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North Petherton
North Petherton is a small town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated on the edge of the eastern foothills of the Quantocks, and close to the edge of the Somerset Levels. The town has a population of 6,730 as of 2014. The parish includes Hamp, Melcombe, Shearston, Woolmersdon and Huntworth. Dating from at least the 10th century and an important settlement in Saxon times, North Petherton became a town only in the late 20th century, until then claiming to be the largest village in England. A former market and administrative centre, North Petherton is now largely a dormitory town for workers in Bridgwater, 3 miles (5 km) to the north east, and Taunton, 8 miles (13 km) to the south west. The centre of the town is designated an ''Area of High Archaeological Potential'' ( AHAP), and a number of buildings have been given listed building status. Toponymy The town is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ''Nortperet''. The name derives from the area's ...
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Church Of St Mary, North Petherton
The Church of St Mary in North Petherton, Somerset, England dates from the 15th century and has been designated as a grade I listed building. It is on the Heritage at Risk Register due to the condition of the roof and north aisle parapet. There was a church in North Petherton before the Norman Conquest and the site belonged to Buckland Priory from the 12th century. The current building dates from the expansion of the town around 1490, although it does contain some fabric from the 13th century. The minster church has a highly decorated tower which, at 112 feet (34 metres) high, was described by Nickolaus Pevsner as one of the finest towers in the county. The tower was built around 1508. It contains a peal of six bells, and a clock built in Bridgwater in 1807. On the stonework are hunky punks in the shape of animals. The interior has a minstrel gallery from 1623, a carved wooden pulpit from the 15th century, and a brass chandelier which was added in 1984. The parish is part o ...
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Petherton Park
Petherton Park (also known as North Petherton Park or Newton Park) was a Deer park around North Petherton within the English county of Somerset. The origins are unclear but the area was part of an earlier Royal Forest stretching from the River Parrett to the Quantock Hills. According to the late 13th century Hundred Rolls, King Henry II of England (d. 1189) gave William of Wrotham lands at North Petherton. During the reigns of Henry II (1154–1189) and Richard I (1189–1199), the royal forest of Petherton Park, was held from the crown by Osbert and William Dacus by grand serjeanty of being the king's Forester of Petherton. William de Plessis, who died in 1274 was granted Petherton Park and it was inherited by his son Richard de Barbeflote or Plessis. The park was the only part of the royal estate which had not been granted away from royal ownership by the end of the 13th century. From 1391 until his death in 1400 the poet Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the foresters. He was succ ...
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Hundred Of North Petherton
The Hundred of North Petherton is one of the 40 historical Hundreds in the ceremonial county of Somerset, England, dating from before the Norman conquest. Although the Hundreds have never been formally abolished, their functions ended with the establishment of county courts in 1867 and the introduction of districts by the Local Government Act 1894. The name of the hundred derives from the name of the large royal estate (later expanded by Henry II to become the Royal Forest of North Petherton) that covered much of the area in 1086, recorded variously as ''Nortpetret'' in the Domesday Book, ''Nortpedret'' in Liber Exoniensis and ''Nort Peretu'' in the associated tax returns.Somerset Intro ...
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River Parrett
The River Parrett flows through the counties of Dorset and Somerset in South West England, from its source in the Thorney Mills springs in the hills around Chedington in Dorset. Flowing northwest through Somerset and the Somerset Levels to its mouth at Burnham-on-Sea, into the Bridgwater Bay nature reserve on the Bristol Channel, the Parrett and its tributaries drain an area of  – about 50 per cent of Somerset's land area, with a population of 300,000. The Parrett's main tributaries include the Rivers Tone, Isle, and Yeo, and the River Cary via the King's Sedgemoor Drain. The long river is tidal for up to Oath. The fall of the river between Langport and Bridgwater is only , so it is prone to frequent flooding in winter and during high tides. Many approaches have been tried since at least the medieval period to reduce the incidence and effect of floods and to drain the surrounding fields. In Anglo-Saxon times the river formed a boundary between Wessex and Dumn ...
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Hundred (country Subdivision)
A hundred is an administrative division that is geographically part of a larger region. It was formerly used in England, Wales, some parts of the United States, Denmark, Southern Schleswig, Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Bishopric of Ösel–Wiek, Curonia, the Ukrainian state of the Cossack Hetmanate and in Cumberland County in the British Colony of New South Wales. It is still used in other places, including in Australia (in South Australia and the Northern Territory). Other terms for the hundred in English and other languages include ''wapentake'', ''herred'' (Danish and Bokmål Norwegian), ''herad'' ( Nynorsk Norwegian), ''hérað'' (Icelandic), ''härad'' or ''hundare'' (Swedish), ''Harde'' (German), ''hiird'' ( North Frisian), ''satakunta'' or ''kihlakunta'' (Finnish), ''kihelkond'' (Estonian), ''kiligunda'' (Livonian), ''cantref'' (Welsh) and ''sotnia'' (Slavic). In Ireland, a similar subdivision of counties is referred to as a barony, and a hundred is a subdivision of a part ...
