Place:Chard, Somerset, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia.

Chard is a civil parish and a municipal borough in Somerset, England. It lies on the A30 road near the Devon border, 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Yeovil. The parish has a population of approximately 13,000 and, at an elevation of 121 metres (397 ft), Chard is one of the highest towns in Somerset as well as being the southernmost. Since 1974 Chard has formed, administratively, part of the district of South Somerset. Chard was a municipal borough between 1835 and 1974.

The name of the town was Cerden in 1065 and Cerdre in the Domesday Book of 1086. After the Norman Conquest, Chard was held by the Bishop of Wells. The town's first charter was from King John in 1234. Most of the town was destroyed by fire in 1577, and it was further damaged during the English Civil War (1642-1651). A 1663 will by Richard Harvey of Exeter established almshouses known as Harvey's Hospital. In 1685 Chard was one of the towns in which Judge Jeffreys held some of the Bloody Assizes after the failure of the Monmouth Rebellion. The Chard Canal was a tub boat canal built between 1835 and 1842. Chard Branch Line was created in 1860 to connect the two London and South Western Railway and Bristol and Exeter Railway main lines and ran through Chard until 1965. Chard was a municipal borough from 1835 until 1974, but in reality it was a small town within a large parish of the same name. The central urban area is now known as Chard Town. The rural area included a number of hamlets including Crimchard (just to the west of Chard itself), Hornsbury and Furnham to the north, and Forton and a group of hamlets named Tatworth, South Chard and Perry Street to the south.

Governance

Chard was originally a parish in the Kingsbury Hundred, one of the hundreds or early subdivisions of the county of Somerset.

In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, all urban and rural districts across England were abolished and counties were reorganized into metropolitan and non-metropolitan districts. Chard joined the non-metropolitan South Somerset District.

Research Tips

• The Somerset Heritage Centre (incorporating what was formerly the Somerset Record Office and the Somerset Local Studies Library) can be found at its new location at Langford Mead in Taunton. It has an online search facility leading to pages of interest, including maps from the First and Second Ordnance Survey (select "Maps and Postcards" from the list at the left, then enter the parish in the search box).
  The Heritage Centre has an email address: archives@somerset.gov.uk.
• Three maps on the A Vision of Britain through Time website illustrate the changes in political boundaries over the period 1830-1945. All have expanding scales and on the second and third this facility is sufficient that individual parishes can be inspected.

• Somerset Hundreds as drawn in 1832. This map was prepared before The Great Reform Act of that year. Note the polling places and representation of the various parts of the county.
• Somerset in 1900, an Ordnance Survey map showing rural districts, the boundaries of the larger towns, the smaller civil parishes of the time, and some hamlets and villages in each parish
• Somerset in 1943, an Ordnance Survey map showing the rural districts after the changes to their structure in the 1930s

• Maps provided by the National Library of Scotland are also very useful. This map is currently set to an area now in the Sedgmoor District as it existed in the late 19th century, but can be moved to anywhere in the county using a variety of background maps. There is a very good search facility.
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. The compiler has gone to a lot of work to provide this material. Respect his copyright.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Somerset provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• English Jurisdictions, a supplementary website to FamilySearch outlining local parish boundaries in the middle on the 19th century. The information provided is especially useful for establishing the relationship of the ecclesiastical parishes in large towns and cathedral cities.
• The Victoria History of the Counties of England – History of the County of Somerset, produced by The Institute of Historical Research at the University of London is a scholarly website with articles tracing the history of individual parishes which are sorted into their hundreds, the early subdivisions of the county. It traces the ownership of estates and manors, describes the local church in detail, and usually provides a map of each parish. The volumes for Somerset are much more recent than those for other counties. It appears to be a work in progress, only covering about half the county so far. A map of the places covered in the series is given in Volume 6, but 3 more volumes have been published since then. If a parish is included there will be a note in its Research Tips.
• The Somerset and Dorset Family History Society
• The Weston super Mare Family History Society
• The Bristol and Avon Family History Society
• A list of all Somerset parishes with online transcripts of parish registers The size of Somerset makes this a huge project. If it does not yield what you are looking for, try getting in touch with the organizer with patience and politeness.
• Somerset Online Parish Clerk project home page
• A collection of West Somerset Parish Register Transcriptions are online courtesy of Martin Southwood
• The Victoria History of the Counties of England – History of the County of Somerset, produced by The Institute of Historical Research, is not available for this hundred.