|
|
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Street is a a civil parish and a village in Somerset, England. The 2011 census recorded the parish as having a population of 11,805. It is situated on a dry spot in the Somerset Levels, at the end of the Polden Hills, 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest of Glastonbury. There is evidence of Roman occupation. Much of the history of the village is dominated by Glastonbury Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and indeed its name comes from a 12th-century causeway from Glastonbury which was built to transport local Blue Lias stone from what is now Street to rebuild the Abbey, although it had previously been known as Lantokay and Lega.
The Society of Friends had become established there by the mid-17th century. One Quaker family, the Clarks, started a business in sheepskin rugs, woollen slippers and, later, boots and shoes. This became C&J Clark which still has its headquarters in Street, but shoes are no longer manufactured there. Instead, in 1993, redundant factory buildings were converted to form Clarks Village, the first purpose-built factory outlet in the United Kingdom. The Shoe Museum provides information about the history of Clarks and footwear manufacture in general.
The Clark family's former mansion and its estate at the edge of the town are now owned by Millfield School, an independent co-educational boarding school. Street is also home to Crispin School and Strode College. To the north of Street is the River Brue, which marks the boundary with Glastonbury. South of Street are the Walton and Ivythorn Hills and East Polden Grasslands.
The Anglican Parish Church of The Holy Trinity dates from the 14th century and has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building.
Having previously been part of Street Urban District from 1889 until 1974, the village now falls within the non-metropolitan district of Mendip, which was formed on 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972.
| 
|
History
The settlement's earliest known name is "Lantokay", meaning the sacred enclosure of Kea, a Celtic saint. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as "Strate", and also "Lega", a name still used throughout the country in the modern form, "Leigh". The centre of Street is where Lower Leigh hamlet was, and the road called Middle Leigh and the community called Overleigh are to the south of the village. In the 12th century, a causeway from Glastonbury was built to transport stone from what is now Street for rebuilding Glastonbury Abbey after a fire, and Street's name is derived from the Latin strata – a paved road. The causeway is about 100 yards (90 m) north of a Roman road.
The parish of Street was part of the Whitley Hundred, one of the hundreds or early subdivisions of the county of Somerset.
Quarries of the local blue lias stone were worked from as early as the 12th century to the end of the 19th century.
The churchyard of the Parish Church has yielded one Iron Age coin, however the origin and significance is unclear, although the Dobunni were known to have produced coins in the area. A number of Roman pottery fragments, now in the Museum of Somerset. Remains of Roman villas exist on the south edge of Street near Marshalls Elm and Ivythorn. Buried remains of a Roman road were excavated in the early 20th century on the flood-plain of the river Brue between Glastonbury and Street. The parish churchyard is on the first flood-free ground near the river Brue and was probably the first land to be inhabited. The form of the large churchyard suggests a lan, a sacred area of a kind that was built in the first half of the 6th century.[1] Llan or Lan is a common place name element in Brythonic languages such as Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric, and possibly Pictish. The original meaning of llan in Welsh is "an enclosed piece of land", but it later evolved to mean the parish surrounding a church.
One biography of St. Gildas has the saint spending some time in Glastonbury Abbey, and moving to a site by the river, where he built a chapel to the Holy Trinity and there died. The Parish Church, now Holy Trinity, has at times been known as St Gildas' church. Glastonbury Abbey controlled Street until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539.
Sharpham Park is an historic 300-acre (1.2 km2) park, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Street, which dates back to the Bronze Age.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Sharpham.
Ivythorn Manor on Pages Hill was a medieval monastic house. It was rebuilt in 1488 for Abbot John Selwood of Glastonbury Abbey. After the dissolution of the monasteries it became a manor house owned by the Marshall and Sydenham families. Sir John Sydenham added a wing 1578 which was later demolished. By 1834 the house was largely ruined until its restoration around 1904, and a west wing was added in 1938. It is a Grade II* listed building.
Research Tips
- GENUKI page on Street.
- An article on Street from the Victoria History of the Counties of England – History of the County of Somerset, produced by The Institute of Historical Research.
- 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
|
|
