Taunton
 Castles |
Taunton, the county town of Somerset, has always been at the centre of history in the region, much of it cruel and very bloody. In AD710, King Ine of Wessex chose Taunton for a base in his new territory, no doubt because of the position the town occupies in the centre of a valley with a river to make it more accessible. The Saxon king fortified the site as a protective measure, for it controlled access to the fertile land in the region. Twelve years later, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘Queen Ethelburga razed Taunton'.
During the medieval period, Taunton and its environs were part of the estate of the tolerant Bishop of Winchester under whose benign rule the town flourished as a clothing centre. In 1138 a strong stone castle keep was constructed to protect the vulnerability of this low lying region; this was during the period when Henry of Blois was both Abbot of Glastonbury and Bishop of Winchester, and his brother Stephen occupied the throne. The castle was further strengthened in 1218 when a Great Hall and Chamber were added. The Yorkist Earl of Devon unsuccessfully besieged the Lancastrian Lord Bonville, secure within the stronghold, in 1451 as supporters of the rival camps in the Wars of the Roses shaped up.
Two small armies passed through Taunton in 1497. The first was composed of Cornishmen marching on London, complaining about excessive taxation gathered by Henry VII to finance his war in Scotland against supporters of Perkin Warbeck. The latter proved an imposter claiming to be Richard of York, one of the Princes imprisoned in the Tower of London by Richard III, and therefore a more legitimate monarch than Henry. The Cornish army was quickly defeated at Blackheath by cannonfire. Later the same year Warbeck himself arrived in Cornwall, gathered an army about him of 6000 men, marched unsuccessfully on Exeter and Taunton, fled to the coast was captured and later executed - Taunton was heavily fined for its poor judgement in proclaiming Warbeck king from the castle walls in 1497. During the Civil War of 1642-9, Royalist forces surrendered the castle to the Cromwellian Robert Blake in 1644, and then tried to retrieve the situation, becoming embroiled in a long, bitter drawn out siege from 1644 to 45. This effectively reduced the King's army by about 10000 men at a critical juncture.
The Great Hall of the castle was the setting of one of Judge Jeffrey's notorious ‘Bloody Assizes'. After the slaughter at Sedgemoor in 1685 the defeated followers of the Duke of Monmouth were rounded up and presented before the ‘hanging judge' at various venues in the West Country, where he was permitted to wreak terrible vengeance on behalf of the Crown. At Taunton, 508 participants in the uprising were condemned, some to be hung, drawn and quartered, others merely hung and many more to transportation. Judge Jeffrey's ghost is said to linger awhile on September nights, the month of the trials.
Taunton Castle continued as the law court until 1858; now the Chapel and remaining castle buildings are owned and occupied by the Somerset Archaeological Society and house the County Museum. Entrance is through a 13 th century gateway but much of the rest of the castle is 18 th century restoration. A particularly strong archaeological section includes a fascinating mosaic of Dido and Aeneas retrieved from the site of a Roman villa at Low Ham. There is also a dug-out canoe dated from about 350 BC; a burial chamber with occupant from Culbone and part of a walkway found submerged in the Somerset Levels dating from about 2900 BC. On the far side of the courtyard was where many of the unfortunates condemned by Jeffrey's to hang, gasped out their last breath.
The Tudor House on Fore Street is one of the most striking half-timbered buildings in the county; now a restaurant it belonged to Sir William Portman, MP for Taunton and one of the men who arrested the Duke of Monmouth. The parish church of St Mary Magdalene and the nearby Church of St James are noted for their splendid towers, rebuilt in the 19 th century. St Mary Magdalene's tower, all 163ft of it, is a faithful rebuilding undertaken in 1862 of the 15 th century original, which was deemed unsafe. Inside is an elaborate Tudor ceiling with gilded angels and modern shield motifs. Other buildings of note include Grey's Almshouses dated 1635 in East Street; the old grammar school 15 th and 16 th century. The Octagonal Chapel in Middle Street, opened by Wesley in 1776 and a well preserved medieval Priory Barn.
The area around Taunton is fruit country and this, combined with its fertile land, made Taunton a famous name in the world of cider. Farmhouse cider has been made here since cider making came to the country with the invading Norman armies. The West Country's favourite tipple was for many generations the veritable stuff of life. In Somerset every man, woman and child drank it, especially in the Levels where it was more wholesome than local water. Farm workers were poorly paid and it was standard practice to make up wages with the ‘cider truck', an allowance that might be a couple of pints a day in winter, increasing to a gallon or more at harvest time. To swing a scythe from dawn to dusk a labourer got ‘cidered up' on half-a-gallon before breakfast and sweated out replenishments all day. The going rate to attract extra labour was 2 quarts a day for a man and 1 quart for a boy - in practice cider consumption was prodigious.
North of Taunton rises the massif of the rolling, wooded Quantock Hills, for many people the most beautiful part of Somerset. The whole range only extends about 12 miles by 6, radiating an inscrutable charm of its own. Villages are folded into the landscape, lanes are maze-like with high hedges, little frequented and not always signposted revealing half-caught glimpses of silent glades and shady coombes. In 1797 William Wordworth, together with his sister Dorothy, came to live in the Quantocks at Alfoxten House. Close by at Nether Stowey lived Samuel Taylor Coleridge from 1796-9, in what is now known as Coleridge Cottage where he wrote ‘The Ancient Mariner'. The two poets and Dorothy enjoyed roaming the hills together in what proved a particularly creative period for Coleridge.