The Somerset village of Corfe straddles a short stretch of the B3170, the road linking Taunton with the A303, a mile south of Taunton Racecourse. I visited the village a couple of years ago and had a stroll around after leaving the car in the small car park alongside the Church of St. Nicholas.
The Somerset Federation of
Women’s Institutes beautifully described Corfe in their The Somerset Village Book (Countryside Books, 1988).
“Corfe is a small, pretty village on the
northern slopes of the Blackdown Hills , four miles south of Taunton. The name is said to have been derived from an
ancient word meaning ‘gap’ or ‘pass’ and this is borne out by the cleft in the
hillside which takes the Honiton road over the Blackdowns from the village. Although it is not mentioned in the Domesday
Book the village has existed since Norman times.
Calamine and limestone were quarried on the
hills around the village and there were numerous lime kilns for burning the
lime for agricultural use.
The ancient woodlands which provided fuel
for the kilns remain and provide a magnificent backcloth to the village.”
The Church of St. Nicholas in the Somerset village of Corfe.
The charming little Church of St. Nicholas with its uncommon tower has its rebuilding chronicled by Ronald Webber in his The Devon and Somerset Blackdowns (Robert Hale & Company, 1976).
"The church of St. Nicholas at Corfe is built
in Norman style, but this was done in the nineteenth century – most of it in
1844 and the rest (including the tower) in 1858. The old (1844) tower was
small, low, square and ugly, so it was replaced by the present one of blue
stone with a peal of four bells; a great improvement, it would seem, to the old
one."
The village war memorial outside the Church of St. Nicholas in the Somerset village of Corfe. 
The plaque on the village war memorial in Corfe, Somerset.
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| I came across this just inside the gate at St. Nicholas Church, Corfe, Somerset. Never seen one like it in a churchyard before! |
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