ILCHESTER Old forms:
Ivelcestery
Yevel,
YevilChester; from the river Ivel,
the camp or station on the Ivel.— We next come to the very queer case of Ilchester.
Why it should ever have existed out there on the moor is difficult to gather save for this— Roman roads crossed there, from Dorchester to the coast
by the Poldens, and from Seaton and)Axminster to Bath onwards the Fosse Way.
The latter road at least was made very early, probably before a .d . 50, and some sort of Roman station may have been thought necessary in advance of the big British work at Cadbury.
With the Roman name in mind, the visitor comes to Ilchester, and is profoundly disappointed; for not only does he find no Roman
trace there, but hardly anything at all, mediaeval or modern
…….. Dont.. forget the waterways they were
the transport highways and if you care to reconstruct the geography
things show a different coherant picture
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. He crosses a bridge over the Ivel , and finds himself at a column (comparatively modern) at the apex of a triangle with two drab streets forking away as two sides of it.
This column, where once stood the market cross, opposite the “ town hall” , is a tall cylindrical pillar with sundial
and weather vane: and the bridge 1825 with six
arches (there were seven in Leland’s time) is apparently near where a Roman ford was. It is a
melancholy case of decay: and the ordinary traveller
contents himself, perhaps, with the memory that
here were Roman crossroads, that there was a siege
in 1088, that Roger Bacon was born here in 1214,
and that the place was fortified in the Civil War.
One thing alone catches the eye, the small octagonal
tower of the church (St Mary’s), planted on a square
base; and on inspection of the interior you see one
or two signs of antiquity— a squint, and some corner
niches in the north chapel. Unaided we are completely nonplussed, and so we have recourse to
Mr Alfred Warbis, whose booklet Ilchester (Murray
& Co., Yeovil) is an excellent example of what may
be done by patient reconstruction of a town which
has buried its past. Ilchester is generally said to be
the Ischalis of Ptolemy and the Antonine Itinerary,
but this is quite inaccurate, first, because the latitude
and longitude of Ischalis put it near the mouth of the
Axe, twenty-seven miles W. of Bath: and second,
because Ischalis does not appear in the Antonine
Itinerary. It has been known as Ivelcestre, Yevilcestre, Givelcestre, and Ivelchester. At the Conquest
it was a borough with 107 burgesses and a Wednesday
