Montacute Castle

St Michaels Hill, Montacute

The stile and notice board showing an artist’s reconstruction of the Norman castle.

I reached the top of the hill, caught my breath and apologised. I hoped that they would forgive me for arriving so late and began to talk about this special place (Usually I bring pictures, I hope this blog makes up for that a bit)

The National Trust does own some spectacular hill tops and St Michaels on the Montacute Estate is a good example. The rain cleared while we were on the summit and the views across the Somerset countryside stretched gin clear for many miles in all directions.

The 18th century prospect tower built on the flat summit of St Michael’s Hill with its views out across the Somerset landscape.

Such a vantage point must have been valued in pre-Saxon times. The Saxons found a stone cross here which they venerated as a sacred Christian relic. The Normans took the place over in 1066 and decided to build a castle here and renamed the place the steep hill (Mons Acutus). The locals were angered by this lack of respect for a holy place and attacked the new castle …but their revolt failed.

The castle was not needed for long and in 1102 a monastery was founded at the bottom of the hill, the castle was cleared and a chapel built there. It was dedicated to St Michael the archangel, leader of the heavenly host, often the saint chosen for hill top locations.. Glastonbury Tor and St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall are other examples.

The 18th century prospect tower over the footings of the medieval chapel of St Michael.

The chapel stayed there until at least 1630.. even after the priory was put out of action in 1538, during Henry VIII’s ‘Dissolution’ of the monasteries.

About 1600, the Phelip’s family (who had purchased the monastic land from the crown) built the magnificent Montacute House out of the local golden-coloured Ham stone. It was built next to the village reusing much of the stone from the ruined monastery which in its day had taken materials from the castle.

By 1760, the hill was valued as an ‘eye-catcher’ for the house.. something to look up to. A spiral track lined with trees was designed to enable easy access to the top of the hill. Here they built a prospect tower and above its door, in Ancient Greek, they inscribed the word ‘periscope’. You can still climb up the tower’s stone spiral stair to the top.

The view from the lower bailey showing the rampart and the steep slope up to the summit and the 1760 prospect tower.

We walked down the hill to the middle castle ward and looked at the moss covered wall hidden by trees marking the terrace edge. We considered the massive amount of work needed to re-profile the hill, probably using conscripted Saxon labour.

Today’s conservation management of the hill is a battle with trees and scrub. In the 1940s the hill was grass covered and grazed by sheep but grazing stopped and it became overgrown with scrub woodland. George the ranger has worked hard with his team of volunteers, it looks good this year but needs a few cattle up there in the Spring to keep the regrowth down.

St Michael’s Hill in the 1940s when the hill was grass covered and the ‘hat-like’ shape of the hill was clear. The timber Norman keep once stood on the summit the perimeter defended by palisades. The stables, garrison and store buildings would have been on the lower terrace. Montacute House is middle left in the photo. The priory site is centre right in the field right of the parish church.

There has been very little archaeological excavation to help understand the massive earthworks created over 900 years ago, but in 2010 I carried out a watching brief when a new water trough was installed on the hill. I noticed that burrowing animals had dug into the broad lower terrace. It’s always worth looking in mole hills and rabbit burrows. In the disturbed soil was some of the rubbish the Norman garrison had left behind.. fragments of cooking pots and splinters of animal bone, left-overs from their meals.

Norman pottery uncovered by rabbits burrowing into St Michael’s Hill

Such scraps enable you to touch the past and to realise that there is still so much more that can be learned about this place.

Martin Papworth

Crewkerne at War (1914-1918)

