Taunton ( ) is the county town of Somerset, England. It is a market town and has a minster church. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, owned by the Bishops of Winchester, which was rebuilt as Taunton Castle by the Normans in the 12th century. Parts of the inner ward house were turned into the Museum of Somerset and Somerset Military Museum. For the Second Cornish uprising of 1497, Perkin Warbeck brought an army of 6,000; most surrendered to Henry VII on 4 October 1497. On 20 June 1685, the Duke of Monmouth crowned himself King of England in Taunton in the failed Monmouth Rebellion. Judge Jeffreys led the Bloody Assizes in the Castle's Great Hall.
The Grand Western Canal reached Taunton in 1839 and the Bristol and Exeter Railway in 1842. Today it hosts Musgrove Park Hospital, Somerset County Cricket Club, is the base of 40 Commando, Royal Marines, and is home to the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office on Admiralty Way. The popular Taunton Flower Show has been held in Vivary Park since 1866, and on 13 March 2022, St Mary Magdalene parish church was elevated to the status of Taunton Minster. At the 2021 census the Taunton built-up area as defined by the Office for National Statistics had a population of 61,665.
History
The town name derives from "Town on the River Tone" or Tone Town. Cambria Farm, which now hosts a park and ride close to the M5 motorway Junction 25, was the site of Bronze and Iron Age settlement and a Roman farm. There was a Romano-British village near the suburb of Holway. Taunton was important in Anglo-Saxon times as a burh with a mint. King Ine of Wessex threw up an earthen castle about 700, but it was levelled in 722 by his queen, Æthelburg of Wessex, to prevent seizure by rebels.
A monastery was founded before 904. The bishops of Winchester owned the manor, and obtained the first charter for their "men of Taunton" from King Edward in 904, freeing them from all royal and county tribute. Some time before Domesday, Taunton became a borough with privileges and a population of some 1,500, including 64 burgesses governed by a portreeve appointed by the bishops. Somerton took over from Ilchester as county town in the late 13th century, but declined; the county-town status passed to Taunton about 1366. Between 1209 and 1311 the Bishop of Winchester's manor of Taunton expanded two-and-a-half times. The parishes of Staplegrove, Wilton, and Taunton were part of Taunton Deane hundred.
In 1451, during the Wars of the Roses, Taunton saw a skirmish between the Earl of Devon, and Baron Bonville. Queen Margaret and her troops passed through in 1471 to defeat at the Battle of Tewkesbury. In the Second Cornish uprising of 1497 most Cornish gentry supported Perkin Warbeck's cause and on 17 September a Cornish army some 6,000 strong entered Exeter before advancing on Taunton. Henry VII sent his chief general - Giles, Lord Daubeney - to attack the Cornish. When Warbeck heard that the King's scouts were at Glastonbury he panicked and deserted his army. On 4 October 1497, Henry VII reached Taunton, where he received the surrender of the remaining Cornish army. Ringleaders were executed and others fined a total of £13,000.
Taunton Castle changed hands several times in the Civil War of 1642–1645, as did the town. During the Siege of Taunton it was defended by Robert Blake from July 1644 to July 1645, and suffered destruction of many medieval and Tudor buildings. On 20 June 1685, the Duke of Monmouth crowned himself King of England at Taunton during the Monmouth Rebellion. In the autumn of that year Judge Jeffreys lived in the town during the Bloody Assizes that followed the Battle of Sedgemoor.
The medieval fairs and markets (a weekly market remains) were celebrated for the sale of woollen cloth called "Tauntons" made in the town. On the decline of the woollen industry in the west of England, silk-weaving was introduced at the end of the 18th century.From the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
In 1839 the Grand Western Canal reached Taunton, aiding southward trade,Helen Harris (1996) The Grand Western Canal, Devon Books, which was enhanced by the arrival of the railway in 1842.
A permanent military presence came to Jellalabad Barracks in 1881.
In the Second World War, the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal formed part of the Taunton Stop Line, set to curb any advance of a German invasion. Pillboxes can still be seen along its length.
A fire aboard a to London sleeping car train approaching Taunton in 1978 killed 12 passengers and injured 15 others.
Regeneration
Taunton was rated "strategically important" in the government's Regional Spatial Strategy, allowing Somerset County Council to receive funding for large-scale regeneration projects. In 2006, the council revealed plans dubbed "Project Taunton". This would see regeneration of the areas of Firepool, Tangier, the retail town-centre, the cultural quarter, and the River Tone, to sustain Taunton as a business hub in the South West.
The Firepool area, just north of the town centre by the main railway station, includes vacant or undeveloped land. The council is promoting sustainable, high-quality, employment-led mixed-use development to attract 3,000 new jobs and 500 new homes. This area was the cattle market until in 2008. A large indoor shopping centre to the east of the Parade covers a site that was once a pig market. Although its official name is now Orchard, and before that the Old Market Centre, locals still call it the Pig Market; one existed there from 1614 to 1882.
