1982-Oct-pg35_Burials in Mudford Road

1982-Oct-pg35_Burials in Mudford Road

This article came from Chronicle published October 1982. Page: 35

 

Burials in Mudford Road

Author: L.C.Hayward

 

Readers of ‘Chronicle’ will recollect an article in Vol.1, No.3, on ‘A Plague burial in Yeovil?’ describing the discovery of two skeletons in the front garden of 51 Mudford Road. Internal evidence gave a date towards the end of the 7th century, and it was suggested that such an isolated internment might indicate a plague burial.

Mr Leslie Brooke has recently found in the Somerset Record Office ‘A Survey of all the lands that pay Tythe to the Parsonage of Yeovill’ dated 1743. It mentions a “Burying Plot’ near Green Cross (Tithe Map 1830), which is almost certainly the field on which houses were built fifty years ago on Mudford Road, near the entrance to the Recreation Ground. It is very likely that the two burials (in wooden coffins placed in a carefully made grave cut into the natural rock) are within the Burying Plot. Such cemeteries are known for the Quakers and the Baptists, and the Mudford Road one probably served the Unitarians who certainly flourished in Yeovil from the 17th century.