By Juliet Aykroyd
Crewkerne, Somerset, UK


Juliet Aykroyd (Credit: Thea Lacey)
THE FIRST YEAR
On 4 August 1914, the tranquil little town of Crewkerne in Somerset woke up to find England at war with Germany. It was no big surprise. Since July, the national and local press had been bracing the nation for conflict with alarming headlines: BARBAROUS HUNS…INHUMAN FEROCITY…. The press was the only source of news at the time, and as well as disseminating controlled information it was instrumental in whipping up patriotic fervour, with stories of German atrocities and spy scares.
One of the first events to impact on our town was an immediate rise in the cost of many foods – including sugar (of which more later). Next, on 8th August, the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) became law. The government took over the railways, and it became illegal – among other things – to loiter on railway bridges, fly kites, light bonfires or feed bread to wild animals. On August 25th, Pulman’s Weekly News reported an odd incident in which spy mania and martial law appear to have collided: Thomas Sharp, a labourer, was mistaken for a German spy, and took refuge from assailants at Crewkerne station. Did he think it was a government sanctuary? He was crouching under a shrub when he was seized and taken before magistrates, who fined him for contravening DORA.
Before the end of August, 200 townsmen serving in the Territorials and the Regular Army had mobilised. Mr George Blake, a wealthy local solicitor, put out a call for a thousand “hard-hitting, determined Somerset men” to enlist in a new battalion. But response was slow. By the end of September only 63 men had volunteered, of whom 10 were unfit for service. “Crewkerne has not come forward so patriotically as expected,” grumbled another town stalwart, Mr H. Paget-Hoskyns, annoyed that the neighbouring town of Yeovil had done better. Mr Blake tried again: he organised a recruitment “Illuminated Mass Meeting” in the Market Square, with flags and streamers, a procession and no fewer than 5 bands, marching around the town by torchlight.
Four years later, some of the families present must have recalled that September jamboree with bitter sorrow. The war was expected to be a quick skirmish, all over in a few months. No one predicted the four years of terrible conflict ahead, or knew that of the hundreds of Crewkerne men who did eventually join up, or were later conscripted, 127 of them would die.
Meanwhile, there were at least two good reasons for the “unpatriotic” first response to the war drums. It was time for the harvest, which was “beautiful, thank God, this year,” the Reverend H.D. Lewis assured his congregation. Harvesting could not be abandoned; farmers needed labourers. Moreover, two important town factories needed workers. Robert Bird & Co and Arthur Hart and Sons were requisitioned right away to produce webbing for the war. Crewkerne’s skilled weavers and webbers were in big demand. Other textile works were busy too, making shirts and tents for the military. Where there was high employment and overtime there were good wages, and good wages meant flourishing shops and services. No wonder young townsmen were in no rush to abandon security, and go off to fight in some foreign country for a cause that few people really understood.
Crewkerne’s webbing was put to an amazing number of uses. The woollen kind was for horse girths, harness, nosebags, slings, stretchers; the cotton for cartridge belts, parachute bindings, balloon straps, shell slings, mortar bomb carriers; the linen for army huts, aeroplane parts, saddle padding, hangars, ammunition boxes, sacks for gas masks, officers’ haversacks…the list goes on: a ghostly reminder of how World War I combatants were kitted out and fragilely held together, and how the war was expected to be fought like the last one: on horseback. Another effect of DORA on Crewkerne life was the requisitioning of horses other than those used for farm work. Thousands were dispatched to the front in the early months, where most of them were killed. Later in the war, tractors  – traction engines they were called – were imported from America. There were complaints about the damage they caused to public highways. Next, advertisements appear in the local press for Ford delivery vans. And so the horse-drawn plough and cart trundle off into history.
An event in November 1916 brought the war home in an immediate sense. In response to a national campaign, Crewkerne Town Council agreed to house twenty Belgian refugees who had fled the German invasion. A committee of four ladies and the Salvation Army band welcomed them at the station, and they were conveyed in a hired brake to the house of Mr Palmer in Abbey Street. Mr E. Blake guaranteed their board and lodging, and a fortnightly house-to-house collection was made for their support. Entertainments were organised: at one concert the refugees overcame shyness and “rendered songs in Flemish.” It was all rather unlike the reception on offer to asylum seekers a hundred years later in the UK, and exemplifies the kind of enthusiastic outpouring of generosity that characterises so many initiatives in the Great War.
 
