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.
Read more about this topic: Dowlish Wake
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)