In Tangier, a brownfield area between Bridgwater and Taunton College and the bus station, the project proposed to build small offices and more riverside housing.
The "Cultural Quarter" is the area along the river between Firepool and Tangier. The plans are to extend riverside retail and attract smaller, boutique businesses such as those found at Riverside.
Plans for the town centre include more pedestrianisation and greater sizes and numbers of retail units.
Several sites along the River Tone are set for renovation. Firepool Weir lock, long silted up, was to be dredged in 2011 to allow boats to pass from the navigable section of the Tone through Taunton to the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal. Goodland Gardens received a makeover and a new café, The Shed, opened. Projects to develop Somerset Square (a paved area next to the Brewhouse Theatre) and Longrun Meadow (a country park near Bridgwater & Taunton College) have been put forward.
Traffic congestion was identified as an obstacle to further economic growth. Part of the strategy was a new road infrastructure consisting of a £7.5 million link road to ease traffic in the town centre (Taunton's "Third Way"), completed in 2011, and a Northern Inner Distributor Road linking Staplegrove Road, the station and Priory Avenue at a planned cost of £21 million, opened in 2017.
2011 M5 crash
A major road accident occurred on the evening of 4 November 2011 near junction 25 of the M5 motorway on the north-eastern edge of Taunton at West Monkton. 34 vehicles were involved, 7 people were killed and a further 51 injured.
Governance
There are two tiers of local government covering Taunton, at parish (town) and unitary authority level: Taunton Town Council and Somerset Council. The town council is based at Deane House on Belvedere Road. Somerset Council is also based in the town, with offices at both County Hall on The Crescent and in Deane House.
For national elections, the town forms part of the Taunton and Wellington constituency.
Administrative history There were two ancient parishes with their parish churches in the town: St Mary Magdalen and St James. From at least the time of King Stephen (reigned 1135–1154), Taunton was described as a borough. It was a seigneurial borough controlled by the Bishops of Winchester in their capacity as lord of the manor rather than having a borough corporation. From 1307 onwards the borough became the Taunton parliamentary borough (constituency), electing two Members of Parliament.
The borough was granted a municipal charter in 1627, establishing a corporation led by a mayor. The borough boundaries only covered part of the parish of St Mary Magdalen. The borough therefore excluded the parts of the town in the parish of St James and also excluded areas where the town was also growing into the neighbouring parishes of Bishop's Hull and Wilton. The borough corporation ceased operating in 1792, after which Taunton remained a parliamentary borough but was no longer a borough for municipal purposes. The boundaries of the parliamentary borough were significantly enlarged in 1832 to cover the built-up area as it then was, covering parts of each of the four parishes of St Mary Magdalen, St James, Bishop's Hull, and Wilton.
In 1849, the parliamentary borough was made a local board district, with an elected local board established to provide public health and local government services to the town. The town was made a municipal borough in 1877, re-establishing a corporation to run the town.
In 1887, the corporation took over the former Taunton Grammar School, parts of which date back to around 1480, to serve as its meeting place and offices, renaming it the Municipal Buildings. As the town grew, the borough boundaries were occasionally expanded, with boundary changes in 1887, 1895, 1921, 1932, 1958, and 1966. As part of the 1921 changes, the civil parishes within the borough were united into a single parish of Taunton matching the borough.
The borough of Taunton was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, with its area becoming part of the new Taunton Deane district. No successor parish was created for the former borough, and so it became unparished. Taunton Deane Borough Council based itself at the Municipal Buildings until 1987, when it moved to new offices at Deane House.
Taunton Deane was abolished in 2019, becoming part of the short-lived district of Somerset West and Taunton, which was in turn abolished four years later in 2023. Somerset County Council then took over district-level functions across its area, making it a unitary authority, and was renamed Somerset Council. As part of the 2023 reorganisation, a new civil parish of Taunton was created covering the unparished area which corresponded to the pre-1974 borough plus areas from a number of adjoining parishes, with the parishes of Comeytrowe and Staplegrove both being abolished. The new parish council took the name Taunton Town Council.
Geography Taunton lies on the River Tone between the Quantock, Blackdown, and Brendon hills. The area is known as the Vale of Taunton. It is surrounded by many other large towns and cities seen on this directional compass:
Taunton is south-west of Bristol, north-east of Exeter, north-east of Plymouth and north-west of Weymouth.
Geology The Taunton area has Permian red sandstones and breccia outcrop 295250million years old. Rocks of Triassic age (248204million years ago) underlie much of Somerset's moors and levels.
Nature reserves The several local nature reserves in and around Taunton are protected under section 21 of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. South Taunton Streams is an urban wetland. The northern suburbs include the Children's Wood riverside reserve, a movement corridor for animals such as otters along the banks of the Tone. Birds include the kingfisher, dipper, grey wagtail, mute swan, grey heron, and reed warbler; butterflies include the small and large skipper, marbled white, small heath, and small copper - along with dragonflies and damselflies.