History
The parish of Dowlish Wake was part of the South Petherton Hundred.
The village is situated on Dowlish Brook, which is crossed by a 17th-century packhorse bridge (widened in the 1990s) and a road bridge dating from the 18th century. There was a flour mill on the brook in the 17th century but only the Mill House survives today. Until the early 1990s parts of the village were regularly cut off by floodwaters between two fords which cross the main road, however this has largely been prevented by recent drainage improvements.
The village was a centre for the manufacture of silk and there are the remains of several limestone quarries. It was on the route of the Chard Canal, which was built around 1835–40 and was intended to be part of a ship canal between the Bristol Channel and the English Channel, but this was never built.
The sports pavilion on the Lawrence Kellett recreation field was rebuilt in 2007.
In 2004 a stone in a village garden, used by a widow to mark the grave of her pet cat, was identified by the village potter as a 9th-century Saxon carving of St Peter.
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