In the great freeze of1963 we had to dig tunnels through the snow to get out of our houses, in 1990 a hurricane upturned lorries and they lay strewn in fields alongside the highways and in 2024 it was a bit windy and so we had to cancel the Christmas Lights turn on. Of course we had to. That’s health and safety. And the fact that all the stalls cancelled, and the squibs wouldn’t work. But nevertheless, we all took refuge from the impending hurricane in the Town Hall and Angel Place and plans for Christmas carried on as normal. In the Art Centre ‘History Day’ happened. As if nothing had happened. But it had. History had happened.
In 1607 the New Year Somerset Tsunami broke through the minimal Burnham on Sea coastal defences of 2 wicker fences and a beach warden to devastate the whole of low-lying Somerset reaching as far as Glastonbury (That’s 14 miles from the sea as the halibut swims).
The Tsunami displaced massive boulders and swept them into the heart of the county where they remained for centuries. Some were elected to represent Somerset constituencies in Parliament for decades.
Tsunami
But the Puritans of the day knew the tsunami was a message from God which was yet another dark foreboding for a dangerous century. We’d already stopped the Catholic terrorist/freedom fighter Guy Fawkes blowing up the undemocratically unelected parliament of protestants headed by a King who thought he was put there by divine right of the supreme being (and who knew Elon Musk was that old) but as a result Bridgwater has held a carnival ever since.
At History Day we learnt that only 38 years after the early warning alert sent to portend disaster, Bridgwater was the scene of a massive and blood siege by cannon and storm, with fire reigning down from the direction of Hamp Hill and setting the area around St Mary’s church (bit of an easy target with even the most inaccurate of 17th century weapons) set ablaze. Well, it didn’t help that the houses were all made of wattle and daub. That’s wood and mud. For an example check the panels by the Old Vicarage hotel to this day.
The Puritan armies of Cromwell and Fairfax stormed across the town ditch approximately where the Cobblestones pub is today and liberated the East part of the town from the Royalists. Cunningly, the Governor of the castle Edmund Wyndham ordered his Cavalier army to remove the arch of the town bridge and then bombarded Eastover himself from the Castle. Which is pretty much how it looks today. Oh no, that’s the roadworks.
The thing about the siege of Bridgwater of June 1645 is that the townsfolk didn’t want to have to fight a battle at all as they all supported the Parliamentary cause and so the minute Wyndham surrendered and Cromwell took the town, they all ‘Oroight Oliver, we were on your side all the time, sn!’ and immediately swapped sides.
Rebellion
We also learnt at History Day that the old market cross in the town, which stood outside present day Lloyd’s bank, had the slogan carved on it. ‘Mind your own Business’. A motto Bridgwater people simply haven’t stuck to at all. 30 years after the siege, Bridgwater people spectacularly failed to ‘mind their own business’ and rose up for the Duke of Monmouth in a rebellion they lost, and many were hung drawn and quartered or sent as slaves to the Caribbean.
If ever a motto failed to sum up the mood of a people, it was that one. ‘Don’t get involved? Right, we’ll do the bloody opposite! No one tells us not to get involved.’