VCH Somerset Publications

This introductory volume was edited by William Page and published in 1906. It contains the following entries:

• Natural History
• Early Man
• Romano-British Somerset
• Anglo-Saxon Remains
• Introduction to the Somerset Domesday
• Text of the Somerset Domesday
• Geld Inquest

The full text is available via British History Online.

This volume, also edited by William Page, was published in 1911.

It contains a history of the medieval Religious Houses in the county, which are all available on British History Online.

The volume also contains the following entries:

• Ecclesiastical History
• Political History
• Maritime History
• Social and Economic History
• Industries
• Schools
• Ancient Earthworks
• Agriculture
• Forestry
• Sport Ancient and Modern
• Index to Somerset Domesday

Parts of the text are available via British History Online.

The volume was edited by R.W. Dunning with contributions from A.P. Baggs, Robin Bush and Margaret Tomlinson. It was published in 1974. It covers the histories of the parishes of Kingsbury (East) Hundred, Pitney Hundred, Somerton Hundred and Tintinhull Hundred.

This was the first volume of the Victoria History of the County of Somerset to be published since 1911, and is the result of the revival of the History under the patronage of the County Council. It provides a comprehensive and detailed account of twenty-one parishes towards the southern boundary of the county and lying in the ancient hundreds of Pitney, Somerton, Tintinhull, and part of Kingsbury (East). The land is partly in the valleys of the Parrett and the Yeo and partly on the hills. The lower ground, still liable to flood on occasions, has gradually over the years been drained and converted into the 'moors' that are a feature of the area and provide unusually rich grazing. From the hills in the south comes the celebrated Ham stone. The volume includes the history of two small towns that can each claim to have served at some time as the county centre: Somerton, whose name is linked with that of the county, and the diminutive Ilchester at the junction of the Foss Way and another Roman road. Langport, a commercial centre on the navigable river Parrett, is also an ancient settlement. Other parishes that figure in the volume include Montacute, with its fine Elizabethan mansion, and Muchelney, with the remains of its medieval abbey, and there are National Trust properties at Lytes Cary (in Charlton Mackrell) and Tintinhull. The test is illustrated with line-drawn maps and with plates that include both photographs, old and new, and reproductions of paintings and drawings.

The full text is available at British History Online.

This volume was published in 1978 and edited by R. W. Dunning with contributions from A.P. Baggs and Robin Bush. It contains entries on the parishes of Crewkerne Hundred, Martock Hundred and South Petherton Hundred in the south east of the county.

The fourth volume of the history of Somerset contains the histories of the parishes in the three ancient hundreds of Crewkerne, Martock, and South Petherton. Lying near the middle of the southern edge of the county, there are, in all, 21 parishes (including Wambrook, transferred to Somerset from Dorset in 1896), and they range in size from Martock, containing nine separate settlements and over 7,000 acres, to Seavington St. Michael, with less than 300 acres. While agriculture predominates, there is considerable variation between the fertile arable of the Yeovil Sands to the north and the woodlands and pastures around Windwhistle ridge to the south; manufacturing industry, moreover, was represented not only by the works in Martock but also by the making of coarse cloth and rope at Lopen. The three market towns of Crewkerne, Martock, and South Petherton, which give their names to the hundreds, probably all had Saxon minster churches: the name of Misterton parish records its dependence on the minster at Crewkerne. The smaller places also have much historical interest. New interpretations are offered, for example, of the building of Hinton house in Hinton St. George, the seat of the earls Poulett, with a park stretching into neighbouring Dinnington, and of Barrington Court. Other manor houses featured are Avishays (in Chaffcombe), Cricket St. Thomas, Wayford, and Whitestaunton. Among the many remarkable parish churches not only the larger ones but also the smaller are discussed and illustrated, including those of Chilling-ton, Cudworth, Knowle St. Giles, and Shepton Beauchamp. The people who figure in the parish histories include, besides members of noble families and the landed gentry, humbler people like John Scott the 'orchardist' of Merriott, the followers of Joanna Southcott at Dowlish Wake, and the village carpenter and wheelwright of Seavington St. Mary.

The full text is available at British History Online.

Published in 1985, this volume was edited by R.W. Dunning with contributions from A.P. Baggs, Robin Bush and Mary Siraut. It covers the Hundred of Williton and Freemanors in the west of the county, on the slopes of Exmoor and the Brendon Hills. There is also coverage of one parish, Holford, of the Whitley Hundred.

