A chance to own a unique piece of Frome history is on offer from Frome Society for Local Study.
The Society’s latest publication will be a limited-edition atlas of a rare nineteenth-century map of Frome Selwood parish. It will be published in early 2023 but is available to advance subscribers at a reduced price until the end of 2022.
The map covers an area of four miles by 6.7 miles and was drawn up by master surveyor and mapmaker Jeremiah Cruse in 1813. There are over 3,000 numbered plots of land marked on the map, each described in the original survey book, with details of size and cultivation, proprietors, tenure, and occupiers.
The book, certain to become a collector’s item, as well as an invaluable source of information for those interested in the town’s history and populace, will be priced at £45 when published next year. However, the Society is making it available to advance subscribers at the reduced price of £35 (plus p&p, where required) until the end of 2022.
The map also includes fields, forests, farms, and hamlets, along with mills, factories, bridges, and turnpikes, as well as many other features in impressive detail.
More details about the map and the background to its creation were revealed by Dr Pat Smith at the Society’s recent Katharine Ashworth memorial lecture.
Dr Smith explained how the survey was commissioned by St John’s Church and illustrated this with many map details showing the town and parish as they were more than 200 years ago. She also gave examples of larger landowners, ranging from peers to gentry and yeoman farmers, who collectively helped shape the town.
Dr Smith said, “It’s all about people and places and how together they created the historic fabric of Frome and the countryside around.”
The map is over 11 feet high by nearly 7 feet wide and these days is rarely seen by the public. After being given to the Frome Society in the 1960s, who passed it to Frome Museum, it is now held at the Somerset Heritage Centre at Taunton for safe-keeping.
Therefore, to bring it to a wider audience, the Society is publishing the map as an atlas of over 100 full colour plates, at the original scale, together with a transcript of the survey book.
Full details are available on the Frome Society website www.fsls.org.uk.
