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Montacute

-history and stuff

Welcome to my website! I grew up in this beautiful village and I've been looking into its origins; some families have been in Montacute for generations. I wanted to answer a simple question: who lived here before me? But I was discovering so much history that I was losing track of it all.
So these are my notes on what I've found out and where I got the different bits of information from. Many thanks to those who have helped me add to these notes; please let me know if you spot any inconsistencies!
Scroll down to browse through my Montacute Snippets for village history, legends and local tales; there are photos of the village in the photo gallery at the bottom of this page (or use the 'Gallery' link above) and there are a huge number of old photos of the village online; this picture postcard shows St Catherine's Church at the southern end of Bishopston.

A bit about Montacute

The origins of Montacute and its name

Iron Age and Celtic Montacute

The Celtic Durotriges Tribe and its coinage

Roman Montacute

Joseph of Arimathea and Montacute

Saxon Montacute

St Michael's Hill and Montacute Tower

Montacute's Legend of the Holy Cross

The Siege of Montacute Castle

The Cluniac Priory in Montacute c.1100-1539

The Macbeth Connection!

St Catherine's Church, Montacute

Conan of Montacute...or maybe not!

Leland's Montacute c.1542 AD

The Leland Trail

Blessed James Fenn, a Montacute Martyr (c.1540-1584)

Montacute House (built ~1600) and the Phelips family

Montacute in 1633 by Thomas Gerard of Trent

Montacute Foundries bells and pots 1300-1800

Ham Hill

The Liberty Trail: Ham Hill to Lyme Regis

Collinson & Rack's Survey of Montacute, 1782-86

Thomas Shoel, psalmist 1759-1823

The Gruesome Tale of Richard Forster

George Mitchell, Skeleton at the Plough, 1826-1901

Llewelyn Powys' Montacute 1884-1939

Montacute Railway Station 1882-1964

Montacute Maps through Time

The village while I was growing up

VCH and Somerset EUS: 2 sources for the definitive history of Montacute

Source Manuscripts and their Evolution (work in progress)

Circular walks around Montacute

List of Places to Visit

The Somerset Historic Environment Record is a fantastic resource for the archeology of the area. If you look up the map for Montacute, the reference numbers on the 'map view' link to the record for each particular site, see screenshot:

Image: painting of Montacute Borough by local artist Rebecca Stidson; I love her work, she often has paintings available on her webpage and she also does commissions!
Hamstone: Montacute's older houses and Montacute House are made of hamstone quarried locally from Ham Hill. The golden glow of the stone is especially stunning in the early morning sun. It is still quarried for building materials and the stonemasons also make gorgeous decorative pieces.
REFERENCES:
Maps site: Know Your Place - West of England
The English Heritage Extensive Urban Survey: An archeological assessment of Montacute by Miranda Richardson
The Somerset Historic Environment Record https://www.somersetheritage.org.uk/#
The Proceedings of The Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society https://sanhs.org (some available online)
House of Cluniac monks: The priory of Montacute', in A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 2, ed. William Page (London, 1911), pp. 111-115. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol2/pp111-115 [accessed 5 February 2022].
'Parishes: Montacute', in A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 3, A P Baggs, R J E Bush and Margaret Tomlinson, ed. R W Dunning (London, 1974), pp. 210-224. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol3/pp210-224 [accessed 29 March 2022].
R.W. Dunning edited the multi-volume amazing Victoria County History publication 'A History of the County of Somerset', and has written and edited other great books about the history of Somerset including Christianity in Somerset (1975), Some Somerset Country Houses (1991), Somerset Castles (1995), Fifty Somerset Churches (1996), A Somerset Miscellany (2005), Victorian & Edwardian Somerset (2008), and Arthur: The King in the West (2010)
Two Cartularies of the Augustinian Priory of Bruton and the Cluniac Priory of Montacute in the County of Somerset by Bruton Abbey
The Waltham Chronicle: An Account of the Discovery of Our Holy Cross at Montacute and Its Conveyance to Waltham (Oxford Medieval Texts) by Leslie Watkiss and Marjorie Chibnall 1994
One from the Plough by Brendon Owen (2001), The Gazebo Press
BY LOCAL AUTHORS:
Memories and a Short History of Montacute by Alfred Gordon Geard 2004
Under the Shadow of the Hill; Montacute, 1939-1945 by Clarence Bradley 2015
A Peewit in Wartime: A Child's War in Somerset by Gordon Rendell 2022

Montacute, Somerset, England, United Kingdom

becsnotes.montacute@gmail.com