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Yatton (St. Mary)

YATTON (St. Mary), a parish, in the union of Bedminster, hundred of Winterstoke, E. division of Somerset, 12 miles (S. W.) from Bristol; containing, with the hamlets of Claverham, Cleeve, and Hewish, 1978 inhabitants. It comprises 5389a. 2r. 5p. Limestone abounds, and is quarried for building, and for burning into lime. The Bristol and Exeter railway passes through the parish. The living is a vicarage, in the patronage of the Prebendary of Yatton in Wells Cathedral, valued in the king's books at £30: the tithes have been commuted for £348 payable to the impropriators, and £445. 10. to the vicar; the impropriate glebe comprises 138 acres. The church is a stately cruciform structure in the decorated and later English styles, with a tower in the centre, formerly surmounted by a spire. The greater portion of it appears to have been rebuilt in the 15th century, by the Wyck family, to one of whom is a monument bearing his effigy, in the north transept. In a sepulchral chapel of the Newton family, built by Dame Isabel, widow of Sir John Newton, is a handsome alabaster monument to Sir Richard Caradoc Newton, lord chief justice of the common pleas in the reign of Henry VI., and another to his son Sir John. A district church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was erected at Cleeve, and consecrated in June, 1840; it is a handsome structure in the Norman style, and contains 300 sittings: the living is in the gift of the Vicar of Yatton. There are places of worship for the Society of Friends and Wesleyans. On Cadbury Hill, in the vicinity, are vestiges of an ancient fortification. In 1782, thirteen human bodies, some of them fresh and of unusual size, and a stone coffin, were found in a limestone-quarry, about two feet below the surface.

Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.

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