Frome in Wessex
Midsomer Norton
Abstract
Contents Updated: Thursday, 26 October 2006
Midsomer Norton, Frome’s Near Neighbour
The county of Somerset is so called because it is a “Somer” (summer) place, “set” being a place or seat. The logic of this seems hard to discern but John Wesley, the methodist preacher, might have had the right idea when he said that Midsomer Norton was so called because it was only accessible in summer, the rest of the year the tracks into it being too muddy. The explanation though must apply to the whole county not just the town.
Following the retreat of the glaciers much of Somerset was left as waterlogged and swampy lowland—places like the Somerset Levels—which for thousands of years took the silt of rivers flowing from the Mendips, the Polden Hills and Quantocks. So when mankind began occupying the area they could only do so in the dry season when the midsummer sun had dried out the lowlands. Glastonbury, just twenty miles from Frome, in those prehistoric times was the site of lake villages as we now know from having excavated them. The site ot the later town was an island, the highest point of which was the mound upon which is Glasonbury Tor.
Even in quite recent times parts of Somerset were notoriously subject to flooding. Henry “orator” Hunt spent the Christmas of 1821 in Ilchester Gaol on the banks of the river Yeo, punishment for denouncing the Peterloo massacre of 1819 when many peaceful and innocent workers and their families were murdered by British soldiers at the command of nervous magistrates. Hunt described how the whole country for miles around Ilchester was under water. The prison was inundated frequently and the water rose rapidly. Convicts had to wade through seven inches of water to get to the chapel which they were obliged to attend. They would then have to sit listening to the sermoniser with their feet in the cold water. Needless to say, the parson was carried to the pulpit by one of the prisoners so that he did not have to get his feet wet. Sometimes the convicts would slip, probably purposely, to drop their load into the slime.
Hunt says that, when the water sank away, it left a scummy deposit which putrified quickly emitting vile odours and causing agues and typhus fevers that could be fatal. This though was probably because, as Hunt declares, the water included water displaced from the soil pipes and this contaminated the wells. It is hardly surprising that people waited until the summer to get into Somerset.
The picturesque river Somer which flows through through the town alongside the main road is perhaps the main feature of Midsomer Norton. Scarcely more than a stream it flows through a neat stone lined channel, occasionally disappearing into a culvert to appear again a short distance further along where it will then tumble over a weir guarded by stately white swans with their attendant mallards. However, part of the town is called The Island confirming that Midsomer Norton too was often flooded.
It is possible that in ancient times a festival was held in Somerset to celebrate the midsummer solstice which would coincide with the receding of the water which allowed accessibility once more. Tradition has it that Midsomer Norton’s church of St John the Baptist—built in the sixteenth century but remodelled in 1830—was dedicated on midsummer’s day and that is the origin of the midsummer festival held ever after. But it is more likely that the opportunist churchmen agreed to take advantage of tradition by dedicating the church on the feast day, as they often did.
Midsomer Norton however was noted for long as the centre of Somerset’s coal mining industry. The industry no longer exists but there are traces of it in the town, in local names like the very common Pitman and in some village names. Coal mining began in the 1200s but it continued as little more than a cottage industry until the industrial revolution when coal became a much more important commodity. Not that it helped the people of Somerset much. The seams were narrow—only two or three feet thick—and the geology difficult. Seams would break unexpectedly and often they had been folded so that they were vertical. Not surprisingly, they were nearly always wet. The miners therefore had to work lying down in puddles of black water that dripped from the seams, lighted only by a few candles. As late as 1901 nine men and a boy were killed by an explosion at Norton Hill colliery.
Boys of thirteen had to pull sledges loaded with the coal from the face to the shaft. To do this they crawled on all fours with a rope tied around their waist, passing under their crotch to a chain and hook fastened to the sled. After doing this for ten hours they had to walk home, possibly several miles if they came from an outlying village.
In 1870 coal produced in this way was over half a million tons. The local people of Somerset were marginally more financially secure but at the price of bent and broken bodies, ill-health and early death. In the 1920s coal production peaked with 10,000 people employed in the industry but from then on it declined rapidly. The last pits closed in the 1970s.
Much of the architecture of Midsomer Norton stems from the brief period of coal mining prosperity in late Victorian times but there are traces of earlier buildings. The half-timbered almshouses on the High Street date from only 1890 but are attractive looking buildings of their type. The Old Town Hall in Silver Street was erected in 1860. The turreted Methodist Church is pretty but rather Disneyish but St John the Baptist Church is imposing. The Catholic church is probably the oldest building in the town, having started life as a tithe barn in the 1400s, though the Greyhound Hotel was once a coaching inn. Memorabilia of the coal mining days can be found as ornaments in local pubs and for purchase in local junk shops, and for the price of a pint many an old pitman will tell you of his experiences down the mines.
