Yeovil
Yeovil is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It is close to Somerset's southern border with Dorset, west of London, south of Bristol, west of Sherborne and east of Taunton. The population of the built-up area – which includes the outlying areas of the town in the parishes of West Coker, Brympton and Yeovil Without – was 50,176 at the 2021 census.
The aircraft and defence industries which developed in the 20th century made it a target for bombing in the Second World War; they are still major employers. Yeovil Country Park, which includes Ninesprings, is one of several open spaces with educational, cultural and sporting facilities. Religious sites include the 14th-century Church of St John the Baptist. The town is on the A30 and A37 roads and has two railway stations.
Geography
Yeovil is in the south of Somerset, close to the border with Dorset and in the centre of the Yeovil Scarplands, a natural region of England. The suburbs include Summerlands, Hollands, Houndstone, Preston Plucknett, Penn Mill, New Town, Hendford, Old Town, Forest Hill, Abbey Manor, Great Lyde. Outlying villages include East Coker, West Coker, Hardington Mandeville, Evershot, Halstock, Stoford, Barwick, Sutton Bingham, Mudford and Yetminster. Other nearby villages include Bradford Abbas, Thornford Corscombe, Montacute and Pendomer. The village of Brympton, now almost a suburb of Yeovil, contains the medieval manor of Brympton d'Evercy. Tintinhull, also close to Yeovil, features the National Trust-owned Tintinhull House and Gardens.Ninesprings Country Park is in the south-east near Penn Hill, linked by a cycle way along the route of the old railway to Riverside Walk, Wyndham Hill and Summerhouse Hill, forming the Yeovil Country Park.
Climate
Like the rest of South West England, Yeovil has a temperate climate generally wetter and milder than the rest of the country. The annual mean temperature is about and shows seasonal and diurnal variation, but the sea has a modifying effect. January is the coldest month, with mean minimum temperatures between. July and August are the warmest months, with mean daily maxima around.The south-west of England is in a favoured location for the Azores high pressure zone, when it extends north-eastwards towards the UK, particularly in summer. However, convective cloud often forms inland, especially near hills, reducing the number of hours of sunshine, whose annual average annual is about 1,700 hours.
Rainfall tends to be associated with Atlantic depressions or with convection. The Atlantic depressions are more vigorous in autumn and winter, when most of the rain that falls in the south-west is from that source. Average rainfall is about. November to March have the highest mean wind speeds, with June to August having the lightest winds. The predominant wind direction is from the south-west.
History
Archaeological surveys have yielded Palaeolithic burial and settlement sites mainly to the south of the modern town, particularly in Hendford, where a Bronze Age golden torc was found.Yeovil is on the main Roman road from Dorchester to the Fosse Way at Ilchester. The route of the old road is aligned with the A37 from Dorchester, Hendford Hill, Rustywell, across the Westland site, to Larkhill Road and Vagg Lane, rejoining the A37 at the Halfway House pub in the Ilchester Road. The Westland site has evidence of a small Roman town. There were several Roman villas in the area. Finds have been made at East Coker, West Coker and Lufton.
Medieval times
Yeovil was first named in a Saxon charter dated 880 as Gifle. It derives from the Common Brittonic river-name gifl "forked river", an earlier name of the River Yeo.The estate was bequeathed in the will of King Alfred the Great to his youngest son Aethelweard. It was recorded in the Domesday Book as Givele, a thriving market community. The parish of Yeovil was part of the Stone Hundred. After the Norman Conquest, the manor, later known as Hendford, was granted to the Count of Eu and his tenant Hugh Maltravers, whose descendants became Earls of Arundel and held the lordship until 1561. In 1205 it was granted a charter by King John. By the 14th century, the town had gained the right to elect a portreeve.
The Black Death exacted a heavy toll, killing about half the population.
In 1499 a major fire destroyed many wooden, thatch-roofed buildings in the town. Yeovil suffered further fires in 1620 and 1643.
Ownership
After the dissolution of the monasteries, the lord of the manor was the family of John Horsey of Clifton Maybank from 1538 to 1610, followed by the Phelips family until 1846, when it passed to the Harbins of Newton Surmaville. Babylon Hill across the River Yeo to the south east of the town was the site of a minor skirmish, the Battle of Babylon Hill, during the Civil War, which resulted in the Earl of Bedford's Roundheads forcing back Sir Ralph Hopton's Cavaliers to Sherborne.Development
In the 1800s Yeovil was a glove-making centre, and the population grew quickly. In the mid-19th century it became linked to the rest of Britain by a complex of railway lines, with competition between the broad gauge lines of the Great Western Railway and the standard gauge lines of the London and South Western Railway.The town's first railway was a branch line from the Bristol and Exeter Railway near Taunton to a terminus at on the western side of the town, which opened on 1 October 1853; as an associate of the GWR, this was a broad-gauge line. The GWR itself opened Yeovil Pen Mill railway station on the east side of the town as part of its route from London on 1 September 1856, extended to Weymouth on 1 January 1857), and the original line from Taunton connected with this. The LSWR route from London reached Hendford on 1 June 1860, but a month later the town was by-passed by an extension of the LSWR to Exeter. A new station at was provided south of the town from where passengers could catch a connecting service to Hendford. On 1 June 1861 passenger trains were withdrawn from Hendford and transferred to a new, more central, Yeovil Town railway station.