FOOD MATTERS – ESPECIALLY SUGAR
If the percentage of townsmen unfit for military service in the first recruitment drive was 10 out of 63, this was much less than the national average – a shocking 38%. It seems that apart from the high incidence of TB our town was healthier and happier than many, because of the high employment rate of both men and women. By April 1915, Bird’s factory-workers’ wages had gone up by 25%, and a bonus of 6% soon followed. A whole new warehouse was added to Hart’s factory. Early in 1915, Mr Maunder of the War Distress Relief Committee reported “No distress in the town occasioned by war,” adding “This is considered to be very satisfactory.” Food prices were ramping up, but wages kept pace, and for the moment there was plenty to eat. This was to change by 1917, with the German submarine blockade and the massive loss of cargo ships. We can get a sense of Crewkerne’s food supply by tracking the story of wartime sugar.
At that time more sugar was consumed in England than anywhere else in the world. The granulated sort was used in medicines, soft and alcoholic drinks and spirits, as well as cakes and confectionery, and the sweet puddings that English people love. Sugar in lump form was considered elegant: square lumps were presented in urn-shaped ceramic or silver vessels with lids – the soon-to-be-redundant sugar basins – and picked up with silver tongs to be placed daintily in a tea or coffee cup. The poorest families made do with treacle, which was cheaper (and more nutritious did they but know it), but the lure of sugar went deep: it was life’s sweetener, a treat and a luxury, and supposed to be vital for children’s health, a misconception which led to ubiquitous dental caries and sometimes malnutrition.
Before the war England relied on imported beet sugar from Austria-Hungary. In 1914, the price of granulated sugar was fixed at four and a half pence a pound, lump sugar at five pence. It was the first food to be rationed in 1918, at half a pound per person per week, and by then it cost seven pence a pound.
Unlike those who lived in big towns and cities, the relatively well-off citizens of Crewkerne did not have to queue for hours outside shops for basic foods. But our town felt the pinch like everywhere else. In the summer of 1917, the Reverend Lewis lamented that the customary cakes and sweets could not be provided for the annual Sunday School treat. Before refrigerators, sugar was essential in preserving fruit for winter in jams and jellies. The new Ministry of Food urged housewives to bottle as many fruits and vegetables as possible, and issued recipes for making jam with nasty-sounding sugar substitutes, like salt-and-sago, glucose (from corn syrup), or saccharin tablets, or mystery concoctions called Consyp and Sypgar. “It is not very sweet,” admits the Ministry pamphlet dolefully of the glucose jam.
The advertisements of the World’s Stores (Pioneers of Popular Prices), Crewkerne’s most enterprising grocer, give us some interesting insights. In November 1917, they announce that they have purchased an entire shipment of tinned jam (twice as sweet as ordinary jam) from an Australian steamship, and are offering it at prices between a shilling and four pence (apple) and a shilling and seven pence (melon and lemon). To avoid being accused of hoarding and profiteering, the advertisement notes, in small print, that these are “prices fixed by THE FOOD CONTROLLER.” The jam must have been a treat, for those Crewkernians who could afford it.
Sugar, wheat, butter, margarine, meat, potatoes, tea and many other foods were scarce by the end of 1917. People with gardens or allotments were encouraged keep a pig (“as an act of patriotism”), and grow potatoes and other vegetables. Country folk were luckier than townsfolk in having access to fresh produce. The Reverend Lewis announced that he would condone gardening on the Sabbath day, “for these are exceptional times.” The World’s Stores promoted wheat and potato substitutes, in the form of the novelty “flaked maize” – now called corn flakes – and semolina at three and a half pence per pound, and marrow beans for eight pence. It was hard for working-class families to give up bread – that ancient and convenient staple of life – and consequently it was never rationed, but deteriorated in quality.
By 1918, Crewkerne had tightened its collective belt. W.A. Thomas, the Chemist in Market Street, ran an advertisement with a picture of a gloomy haggard-faced man – “the Result of War Diet “– and the offer of an Elixir “to tone up the digestive system and strengthen the nerves…changing the outlook to one of hope and brightness.” However, unlike so many war victims in France and Germany, nobody seems actually to have starved. In fact the average British diet was considerably better than before the war. Food was distributed more equally, and housewives were better informed about nutrition and cooking methods. A lot of the credit for this is due to the energies of women.
 
