Huntspill
| Huntspill | |
| Somerset | |
|---|---|
 Church of St Peter, West Huntspill | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | ST315455 |
| Location: | 51°12’18"N, 2°58’55"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 1,414 (2011) |
| Post town: | Highbridge |
| Postcode: | TA9 |
| Dialling code: | 01278 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Sedgemoor |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Bridgwater & W. Somerset |
Huntspill is a village on the Huntspill Level in Somerset. It sits by the A38 road, a mile and a half south of Highbridge. The village is the principal village in a civil parish named 'West Huntspill' (as the eastern part have been spilled out of it), which parish also contains the hamlet of Alstone.
It is part of the Huntspill and Puriton Hundred of Somerset.
The parish of West Huntspill had a recorded population of 1,414 in 2011.
History
The first mention of Huntspill is around AD 796, when the area was granted to Glastonbury Abbey by Aethelmund, a nobleman under King Offa of Mercia.
Huntspill is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Honspil, meaning 'Huna's creek' possibly from the Old English personal name Huna and from the Old Welsh pwll.[1] An alternative origin is from Hun's Pill in Old English, meaning a port on a tidal inlet, or pill, belonging to Hunna.
The mouth of the River Brue had an extensive harbour in Roman and Saxon times, before silting up in the Middle Ages. A new wharf, known as Clyce Wharf, was built on the Huntspill side of the river mouth by 1904, and was used for the import of coal and the export of bricks and tiles and agricultural products. The wharf closed in 1949.[2]
The village was flooded in the Bristol Channel floods of 1607.
In 1936 the village was the centre of an outbreak of Typhoid fever in which seven people died.[3]
The ancient parish of Huntspill also included the villages of East Huntspill, Hackness and Bason Bridge, east of the village of Huntspill. The western boundary of the parish was the tidal River Parrett, but changes in the course of the river left some parts of the parish on the west side of the river. (Administrative changes in 1933 tidied boundaries up to match what nature had done.)
Parish church
The parish church is the Church of St Peter, which is in West Huntspill. It was established by 1208, rebuilt around 1400, and extended in the early to mid 15th century. It was gutted by fire in 1878 and restored over the next two years. It has been designated as a Grade I listed building.[4]
See also
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Huntspill) |
- Huntspill: A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 8: The Poldens and the Levels
- Burnham and Highbridge - The Somerset Urban Archaeological Survey (Clare Gathercole)
References
- ↑ Robinson, Stephen (1992). Somerset Place Names. Wimborne, Dorset: The Dovecote Press Ltd. ISBN 1-874336-03-2.
- ↑ A History of the County of Somerset - Volume : {{{2}}} (Victoria County History)
- ↑ Sly, Nicola (2010). A grim almanac of Somerset. Stroud: History Press. p. 30. ISBN 9780752458144.
- ↑ National Heritage List 1060138: Church of St Peter
- The People of the Parish (2001). The Book of West Huntspill: A Millennium Celebration. Tiverton, Devon: Halsgrove Publishing. ISBN 1-84114-108-9