History
The manor of "Hache" dates from Saxon times and became the caput of a feudal barony after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, when it was granted to Robert, Count of Mortain(d.1095) by his half-brother William the Conqueror. Hatch Beauchamp is described under the title of Terra Comitis Mortoniensis ("lands of the Count/Earl of Mortain") as follows: "Robert holds Hache of the Earl: 8 acres (32,000 m2) of meadow, 50 acres (200,000 m2) of wood; arable, six carucates; in demesne, two carucates, and three servants, eleven villanes, four cottagers with three ploughs." This Robert who was the vassal of the Earl was Robert FitzIvo. Six years later in 1092, the manor was in the hands of Robert of Beauchamp, who may have been the same person. The Beauchamp family were loyal allies of William the Conqueror, and had been granted large estates in Somerset and Bedfordshire.
Hatch Beauchamp is noted around 1300 as having a market every Thursday, but this has long since vanished. The area - along with most of the South West of England, was staunchly Royalist in the English Civil War, although the local town of Taunton was a Parliamentary stronghold, and was besieged.
The village today contains an inn, and a manor house, Hatch Court, built around 1750, in the Palladian architectural style. Prior to this, a great house had existed on the same site since the Middle Ages, but had fallen into ruin by the 17th century. The inn dates from around the mid-18th century.
Hatch Beauchamp is the burial place of Colonel John Rouse Merriott Chard, VC, RE (21 December 1847 - 1 November 1897) a British soldier who won the Victoria Cross for his role in the defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879.
In the Victorian era, Hatch was connected to the national railway grid in 1866 as part of the Bristol and Exeter Railway. The village had a Chalet-style station, known as Hatch, on the Chard Branch Line which closed in 1963. In 1962, following the Beeching Report, railway services ceased to operate completely, although the railway station remains.
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