The South Somerset village of Ilton has an interesting history with connections to a distinguished Somerset family, a railway, a canal, and a military airfield. It has a number of wonderfully picturesque Grade II listed buildings which compensate for the rather drab sprawl of characterless new housing north of the village green.
I approached the southern fringe of Ilton along Cad Road. A pretty cottage beside the road, one of several, displayed a pair of boxing hares on the ridge of its thatched roof.
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| A pair of boxing hares on a thatched cottage roof at Ilton in South Somerset. |
A little further on I came across some almshouses and stopped to have a closer look. The almshouses and its stone gateway and boundary wall are both Grade II listed. The inscription on the stone above the gate reads: “THIS HOUSE WAS FOUNDED BY JOHN WHETSTONE GENTLEMAN FOR THE RELEEFE OF THE PORE OF ILTON ANODNI 1634”. Whetstone's Almshouses originally had a chapel at one end of the building, but the chapel windows, although still visible in outline, were filled in early in the twentieth century when the building was modernised.
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| Whetstone's Almshouses at Ilton in South Somerset. |
Another set of almshouses on the south west
fringe of the village were set up by the ancient Wadham family. In 1999 these were modernised out of all
recognition.
Maxwell Fraser in his Companion into Somerset (Methuen &
Co. Ltd. London, 1947) has this to say of the Wadhams and John Whetstone.
Ilton, north of Ilminster, and on the other side of
the river (Isle), which takes a big bend eastwards, has a church containing
brasses to the Wadhams, . . . The
Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham who founded Wadham College showed very enlightened
views, and anticipated some modern reforms . . . This same Nicholas also founded a pretty row
of almshouses at Ilton, and another group of seventeenth century almshouses
there have an inscription to “John Whetstone, Gentleman”. He is said to have derived his name from the
fact that he was found in a manger with a bundle of whetstones. He grew up to achieve success and riches, and
founded the almshouses as a thank-offering”.
Having turned off Cad Road
toward the village centre I came across a Grade II listed former chapel, now a
picturesque cottage-like home. A little
further on I passed Ilton Court, another Grade II listed building. In 1700 one John Scott was resident there and
was said to have the title of “Overseer of Ilton’s poor”.
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| Ilton Court in the village of Ilton, South Somerset. |
Arriving at The Wyndham Arms
one is at the centre of old Ilton. The
village green opposite the pub has the Grade II listed Drake’s Farmhouse to its
south while to the east is the Church of St. Peter and, hidden behind the
trees, its former vicarage now known as Merryfield House – also Grade II
listed.
The Wadham family.
The manor of Ilton and the
manorial seat of Merryfield Manor were acquired by Sir John Wadham in the late
fourteenth century and the moated manor house became the family’s principal
residence. The Wadhams were a
philanthropic family, and Oxford-educated Nicholas Wadham (1532-1609), who
inherited in 1577, devoted considerable amounts of his wealth to educational
purposes. He intended to establish a
college at Oxford, but died before his plan came to fruition and it was
subsequently overseen by his widow Dorothy.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 and completed in 1613.
After Dorothy’s death in 1618
the Wadhams’ lands were inherited by Nicholas’ nephew Sir John Wyndham of
Orchard Wyndham near Williton and became part of a substantial estate.
Merryfield Manor did not
appeal to Sir John and appears to have been demolished shortly after Dorothy
Wadham’s death. Material from the site
is said to have been re-used for the construction of several local buildings,
including Ilton Court. Nothing is left
of Merryfield Manor today except the remains of the moat and some overgrown
remnants of wall.
The Canal.
The Taunton to Chard canal,
which passed just to the west of Ilton, opened in 1842, but failed to make
profits and was closed in 1866 on the coming of the railway. It was originally planned to be a section of
the ambitious Bristol Channel to English Channel Ship Canal which would stretch
from Stolford to Beer, but the project failed to obtain sufficient financial
backing.
The Railway.
The Taunton to Chard Railway,
opened in 1866, was 15 miles long with halts at Thornfalcon, Hatch Beauchamp,
Ilton, Ilminster and Donyatt. The line
was closed in 1962, before The Beeching Axe, as it was thought to be unviable
due to low passenger numbers.
It would have been a
wonderful local transport asset today, but sadly, or one might say
outrageously, the track was taken up and many of the bridges demolished.
The Airfield.
Merryfield airfield was built to
be a Second World War Royal Air Force bomber base. It was to have been named RAF Isle Abbotts
after the small village to the north, but was renamed RAF Merryfield after the
manorial estate it was built on.
After it opened in early
February 1944 it soon became home to the 4 squadrons of 441st Troop
Carrier Group of 50th Troop Carrier Wing of the USAAF. The group was
equipped with Douglas C47 Skytrains, a military version of the civilian Douglas
DC3, and Waco Hadrian gliders in preparation for the Normandy landings. In the late evening of June 5 1944 the group
carried over 1,400 US airborne troops, a contingent of the 101st
Airborne Division, to France and made further sorties the next day air-dropping
reinforcements of troops and supplies.
After D-Day the US 61st
Field Hospital was established in a large tented area, with an associated
ambulance park, at Merryfield on July 19 1944 to deal with wounded evacuated by
air from Normandy. The wounded were transported by road to the US 67th
General Hospital at Musgrove Camp, Taunton.
By September the USAAF had left
Merryfield for airfields in France, and the RAF took back possession.*
In the 1950s, during the rapid
expansion of air power in the early cold war years, the RAF and RN used
Merryfield for training pilots. By 1961
the airfield was no longer in use and was left almost abandoned. Then in 1971
the RN moved in to use it as a satellite station for nearby RNAS Yeovilton – a
purpose it still fulfils today.
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| The Church of St. Peter in the village of Ilton, South Somerset. |
Just inside the gateway to
Ilton’s Church of St. Peter are the Commonwealth War Graves of two young RAF
pilots who were killed, during 1952, whilst serving with No. 208 Advanced
Flying School based at RAF Merryfield.
Both lost their lives flying the RAF’s early jet fighter, the single
seat de-Havilland Vampire, at a time when the armed forces were rapidly
expanding to meet the threat of The Cold War.
On June 23 1952 Pilot Officer
Allan Durham’s Vampire broke away from a formation at 28,000 ft. It dived into the ground near Chudleigh in
Devonshire. It is thought his oxygen
supply failed and he passed out at the controls. Allan Durham was nineteen years old and was
from Sheffield. **
On September 25 1952 Pilot
Officer John William Gillard’s Vampire came out of cloud at about 1,000 ft and
crashed close to Burton Woods, Curry Rivel.
It is believed the aircraft entered cloud and the pilot opened the hood
to clear ice from the windscreen. In
doing so the slipstream removed his helmet, which was found over a mile away
from the crash site, and probably knocked him unconscious. John Gillard was also only nineteen years old
and was born in East Greenwich, London. **
Land for Ilton’s village
cemetery was acquired in that same year of 1952; sadly, more young RAF men were
to be killed while serving at RAF Merryfield and would later be laid to rest
there.
Sources:
*Somerset at War 1939-1945, Mac Hawkins (The Dovecote Press Ltd.,
1988)
**Wings over Somerset, Peter Forrester (The History Press, 2012)
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