A stroll around Vivary Park in Taunton, Somerset.

Last week my wife and I had cause to visit Taunton.  We parked the car in the Orchard multi storey car park and, while my wife met up with a friend from her university days, I went for a quick stroll around Vivary Park with my camera.

The gates to Vivary Park on Upper High Street in Taunton, Somerset.

Just inside the park’s impressive cast iron gates on Upper High Street is a war memorial remembering the fallen of World War One and World War Two together with 3 who lost their lives serving in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s and 1 who died in Afghanistan in 2009.  The memorial was erected in 1922.

The war memorial in Vivary Park, Taunton, Somerset

A little further on is a fountain in memory of Queen Victoria which was unveiled in 1907.  It was built by the Saracen Foundry of Glasgow which, in 1895, also built the park gates mentioned previously.

The Queen Victoria Memorial Fountain in Vivary Park, Taunton, Somerset.  The Keep of Jellalabad Barracks is in the background.

The plaque on the Queen Victoria Memorial Fountain in Vivary Park, Taunton.

At this point I took cover in a wooden shelter as a shower of rain passed.  From the shelter I took some photos of the very well-kept flower beds and the Keep of Jellalabad Barracks which towers over the eastern side of the park.  

Jellalabad Barracks was completed in 1881.  It takes its name from the siege of Jellalabad in 1842 during the First Afghan War.  The 13th Regiment of Foot, which later became the Somerset Light Infantry, held the fort at Jellalabad for 5 months before being relieved.  Hugh Popham writes in his The Somerset Light Infantry (Hamish Hamilton, 1968): “The honours quickly began to flow.  Even before the regiment left Jellalabad it was announced in the London Gazette that ‘Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to approve of that Regiment assuming the title of the 13th or Prince Albert’s Regiment of Light Infantry; and its facings be changed from yellow to royal blue’.  By the same order, a ‘mural Crown, superscribed Jellalabad’ was added to the Colours and appointments, where it has remained ever since, to mystify those to whom the First Afghan War is as remote as the Peloponnesian.”  I suspect Afghanistan’s troubled history is far better known today than when Hugh Popham wrote those words 50 years ago!

With more rainclouds on the horizon I took advantage of a sunny spell and hurried off to Taunton Library in nearby Paul Street.  There I settled down in the Military History section where my wife and I had arranged to meet before heading back across the Blackdown Hills for home.