CREWKERNE’S WOMEN AND THE WAR
The Ministry of Food’s War Time Food Economy campaign was promulgated largely by women, whose lives (as is well known) were profoundly changed by the Great War, mostly for the better. But the town records over these four years are dominated by men’s names and men’s interests. There were no women on the Town Council, and until 1918, they couldn’t vote in elections, and then only if they’re over 30. It was taken for granted that women factory and shop workers were paid half the wages of men.
Only sometimes do we get glimpses of Crewkerne women and their wartime lives. At the top end of the scale, Miss Frances Sparks stands out; she is from the family of one of the town’s wealthy solicitors, and a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. Her monthly records of rainfall in the area are published in Pulman’s newspaper. She is one of the few women’s voices we hear raised in the business of running the town. In 1916, she proposes that because of the dim wartime street lighting, it might be sensible to paint the edge of pavements white. The council rejects her idea.
Then there are the women fund-raisers, energetically rattling boxes for contributions to the war effort, organising “Sales of Work” and meetings, running clubs and tea parties and societies. One of these is Mrs Lewis, wife of our Vicar, with her Women’s Bible Class and Mrs Hoskyns, active in Red Cross events. There’s the newly founded Women’s Institute. There are the District Visitors, volunteers from the Anglican Church community, who keep an eye on working-class families’ welfare: an early type of social worker. There is Miss Walkenshaw, a teacher at the County School, showing mothers how to bottle fruit as directed by the Ministry, and make “attractive, appetising and nutritious dishes” out of wheat substitutes.
Then there are the wage earners. Many farmers were reluctant to employ women labourers. “Women are all very well in their place,” announced a farmer at a Union Meeting, “but they are not fit for farm work.” Factory owners were less conservative; at Robert Bird’s eight girls were employed at the beginning of the war; by the end of 1915 there were thirty-two, “doing men’s work.” These working women had money to spend on food and clothes, on the annual two-day fair (“The female element naturally predominates in the patrons of this ancient local fixture,” a commentator declared pompously), and the “Moving Pictures” on offer at the People’s Palace. But work could take its toll. Lucy Evans, age 20, dropped dead one morning as she hurried to her factory job. Cause of death: exhaustion.
The suffering endured by so many bereaved and anxious women is mostly kept private. The story of Flossie Blake, age 23, is an exception. Her beloved brother William is called up, leaving her to run the family smallholding and care for their aged parents. Her hat is found floating on a pond: later her drowned body is recovered. Verdict: melancholia.
At the lower end of the social scale, there are the feckless ones, for whom male legislators had little sympathy. Mary Jacobs is caught stealing apples and fined one shilling. Her excuse that she was “tying corn late and had nothing for her children’s Sunday dinner” does not wash with the magistrates: her husband is in France, and she would have been receiving Separation Allowance. An “incorrigible,” Ellen Savidge is jailed for three months for stealing a navy blue silk blouse and a silver brooch. Or there is Mary Ann Bull, a travelling hawker, fined ten shillings for “using worse language than the local policeman had ever heard in the whole of his 20 years’ experience.”
We don’t know how many attended the annual Woman’s Suffrage Society meeting in June 1916, or whether they applauded the speaker, a Miss Richmond from New Zealand (where women had had the vote for 20 years), when she declared that “Woman has a perfection of her own to which she has not yet attained.”
 
REMEMBERING THE DEAD

Crewkerne War Memorial
(credit: Magicfingers)

Dedication – Crewkerne War Memorial
(credit: Magicfingers)
In his Parish Magazine of October 1914 the Reverend Lewis, gripped by the sanguine mood of the time, rejoices that “of our brave men as yet, thank God, none have been killed.” By March 1915, just two soldiers from the town had died. On May 25th came the first of the few military burials in home soil, when Private Albert Taylor was laid to rest in the town cemetery. His hearse was followed by a long mourning cortege, blinds were drawn and the town hall flag hung at half-mast.
 In November 1915, the newspapers published a plea from King George for more recruits, and around 500 more men from the town and district joined up. Conscription, which excluded farmers but not agricultural labourers, increased the tally in 1916. High levels of enlistment were something to be proud of. “Few towns of its size can compare with Crewkerne in the matter of recruiting,” boasted a town Councillor. 
But, by July 1917, Reverend Lewis is striking a different note: “Scarcely a week passes that we do not hear of another Crewkerne man who has made the great sacrifice.” And he observes tragically that: “the streets and places where men foregather, formerly so thronged, are now so nearly silent.” By September 1918, he is sounding desperate:“We may confidently hope that the vast American armies…will free the world from the nightmare which it has been enduring.”
Thoughts of commemoration had been around from the start, and a War Memorial Committee was set up in 1917. It was agreed that the dead should not only be honoured by a monument, but remembered within a designated area of public amenity, to include up-to-date council-funded housing (“Homes for Heroes”), an avenue of trees, and recreation grounds to include a bowling green, tennis courts, a quiet garden for old folk and sandpits for toddlers. It was a remarkably imaginative scheme, and there was nothing like it anywhere else in the country.
After years of wrangling, outpourings of emotion, impressive dedication and funding raised from all sectors of the community, some at least of the original plans were fulfilled. The sandstone memorial – a cromlech with a statue of a helmeted soldier, and inscriptions round the base – was finally unveiled on 1st June 1922. The soldier, the houses and trees and open spaces are still there, at Severalls Park Avenue, West Crewkerne, as a unique testimonial to the town’s enterprise. In June 2014, a re-dedication ceremony of the refurbished memorial was held on the site.
Last words from the Reverend Lewis, from a fundraising appeal booklet circulated in 1919, he writes:
“It is not enough that our young men should have proved themselves valiant in battle beyond all precedent, that our women, calm-eyed in their grief and anxiety, should have shouldered the heavy burden of their country’s work…We want those who came after to say that their forefathers, having shown themselves great in the day of battle, were greater still in the days of peace that followed; setting themselves, in spite of war-weariness, with steadfast purpose, to solve the great problems of reconstruction.”

