Böcker av R.w. Dunning

This text presents the history of the south-east corner of Somerset bordering Wiltshire and Dorset, comprising the outliers of Salisbury Plain on the east and part of a clay vale to the west and including a natural route westwards followed by the two principal London-Exeter roads and the railway.

A detailed and fully referenced academic history of Bridgwater and 25 neighbouring parishes in the valleys of the rivers Parrett and Tone and on the Eastern slopes of the Quantocks. The area is mainly one of scattered settlement, of small-scale mixed farming, and rural industries.

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 parishesoccupy a roughly triangular area of western Somerset includ-ing 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 ofthe 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 largetracts 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 centuriesbeside 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 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, inall, 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 Mar-tock 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 allhad 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 re-markable 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.

This is the first volume of the Victoria History of the County of Somerset to be pub-lished since 1911, and is the result of the revival of the History under the patronage of the County Council. It provides a com-prehensive 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. Lang-port, 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 illus-trated with line-drawn maps and with plates that include both photographs, old and new, and reproductions of paintings and drawings.