History
The name Coker comes from Coker Water (crooked stream from the Celtic Kukro).
Artifacts from early settlement in the parish include a polished stone axe and boat shaped-bronze broach. A Roman villa has been excavated and a bronze plate inscribed to the god Mars discovered. From this Mars was given the title Mars Rigisamus (which means 'Greatest King' or 'King of Kings') as it depicts a standing naked male figure with a close-fitting helmet; his right hand may have once held a weapon, and he probably originally also had a shield (both are now lost). The same epithet for a god is recorded from Bourges in Gaul. The use of this epithet implies that Mars had an extremely high status, over and above his warrior function.
The manor descended with its neighbour East Coker until the 14th century when it passed to a junior branch of the Courtenay family. It was later held by the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland protectors of Edward VI and later still by the Portmans of Orchard Portman.
The original manor house burned down during an attack in the Wars of the Roses, although the current hamstone manor house has medieval origins, the earliest surviving portions probably being of around 1500. It is a grade I listed building.
The village had a long history of growing hemp and flax for sailcloth manufacture, which made "Coker Canvas" highly prized by naval captains during the Napoleonic Wars. Dawes Twine Works, a late 19th century historic building in the village used for the manufacture of rope and twine, was a featured candidate on the BBC Restoration TV series in 2006.
Read more about this topic: West Coker
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)