The Sweets of Merriott

On the Merriott Memorial to the First World War, there are two named SWEET, both of the first Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry. This battalion was one of the earliest to be sent to France, not only bearing the brunt of some of the worst of the fighting, but in almost continuous action for four years. https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/units/320/somerset-light-infantry/

Archibald was 24, and died of wounds on the 15th May, 1915 in Belgium/ Heuvelland, West Vlaanderen. He is buried in the Klein-Vierstraat British Cemetery. Heuvelland, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium.V. E. 14. Archibald was born and raised in Merriott and enlisted at Crewkerne. He was the son of Robert & Elizabeth Sweet of Shiremoor Hill.

In the 1901 Census, his parents are listed as sailcloth weavers, who had two young servants, plus their five children: Samuel, Frederick, Archibald, Beatrice and Walter.

Henry George Sweet was 20 when he was killed in action in Flanders on the 24th August, 1916. He is memorialised at Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial,Ieper, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium. Panel 21.

Henry was also born and raised in the Merriott area, though out at Townsend, where his father James is listed (in the 1901 Census) as a Horse Carter on the farm. Ann, his wife was also a weaver. By 1901, Henry was their only son.

Townsend, Merriott from the Francis Firth Collection 1955

Somerset Light Infantry 1914 BEF

Medieval Yeovil

Yeovil was a settlement in Domesday Book, in the hundred of Stone and the county of Somerset.

It had a recorded population of 32 households in 1086, putting it in the largest 40% of settlements recorded in Domesday, and is listed under 3 owners in Domesday Book.

The Domesday Survey of 1086 records present day Yeovil under several different sections. The Givele of Robert Count of Mortain, relates to Kingston manor, formerly held by four Saxon thegns consisting of two hides (about 240 acres) and a mill. The earl retained one hide for himself, the other was held by Amund.

The six hides and a mill of Ivle, or Ivla, corresponds to Hendford and part of Preston, formerly held by Athelston, but now by Hugh Maltravers under William de Ou. To this manor twenty-two messuages, held ‘in parage’ were attached, the twenty two ‘freemen’-holders having been collectively responsible prior to being placed under the Hendford Lord’s jurisdiction.

Eslide’s two hides was land of Roger Arundel held by Azelin, hitherto Godwin and Sevic held it in parage. These two hides were later divided, becoming Lyde and Newton. Prestetone, held by Ansger de Montagud of the King (formerly by Alward), paid geld for two hides – this was the other part of today’s Preston.

According to an enquiry of 1219, the community of the twenty-two messuages, called a ‘tenement’ acquired the status of ‘free’ township when, circa 1140, the Empress Matilda conferred income arising from it on the parish church, at the same time giving the freeman the right to judge malefactors, though punishments were to be carried out by the Hendford lord. In effect this resulted in the rector of St. John’s Church becoming lord of the township as recipient and custodian of fees due, while local legislation, of a minor nature, was administered by a proctor, or portreeve elected from the burgesses.

The town’s status was further enhanced in 1205 when King John, who frequently visited Somerset, granted a charter conferring the right to hold markets and fairs.

North Lane, Yeovil

NORTH LANE

A medieval lane known by more than one name

For centuries known as Sheep Lane, today’s North Lane was part of the original northern boundary of the old medieval borough of Yeovil. Indeed, running along the northern edge of St John’s churchyard, its origins are probably Saxon. It connects Princes Street with Silver Street. It also was close to the boundary between the Manor of Kingston to the north and the Manor of Hendford to the south.

