history
Just two small objects from the Neolithic period are all that have been found from that era in the Yeovil area - a leaf-shaped arrowhead and part of a polished stone axehead. These were discovered close to the Hundred Stone which lies on the ridgeway to the north of the town. This is believed to be a section of the great prehistoric highway, known as the ‘Harroway’ or ‘Hoarway’, stretching from Kent to Cornwall and certainly an arterial way of the Bronze Age.
An intriguing discovery, made in 1826 in a quarry near the present Yeovil Junction railway station, did not find its way into print until 1853.
It was then stated that a human skeleton had been found in a sitting position in a stone vault cut into solid rock and covered with a rough stone slab. On one side of the figure was an early Bronze Age beaker six and seven-eighths inches (175mm) high, and on the other side a deer’s horn. Nearby, another chamber contained the skeleton of a horse, while yet another, larger, vault contained ‘an immense quantity of human bones with earth and stones’. It is obvious that these interments followed a local battle in which a leader met his death with many of his followers.
On the Dorchester Road a Bronze Age burial was uncovered in 1926, when road widening was in progress close to where the road leads to East Coker. A rotary, or ‘beehive’, quern for grinding grain, was recovered from the excavations made to construct a garage in Goldcroft, and 1988 a bronze axehead was unearthed on Wyndham Hill.
Perhaps the most important find from this period occurred in 1909 when a gold torc (illustrated above) was found when digging a garden on Hendford Hill. Weighing 5oz 7½ dwt. troy, and with a three-inch (77mm) diameter, it is constructed of composite gold strips and dates from the Middle Bronze Age.