In 1854, the town gained borough status and had its first mayor. In the early 20th century, Yeovil had around 11,000 inhabitants and was dominated by the defence industry, making it a target of German raids during World War II. The worst bombing was in 1940 and continued until 1942. During that time 107 high-explosive bombs fell on the town, 49 people died, 68 houses were totally destroyed and 2,377 damaged.
Industrial businesses developed around the Hendford railway goods station to such a degree that a small was opened on 2 May 1932 for passengers, but the growth of road transport and a desire to rationalise the rail network led to half of the railway stations in Yeovil being closed in 1964. First to go was Hendford Halt, closed on 15 June along with the line to Taunton, then Yeovil Town closed on 2 October. Long-distance trains from Pen Mill were withdrawn on 11 September 1961, leaving only with a service to London, but the service between there and Pen Mill, the two remaining stations, was also withdrawn from 5 May 1968.
As a former centre of Britain's leather industry, the town is post-industrial in character. Journalist John Harris, for instance, described the towns Taunton, Yeovil and Bridgwater as a "post-industrial, hardscrabble place that contain 19 of the council wards in the 20% of English areas classed as the most deprived."
Governance
Officially designated as Yeovil Municipal Borough in 1854, the town continued to lend its name to the area with the creation of the local government district of Yeovil on 1 April 1974, with the merging several neighbouring rural and urban districts, which later became South Somerset, a now-defunct district. Some suburbs fall within the civil parishes of Yeovil Without, Brympton, and West Coker.Yeovil has a town council, which took over the functions of the Charter Trustees in 1982. It has responsibility for the management of recreational and leisure facilities, open spaces and play areas. In 2005, Yeovil Town Council became the first large council in Somerset to be awarded Quality Town Council status. Yeovil Town Council is based at the Town House. All other council services are provided by Somerset Council, a unitary authority established in April 2023.
There are five electoral wards covering Yeovil.
Yeovil is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament. It covers the Somerset towns of Yeovil, Chard, Crewkerne and Ilminster. Until 1983 Somerset was split into four constituencies and Yeovil constituency also covered Ilchester, Martock and Somerton, but these were moved into the new constituency of Somerton and Frome. From the 2010 general election, Yeovil constituency regained Ilchester, to equalise the constituency populations. The Boundary Commission for England estimated the electorate of Yeovil constituency after the boundary changes to be 77,049. The current MP is Adam Dance of the Liberal Democrats, who was elected in July 2024.
Demography
At the 2011 census, the population of the built-up area was 45,784, forming 28% of the population of South Somerset district.Economy
manufactures helicopters in Yeovil, and Honeywell Aerospace, formerly Normalair Garratt, builder of aircraft oxygen systems, is also based there.Yeovil's role as a centre of the aircraft and defence industries continued into the 21st century, despite attempts to diversify and the creation of industrial estates. In January 1986 a proposed sale of Westland Helicopters to the US Sikorsky Aircraft group led to the Westland affair, a crisis in the Thatcher government, the resignation of Michael Heseltine as Secretary of State for Defence, and two weeks later the resignation of Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Leon Brittan, who admitted leaking a governmental law officer's letter harshly critical of Heseltine. Leonardo, formerly AgustaWestland, created through the acquisition of Westland by Finmeccanica in 2000, remains the main employer in Yeovil.
Yeovil Aerodrome,, is west of the town centre. British defence giant BAE Systems also runs a site producing high-integrity networked software, mainly for the armed forces.
Screwfix, based in Houndstone, started life as Woodscrew Supply Company in 1979. It is now a subsidiary of Kingfisher plc. The company warehouse relocated to Stoke-on-Trent after failing to gain planning permission for expansion.
Quedam Shopping Centre has some 45 shops: the usual high-street chains, several independents, and a multi-storey car park with about 650 spaces.
In 2015, leather manufacturer Pittards bought back its 1964 purpose-built tannery in Sherborne Road, Yeovil. In September 2023, the company went into administration.