In a deed dated 1742 it would appear that North Lane was known by another name – Shitt Lane. The deed was between William Brooke, a Yeovil carpenter, and William Daniell, wealthy glover of Yeovil (and father of Peter Daniell) and reads “Whereas by Indenture dated 18th September 1728 between Thomas Grensham of Yeovil, Mercer and William Brooke, William Daniell at his own expense erected new built or converted into a dwelling house part of a barn in the churchyard of Yeovil on the north side of the Parish Church and leased for 5s a year. Also on the east part of the said newly erected house right of access to the well with other tenants and paying one third part to the repairs of the well. Also allowing 10ft of ground length and breadth on the north part of the dwelling house in possession of George Wills allowing full liberty for Thomas Grensham access to the plot of ground through a door abutting against Shitt Lane.”

To its north was the triangular area known as the ‘Kennels‘ in medieval times and also known as the ‘Sheep Fair’ and ‘Fair Field’. During the nineteenth century it became known as ‘Fair Ground’ but was later, and until quite recently, part of Yeovil market.

North Lane House was a large residence on the south side of North Lane; its location is now covered by the entrance to the North Lane car park. The house probably dated from the 1830’s and in the 1851 census it was the home of 54-year old Charles Raymond who lived there with a domestic servant and an errand boy. Both Charles Raymond and his father Richard before him caused North Lane to be known to a generation of Yeovilians as Raymond’s Lane. Charles was a shoeing smith employing four men and two boys. By 1861 Charles Raymond was no longer residing at North Lane House.

MAP

The 1886 Ordnance Survey showing North Lane connecting Princes Street at left with Silver Street at bottom right.

GALLERY

The western end of North Lane seen from Princes Street during the mid-1960s.

The side of Magnolia House at the western end of North Lane. Photographed in 2016.

…. and just a couple of steps further along is the view of the rear of the Mansion House. Photographed in 2016.

Courtesy of Colin Haine

Photographed in 1983, this shot is taken from just a few steps along North Lane and shows the buildings seen at the centre of the previous photograph, including the sign for the studio of local radio station ‘Somerset Sound’. The building at left survives but the white buildings, the North Lane slaughterhouse, have been replaced by a block of flats as seen below.

Courtesy of Colin Haine. This photograph features in my book “Now That’s What I Call Yeovil“

The old North Lane slaughterhouse buildings photographed in the 1980s from the North Lane car park. At this time the buildings were the premises of N & G Partridge Ltd.

Courtesy of Colin Haine

…. and then it was gone. Seen from the North Lane car park.

…. and pretty much the same view in 2015.

Just a little further on, these flats replace the earlier buildings of the previous photograph. Photographed in 2016.

Looking west along North Lane with St John’s churchyard walk at left and the Court Ash car park at right. Photographed in 2013.

Almost the same view, with the entrance to North Lane car park at left, North Lane continuing to Princes Street at centre and the new flats at right. Photographed in 2015.

Fair Ground in the mid-1960’s seen from Silver Street with North Lane at left and the eastern end of Court Ash at right. The building at the rear of the car park was the poultry shed.

This photograph, taken from North Lane and looking towards Market Street, dates to January 1985 when it fell ‘deep, and crisp, and even’.

…. and the same area seen from an unusual angle, probably in the 1960s. Notice all the posters on the wall in North Lane, at the rear of Church Terrace. At top left is the Pall Tavern.

Photograph by Trevor Hussey, courtesy of Mrs Anne Hussey

North Lane, photographed in 1990 from the churchyard walk. 

The lower end of North Lane looking towards the Pall Inn in Silver Street, with St John’s churchyard at high level to the right. Photographed in 2015.

Looking east along North Lane from the parallel churchyard walk. Photographed in 2016.

…. and looking west from churchyard walk. Photographed in 2016.

The eastern end of North Lane seen from the end of Silver Street. Photographed in 2013.

Bob Osborn

Somerset Villages 1957

Crewkerne Unitarian Chapel

1680 Miracle at Crewkerne

Charles II touching a patient for the king’s evil (scrofula)
Image courtesy of Wellcome Library CC BY 4.0

When touching a monarch was believed to be a cure for illness.

The King’s Evil was the name given to scrofula, the swelling of the bones and lymphatic glands in the neck. Now recognised to be tuberculosis.

From the time of Edward the Confessor, King of England 1003-1066, it was a superstitious belief that the disease could be cured by royal touch. This belief of the curing touch of a monarch was to be found only in Britain and France.

Succeeding Kings and Queens would hold ceremonies known as ‘Touching for the King’s Evil’ where hundreds of people suffering from the disease would kneel before them and be touched by the monarch’s hand. The ceremonies varied between the two countries. Some monarchs were hesitant to carry out the ceremony when plague and other diseases where ravaging the country, but they also realised the importance of the ceremony for the people and recognised that it could make them unpopular if they did not hold the ceremony.