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The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The tales (mostly written in verse (poetry), verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the The Tabard, Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return. It has been suggested that the greatest contribution of ''The Canterbury Tales'' to English literature was the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French, Italian or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, W ...
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Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific ''A Treatise on the Astrolabe'' for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament. Among Chaucer's many other works are ''The Book of the Duchess'', ''The House of Fame'', ''The Legend of Good Women'', and ''Troilus and Criseyde''. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our ...
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Forest
A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines a forest as, "Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds ''in situ''. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban use." Using this definition, '' Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020'' (FRA 2020) found that forests covered , or approximately 31 percent of the world's land area in 2020. Forests are the predominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are found around the globe. More than half of the world's forests are found in only five countries (Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, and the United States). The largest share of forests (45 percent) are in th ...
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Henry II Of England
Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189), also known as Henry Curtmantle (french: link=no, Court-manteau), Henry FitzEmpress, or Henry Plantagenet, was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189, and as such, was the first Angevin king of England. King Louis VII of France made him Duke of Normandy in 1150. Henry became Count of Anjou and Maine upon the death of his father, Count Geoffrey V, in 1151. His marriage in 1152 to Eleanor of Aquitaine, former spouse of Louis VII, made him Duke of Aquitaine. He became Count of Nantes by treaty in 1158. Before he was 40, he controlled England; large parts of Wales; the eastern half of Ireland; and the western half of France, an area that was later called the Angevin Empire. At various times, Henry also partially controlled Scotland and the Duchy of Brittany. Henry became politically involved by the age of 14 in the efforts of his mother Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, to claim the English throne, then occupied b ...
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Goathurst
Goathurst is a small village and civil parish in the English county of Somerset, around 3 miles from the town of Bridgwater. The parish includes the hamlets of Andersfield and Huntstile. The village is on the route of the Samaritans Way South West. History Goathurst was part of the hundred of Andersfield. Originally part of the Royal Forest of North Petherton, its first squire owned Goathurst's St Edward's church, a Grade I listed building which includes a 19th-century monument to three-year-old Isabella Kemeys, showing the child lying on a pillow holding a broken flower. Goathurst was the location of a 300-person prisoner of war camp during World War II, initially housing Italian prisoners from the Western Desert Campaign, and later German prisoners following the Battle of Normandy. Governance The parish council has responsibility for local issues, including setting an annual precept (local rate) to cover the council's operating costs and producing annual accounts for pu ...
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Athelney
Athelney is a village located between the villages of Burrowbridge and East Lyng in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, England. The name is believed to be derived from the Old English '' æþeling'' meaning "prince" + -''ey'' meaning "isle". The village is best known for once being the fortress hiding place of King Alfred the Great, from where he went on to defeat the Great Heathen Army at the Battle of Edington in May 878. Isle of Athelney The area is known as the Isle of Athelney, because it was once a very low isolated island in the 'very great swampy and impassable marshes' of the Somerset Levels. Much of the Levels are below the level of high tide. They are now drained for agricultural use during the summer, but are regularly flooded in the winter. Archaeological excavations and written evidence indicate that at the time of Alfred the island was linked by a causeway, known as Balt Moor Wall, to East Lyng, with either end protected by a semi-circular stockade and ditc ...
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Stretcholt
Pawlett is a small village north of Bridgwater, in the Sedgemoor district of the English county of Somerset. The village has Roman or Saxon origins. It has a Norman church and expanded in the 17th and 18th centuries with the draining of the Somerset Levels. During World War II it was the site of an experimental research station into anti-barrage balloon warfare, where experiments were performed to examine ways to use cable cutting devices on the wings of aircraft to sever the cable on which the balloon was flown and thus allow the aircraft to continue on a mission unimpeded. Brave pilots flew their machines into cables to test the effectiveness of these cutters. History A survey in 2003 recorded an early system of flood banks in the "Hams" around the village which may have originated in the Roman or Saxon periods. An early field system was also identified, again possibly originating in the Saxon period. The Pawlett Hams form part of the Bridgwater Bay Site of Special Scientific ...
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