Chard, Somerset
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chard is a town and parish in the county of Somerset, England, situated on the A30 road near the Devon border, 15 miles south west of Yeovil.
The parish has a population of approximately 12,000 and, at an altitude of 121 metres, is the highest town in the county.
Chard was the original headquarters of Cerdic, the first King of Wessex. It is considered by some scholars that Cerdic was the basis of the legend of King Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table and that Camelot was in the vicinity of Chard.[2] 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. Chard claims to be the birthplace of aviation, as it was here in 1848 that the Victorian aeronautical pioneer John Stringfellow (1799-1883) first demonstrated that engine-powered flight was possible.
Chard is a key point on the Taunton Stop Line, a World War II defensive line consisting of pillboxes and anti-tank obstacles, which runs from Axminster north to the Somerset coast near Highbridge.
Chard was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and remained a municipal borough until the Local Government Act 1972, when it became a successor parish in the South Somerset district.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The History of Chard, the Ancient Capital of Wessex
- The County of Somerset
- List of interesting places to visit round Chard and in Wessex
- The Somerset Urban Archaeological Survey: Chard, by Miranda Richardson
[edit] References
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