However, not all held the popular belief in the ceremony. James I of England believed it to be superstition, and during the Commonwealth period after the execution of Charles I, Parliament naturally thought it superstitious.

On the restoration of the monarchy and its traditions, King Charles II restarted the ceremony. During his reign touched almost 100,000 people. On 6 July 1660 one of the ceremonies was witnessed by the diarist Evelyn.

“His Majesty sitting under his state [canopy] in the Banqueting-House, the chirurgeons [surgeons] caused the sick to be brought or led, up to the throne, where they kneeling, the King strokes their faces or cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain in his formalities says, ‘He put his hands upon them, and he healed them.'” This is said to every one in particular. When they have been all touched, they come up again in the same order, and the other chaplain kneeling, and having angel [coin] gold strung on white ribbon on his arm, delivers them one by one to his Majesty, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass, while the first chaplain repeats, “That is the true light who came into the world.”
The ceremony concluded with a reading from the bible, prayers and a blessing. Then the King’s hands were washed.

Samuel Pepys, the great diarist, witnessed the ceremony a few months later on 13th April 1661. He wrote, “I went to the Banquethouse, and there saw the King heal, the first time that ever I saw him do it; which he did with great gravity, and it seemed to me to be an ugly office and a simple one.”

In 1680, there is a Crewkerne connection, Here’s the original document- https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A33265.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext

HIS GRACE The Duke of Monmouth Honoured in His PROGRESS In the WEST of ENGLAND IN AN ACCOUNT Of a most Extraordinary CƲRE OF The Kings Evil: Given in a Letter from Crookhorn in the County of Somerset from the MINISTER of the Parish and many others.

VVE whose Names are under-witten, do certifie the truth of a Miraculous Cure of a Girl of this Town of about Twenty years Age by Name E∣lizabeth Parcet, a poor Widows Daughter, who hath anguished under the sad affli∣cted Distemper of the Kings Evil, Termed the Joint Evil, being said to be the worst Evil for about Ten or Eleven years time, she had in her right hand Four runing wounds, viz. One in the inside, and three on the Back of her hand, and two more in the same arm, one above her handwrest, the other above the bending of her Arm, She had betwixt her Arm-pit and Brest, (a bunch) which the Docters said fed those six several Runing Wounds; the said Distemper was likewise on her Left eye, inso∣much she was almost blind; her Mother despairing for the preserving her sight, and being not of ability to send her to London, to be touched by the King, being mi∣serable Poor having many small Children, and this Girl not being able to work, her Mother desirous to have her Daughter cured, saught to the Chirurgions for help who tamper’d with it for a time, but could do no good; went likewise 10 or 11 Miles, to a Seventh Son, but all in vain; no visible hopes of a Cure remained, and expected nothing but the Grave.

But now, in this the Girls great extremity. God the great Physitian Dictates unto her, thus Languishing in her miserable, hopeless con∣dition; what course to take, and what to do for a Cure, which was to go and touch the Duke of Monmouth; which the Girl told her Mo∣ther that if she could but touch the Duke she should be well, her Mo∣ther reproved her for her foolish conceit, but the Girl did often per∣swade her Mother that she might go to Lackinton to the Duke, who then lay at Mr. Speaks, for certainly said she I should be well if I could but touch him; her Mother slighted the pressing requests of her Daugh∣ter, and the more her Mother slighted it and reproved her, the more earnest was the Girl for it; in few days after the Girl having notice that Sir John Syd•nham intended to Treat the Duke at white Lodg in Henton-Park, which this Girl with many of her Neighbours went to the said Park; she being there timely waited the Dukes coming: First, she observed the Person of the D. to have knowledg of him as he was passing into the said Lodg, she prest in among a Crowd of People, and caught him by the hand, his Glove being on, and she had a Glove likewise to cover her wounds, she not being herewith satisfied with this first attempt of touching his Glove only, but her mind was, she must touch some part of his bare skin; she weighting his coming forth, intended a second attempt: the poor Girl, thus betwixt hope and fear waited his motion, on a sudden was news of the D. com∣ing on, which she to be prepared, rent off her Glove that was clung to the Sores in such hast, that broke her Glove, and brought a way not only the sores, but the skin: the Dukes Glove, as providence would have it, the upper part hung down so that his hand-wrest was bare; she prest one and caught him by the bare hand-wrest with her running hand; (saying, God bless your Greatness; and the Duke said God bless you) the Girl was not a little transported with her good success, came and told her friends that now she should be well, she came home to her Mother with great joy, and told her she had that touched by the Dukes bare hand (and that she should now be well) her Mother hearing what she had done, reproved her very sharply for her boldness, and asked her how she durst do such a thing, and threatned to beat her for it, she cryed out O Mother I shall be well again, and be cured of my wounds; and as God Almighty the great Phy∣sitian would have it, to the admiration of all that know of it, or heard of it. Her six running wounds in her hand and arm, in four or five days were dried up, the bunch in her brest was dissolved in eight or ten days, of which now is no sign: her eye that was given for lost, is now perfect∣ly well, and the Girl in good health; the marks of her several wounds are yet visible in her hand and arm, all which has been discovered to us both by Mother and Daughter, and Neighbours that know her.

