halfpenny a
bucketful.
    This difficulty in the water supply, together with two other odd facts,
namely, that the chief graveyard slopes up as steeply as a roof behind the
church, and that in former times the town passed through a curious period of
corruption, conventual and domestic, gave rise to the saying that Shaston was
remarkable for three consolations to man, such as the world afforded not
elsewhere. It was a place where the churchyard lay nearer heaven than the church
steeple, where beer was more plentiful than water, and where there were more
wanton women than honest wives and maids. It is also said that after the middle
ages the inhabitants were too poor to pay their priests, and hence were
compelled to pull down their churches, and refrain altogether from the public
worship of God; a necessity which they bemoaned over their cups in the settles
of their inns on Sunday afternoons. In those days the Shastonians were
apparently not without a sense of humour.
    There was another peculiarity - this a modern one - which Shaston appeared
to owe to its site. It was