Yeovil
Yeovil is a town in south Somerset, England, on the A30 and A37. It has a population of about 30,000, and is the former constituency of one time leader of the UK Liberal Party, Paddy Ashdown. The town is in the Yeovil parliamentary constituency.
It is home of the FA Cup giant killing team Yeovil Town F.C. Famous as a glove making town during the industrial revolution, its football team retain the nickname, The Glovers.
The town's main employer is Westland Helicopters, the proposed sale of which to the American Sikorski Fiat group in January 1986 led to a crisis in the then Thatcher government, and the resignation of Michael Heseltine as Defence Secretary. The political fallout continued 2 weeks later with the resignation of the then Trade and Industry Secretary Leon Brittan after his admission of leaking of a governmental law officer's letter which harshly criticised Mr Heseltine.
Outlying villages include East Coker, the burial place of the poet T.S. Eliot, Sutton Bingham, Stoford, Evershot, Halstock and Yetminster, the home of folk band The Yetties. Other nearby villages include Bradford Abbas, Corscombe, the former home of singer Polly Jean Harvey, and Pendomer, where William Dampier (1651-1715) the controversial English explorer, sea captain, and scientific observer was born. Former England cricketer Ian Botham comes from Yeovil itself.
The town has two train stations;
Yeovil Pen Mill serving the
Bristol-Weymouth line, and
Yeovil Junction on the
London-Exeter line.
The name "Yeovil" comes via
Anglo-Saxon from a corruption of the
Celtic gifl, meaning "forked river".
Archaeological surveys have indicated signs of activity from the palaeolithic period, with burial and occupation sites located principally to the south of the modern town. Land south of Yeovil is also a possibility as a site for the
Battle of Peonnum, although there has been no conclusive evidence for this.
Strategically important, the town and surrounding areas also betray traces of Roman settlement.
First recorded in the
Domesday Book as the town of
Givle, it features as a thriving market community, with a population of c. 1000. In 1205 it was granted a charter by
King John. By the 14th century, the town had gained the right to elect a
portreeve. The
Black Death exacted a heavy toll, killing approximately half the population. In 1499 a major fire broke out in the town, destroying many of the wooden, thatched roofed buildings. Yeovil suffered further serious fires, in
1620 and again in
1643.
By the time of the
1801 Census, the population of Yeovil was about 2,800. It grew rapidly in the 19th century and had a population of 11,000 by 1900.
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BBC Somerset