• Henry Clark Minister of the Parish,
• Captain James Bale,
• Captain Richard Sherlock,
• John Stacky Clerk,
• William Pike,
• Samuel Daubeney,
• G•orge Strong,
• John Greenway,
• Robert Chislet.

Whoever doubts the truth of this relation, may be satisfied thereof by sight of the Original under the hands of the Persons before mentioned, at the Amsterdam Coffe-House in Bartholomew Lane near the Royal Exchange.

LONDON; Printed for Benjamin Harris at the Stationers Arms in the Piazza under the Royal Exchange in Cornhil. 1680.

The “Men of Merriott”

The half-forgotten Memorial Plaques that exist to this day in perhaps every single town and village across the country, carry countless stories of grief and human sadness. We may mouth the words “Lest we forget” but often don’t consider why that must be. The reason that makes our memorialising significant, of course, is to ensure as best we can that such tragedy does not recur.

The Elswood family have lived in Merriott from at least 1730 right up until the present day. According to the 1911 census, one branch lived at 4 Lower Street, Tinker’s Lodge. Frank and Emma (nee Chant) lived in the tiny labourer’s cottage with their nine children. Thomas and Ernest were both carpenters and wheelwrights. A younger son Alfred worked at the Smithy. A daughter Sarah (19) was in service, and Albert, the baby of the family, was still a schoolboy.

In 1914, the First World War began, and Albert enlisted in Crewkerne, and joined the Somerset Light Infantry, A Company, 6th Battalion. On the 16th September 1916 he was killed in action in the Somme offensive and his name recorded on the Thiepval Memorial.

Royal Field Artillery (Imperial War Museum)

Thomas Elswood was a Gunner in the Royal Field Artillery, 29th Division, but was killed in action in Flanders and buried at the Dadizeele New British Cemetery, Moorslede, West-Vlanderen, Belgium. He died just two weeks before the end of the war.

Both war-zones were scenes of indescribable horror.

The first day of the Somme was the deadliest day in British military history – of the 57,470 British casualties, 19,240 men were killed in a few hours. But there was no question of suspending the offensive with the French still heavily engaged at Verdun. Ultimately the Battle of the Somme would continue for another four months.

The First Day of the Somme Offensive (Imperial War Museum)

There is actually extant a letter from Albert’s commanding officer just prior to the attack. He wrote that the territory was ‘the most awful country that human beings ever saw or dreamt of; July 1st was a playground compared to it and the resistance small… I confess I hated the job from the first… So many attempts had been made and so many failures that one knew it would be a tough thing to take on, and I hadn’t personally any particular hopes of accomplishing it. More especially as the distance to be covered, nearly one mile, was enormous for these attacks under circumstances… of country absolutely torn with shell for three months’.

Pople’s Well, Crewkerne

Holy Well in Somerset

The well is located in Crewkerne, Somerset literally along ‘Pople’s Well’ Road. It has steps leading down to the spring.

Site Name: Pople’s Well
Country: England County: Somerset Type: Holy Well or Sacred Spring
Nearest Town: Crewkerne
Map Ref: ST4387909886
Latitude: 50.885723N  Longitude: 2.799185W

Horne quotes a recollection concerning a ‘Beauty Spring’ here; ‘…it was embowered amid brambles and sting-nettles…the water was reputed to bestow beauty upon those who bathed their faces therein at sunrise on the first of March’.

There was also a ‘Pople’s Well’, ‘at the bottom of the hill on the west side of the church’ and, although it was not designated holy, some would not drink the water ‘because it rose among the bodies in the Churchyard’. The Poples were an old Crewkerne family.