The fifth volume of the history of Somerset contains the histories of twenty-two parishes in the eastern part of the hundred of Williton and Freemanors and of one parish, Holford, part of which was in Whitley hundred. The parishes occupy a roughly triangular area of western Somerset including the southern and eastern part of the Brendon hills as far as the Devon border, the north-western end of the Quantock ridge, the wide valley between them, and some of the coastal strip to the north which faces the Bristol Channel. Extensive grazing on the Hangman Grits of the Quantocks and the slates of the Brendons was an important feature of the economy, and the Quantocks still retain large tracts of uncultivated heath land. Mining for copper on the Quantocks and for iron ore on the Brendons, and quarrying limestone for burning in most parishes, provided an important industrial element in the 18th and 19th centuries beside an agrarian system which in the 17th century and earlier had concentrated on sheep and cattle on the higher ground and arable in the valleys and coastal strip. Cloth-making was of significance in many parishes until the earlier 19th century. The nucleated villages in the east of the area contrast with the scattered pattern of Brendon settlement. Stogumber and St. Decumans had Saxon minster churches; boroughs were formed in the Middle Ages at Crowcombe, Nether Stowey, and Watchet. A castle was built at Nether Stowey, a monastery in Old Cleeve parish. Williton emerged as an urban centre in the 19th century. Among the large houses featured are Nettlecombe Court, Orchard Wyndham, St. Audries, and Court House, East Quantoxhead. The Acland-Hoods, the Carews, the Luttrells, the Trevelyans, and the Wyndhams were prominent in land ownership and government; also important in the local economy were the 17th-century country shopkeepers selling figs and canary seed, the seaweed burners and paper-makers of the 18th century, and the shippers of grain, flour, and timber in the 19th.

The full text is available via British History Online.

This volume was edited by R.W. Dunning, with contibutions from A.P. Baggs and Mary Siraut. It was published in 1992. It covers the parishes within Andersfield, Cannington, and North Petherton hundreds. Together, these occupy the Lower Parrett valley stretching from the Quantock ridge in the west to King's Sedgemoor in the east, and from the Bristol Channel in the north to the river Tone in the south.

Andersfield, Cannington, and North Petherton hundreds together occupy the Lower Parrett valley stretching from the Quantock ridge in the west to King's Sedgemoor in the east, and from the Bristol Channel in the north to the river Tone in the south. By the late 11th century the settlement pattern was dense, especially between the Quantocks and the Parrett, an area crossed by the Saxon 'herpath' in the north and including the 10th-century strongholds of Athelney and Lyng in the south and the Domesday royal manors of Cannington, North Petherton, and Creech St. Michael. The origin of the medieval royal park at North Petherton can be traced to a pre-Conquest royal forest on the Quantocks, and North Petherton was an extensive minster parish. Bridgwater, a chartered borough from 1200, is the only significant town. By the later Middle Ages its port served central, south, and west Somerset, and until the 19th century heavy goods continued to be transported along the Parrett, the Tone, and the Bridgwater and Taunton canal into Dorset and Devon. The pattern of settlement is varied, with a few nucleated villages, roadside villages, and many dispersed hamlets. Interlocking parish boundaries indicate complex economic units and late parochial formation. Arable farming predominated until the 16th century, partly in open arable fields. In the 17th century there was an emphasis on stock rearing and an increase in dairying and orchards, largely the result of improved drainage. Cheese was an important product of the area in the 18th century, and in the 19th baskets from locally grown willow. Woollen cloth production continued into the 17th century. From the late 17th century the alluvial clays of the Parrett valley provided material for the bricks and tiles for which Bridgwater became well known in the 19th century. Substantial estates whose houses wholly or partially survive include Fairfield, Gothelney, Gurney Street, West Bower, and Sydenham. Halswell House was from the later 17th century the grandest mansion in the area, and Enmore Castle was built in the later 18th century.

The full text is available at British History Online.

This volume was published in 1999 and edited by R. W. Dunning with contributions from A.P. Baggs and Mary Siraut. It covers the parishes within Bruton Hundred, Horethorne Hundred and Norton Ferris Hundred in the south-east corner of Somerset, comprising the outliers of Salisbury Plain on the east and part of a clay vale to the west.

The volume relates the history of the south-east corner of Somerset. The area comprises the outliers of Salisbury Plain on the east and part of a clay vale to the west. It included a natural route followed by the two principal roads from London to Exeter and by the railway. Of the towns, Milborne Port and Wincanton each owed its prosperity to one of those roads. Bruton and Milborne Port were royal urban centres in the late 11th century, both centres of minster parishes. Milborne Port, a borough in 1086, returned members to parliament for some years from 1298; at Wincanton a borough had been created by the mid 14th century. Settlement in nucleated villages was dense in the clay vale but ancient scattered farmsteads were found both south of Wincanton and west of Selwood forest. Quarries in most parishes provided local building stone; millstones from the Upper Greensand at Penselwood were widely distributed in the 13th and 14th centuries. The area remains chiefly agricultural. Arable farming was at first often in paired open fields, mostly inclosed and consolidated by private agreement before 1800. Acts between 1771 and 1821 inclosed and allotted surviving common meadow and pasture. Dairying, significant by 1600, predominated by 1700. The heart of Selwood forest, still heavily wooded, supported a timber industry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Deer parks preceded two 18th century landscaped parks at Redlynch and Bruton Abbey. Textiles were long made in the countryside as well as in the three towns. Milborne Port, from the 1670s a centre for tanning, was from the early 19th century to the late 20th an important gloving town, employing outworkers in surrounding villages. It includes histories of the parishes of Blackford, Bratton Seymour, Brewham, Brewham Lodge, Bruton, Charlton Horethorne, Charlton Musgrove, North Cheriton, Abbas and Templecombe, Corton Denham, Cucklington, Eastrip, Henstridge, Holton, Horsington, Marston Magna, Milborne Port, Milton Clevedon, Penselwood, Pitcombe, Rimpton, Shepton Monatgue, Stoke Trister, Stowell, Upton Noble, Wincanton and Yarlington.

