Kingsdon, Somerset
Historical Description
Kingsdon, a village and a parish in Somerset. The village stands near the river Cary and the Fosse Way, 2½ miles N of Ilchester, and 6 W of Sparkford station on the G.W.R., and has a post and telegraph office under Taunton; money order office, Ilchester. Acreage, 2329; population, 294. Kingsdon Hill commands a fine view. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Bath and Wells; value, £255 with residence. The church was originally Norman, of which the string-course remains on the outside of the N transept. The font is Norman; later windows Perpendicular. The effigies of a Knight Templar is said to be that of Gray Bryan, who was imprisoned at the last Crusade and ransomed by the sale of the Somerton estate. The transept was evidently the knight's mortuary, as witness the piscina. The rector, named Johannes Dotin, in 1560 was also the head of Exeter College, Oxford, the record of which is on a brass plate over the chancel door.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Somersetshire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Kingsdon All Saints | |
Hundred | Somerton | |
Poor Law union | Langport |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
Ancestry.co.uk, in association with Somerset Archives & Local Studies, have images of the Parish Registers for Somerset online.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Kingsdon from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Kingsdon (All Saints))
Maps
Online maps of Kingsdon are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Somerset papers online:
- Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette
- Taunton Courier, and Western Advertiser
- Western Gazette
- Wells Journal
- Somerset County Gazette
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitation of Somersetshire, 1623 is available on the Heraldry page.