Place:Dinder, Somerset, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia. Dinder (#4 on map) (which means "the house in the valley") is a civil parish with a village 2½ miles west of Shepton Mallet (not on map), and 2 miles east of Wells (#W) in Somerset. It now falls within the civil parish of St. Cuthbert Out, but until 1974 it was a separate civil parish. The river Sheppey runs alongside the main street of the village. The manor containing the village formed part of the endowment of the bishopric of Wells; the cathedral is located only 2 miles northwest of the village. By the 12th century it had been granted to William Fitzjohn, whose descendants were known as 'Harptree' or Flemining. By 1327, the manor was owned by a Richard de Rodney, whose family retained possession until it was sold in the mid 17th century to Richard Hickes, through whose descendants it passed to the Somerville family who built Dinder House and whose most famous member, Admiral James Somerville, was in charge of the British naval force which sank the French fleet at Oran, Algeria in 1940. Dinder House is a small country house in landscaped grounds, built in 1799–1801. (further description in Wikipedia). The Anglican Church of St Michael is of Norman origins and has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building. It includes nave, chancel, north aisle, porch, and square tower. Within the church are an ornamental font and stone pulpit, with some monuments to the Somerville family. A cross in the churchyard dates back to the 14th century.

Reverend Charles Woodmason (ca. 1720–March 1789), author, poet, Anglican clergyman, American loyalist, and [[wikipedia:West Gallery psalmodist|, who is best remembered for his journal documenting life on the South Carolina frontier in the late 1760s and for his role as a leader of the South Carolina Regulator movement, served as curate of St. Michael and All Angels Parish from at least February 1776 through December 1777. Extracts of some of the sermons he preached at Dinder are in Richard Hooker's volume on Woodmason (Hooker, Richard J., ed. The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the [American] Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant. 1953. ISBN 978-0-8078-4035-1).

Governance

The parish was part of Wells Forum Hundred, one of the hundreds or early subdivisions of the county of Somerset. From 1894 until 1974 it was part of the Wells Rural District.

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. Dinder was absorbed into the parish of St. Cuthbert Out (#12) and in doing so also joined the non-metropolitan Mendip District which covers an area in central Somerset.

Research Tips

• [name of parish GENUKI page on [parish]].
• 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, does not provide any details on the parish and chapelries of Wells Forum Hundred, however there may be some references in a chapter on Wells Cathedral in Volume 2.
• 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: [email protected].
• 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