Norton Ferris itself lies in the parish of Kilmington, now in Wiltshire. This parish will appear in VCH Wiltshire volume XIX. You can read a draft of Kilmington here.

The full text is available via British History Online.

This volume was published in 2004 and edited by R.W. Dunning with contributions from Mary Siraut. It covers the parishes of Whitley Hundred, as well as Huntspill and Puriton Hundred. The area covered by the volume includes Somerset's Polden hills which divide the county's central marshlands, Sedgemoor to the south and the Brue Valley to the north.

The full text is available via British History Online.

More information on this book.

Covers the Glastonbury Twelve Hides hundred in the centre of the county, on the edge of the Somerset Levels, held until its dissolution by the Abbey of Glastonbury. The abbey itself, and the town, are covered, along with surrounding parishes, including the large village of Street, home of the shoe manufacturer C. and J. Clark.

The ancient religious settlement of Glastonbury, with its many legendary associations stretching back into the Dark Ages, and the manufacturing town of Street, the creation of the late 19th century, are curious neighbours. They lie at the centre of the mysteriously-named Twelve Hides Hundred, the core estate of Glastonbury Abbey in the early Middle Ages. Around them, spreading into the low-lying moors of the Somerset Levels, are parishes which produced for the abbey, after continuous improvement of drainage, most of its economic riches - meat, milk, cheese, fruit, wool, wine, cider, fish, stone, timber, and fuel.
The suppression of Glastonbury under unusually tragic circumstances ended the dominance of a single lord and a coordinated economic system, and the eventual inclosure and drainage of the moors took two more centuries to achieve. Glastonbury, meanwhile, faced a century and more of depression but in the 18th received a charter of incorporation and became a centre of the stocking industry; while the fortunes of Street also rose, both through the shoe industry but also of the role of the Clark family in education and social improvement.

The full text is available at British History Online.

Published in 2010, this volume was edited by Mary C. Siraut. This volume covers the northern part of the Catsash hundred, comprising ten ancient parishes. The town of Castle Cary is the most populous parish treated; the others are Alford, Ansford, Babcary, Barton St David, Keinton Mandeville, Kingweston, Lovington, West Lydford and Wheathill.

The full text is available at British History Online.

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This volume was edited by Mary C. Siraut, with contributions from Adam Chapman and Matthew Bristow. It was published in 2015. It covers the parishes in the southern part of Catsash Hundred, dominated by Cadbury Hill, crowned by Cadbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort dating from 600-400 BC and threaded through by the A303, which overlays an ancient route from London to the south west. The parishes include the townlet of Queen Camel, North and South Cadbury, North and South Barrow, Sparkford, Compton Pouncefoot, Sutton Montis, Maperton and Weston Bampfield.

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The book, edited by Mary Siraut, VCH Somerset county editor, was published in 2009.

Long admired by poets and artists, Exmoor calls to mind wild moors, rugged landscapes and, of course, Lorna Doone. Home to a wide variety of a dinstinctive flora and fauna including adders, nightjars and the famour Exmoor pony, it is difficult to believe that the scenery we see today is the result of millennia of human intervention. Since prehistoric times, Exmoor has provided a home and a livelihood for a small but significant population, which has proved to be innovative and resilient in the face of isolation, poor soil and a tough climate. Based on research in 11 Exmoor parishes straddling both Devon and Somerset, Exmoor: the Making of an English Upland looks at the history of landscape and community from prehistoric times to the present day.

The book explores the patterns of settlement - how were Exmoor's farms and villages developed or abandoned over time? Who lived here and how did the survive? Hill farming and the wool and cloth industries are at the fore of the story, while the influence of national events such as the Civil War and the effects of 19th-century enclosure are also considered. Including an in depth look at sources fr the origins of Exmoor place names, population and migration, and deserted farmsteads, the book is illustrated with many new images ande reconstruction drawings. Exmoor: the Making of an English Upload is a 'must read' for anyone interested in the area and a timely addition to the history of English uplands.