Hatch Beauchamp is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated 5 miles (8.0km) south east of Taunton. At the 2021 census, the parish had a population of 626.
The manor of "Hache" dates from Saxon times and became the caput of a feudal barony after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, when it was granted to Robert, Count of Mortain (d.1095) by his half-brother William the Conqueror. Hatch Beauchamp is described under the title of Terra Comitis Mortoniensis ("lands of the Count/Earl of Mortain") as follows: "Robert holds Hache of the Earl: 8 acres (32,000m2) of meadow, 50 acres (200,000m2) of wood; arable, six carucates; in demesne, two carucates, and three servants, eleven villanes, four cottagers with three ploughs." This Robert who was the vassal of the Earl was Robert FitzIvo. Six years later in 1092, the manor was in the hands of Robert of Beauchamp, who may have been the same person. The Beauchamp family were loyal allies of William the Conqueror, and had been granted large estates in Somerset and Bedfordshire.
Hatch Beauchamp is noted around 1300 as having a market every Thursday, but this has long since vanished. Like most of the South West of England, the area was staunchly Royalist in the English Civil War, although the local town of Taunton was a Parliamentary stronghold, and was besieged.
The village today contains an inn, and a manor house, Hatch Court, built around 1750, in the Palladian architectural style. Before this, a great house had existed on the same site since the Middle Ages, but had fallen into ruin by the 17th century. The inn dates from around the mid-18th century.
Hatch Beauchamp is the burial place of Colonel John Rouse Merriott Chard, VC, RE (21 December 1847– 1 November 1897) a British soldier who won the Victoria Cross for his role in the defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879.
In 2009, a contemporary art gallery named CLOSE Gallery was established in Hatch Beauchamp.
Historically, the parish was part of Taunton Rural District from 1894 until 1974, when it became part of Taunton Deane district. In 2019, Taunton Deane merged with West Somerset to form Somerset West and Taunton, and in 2023 the districts of Somerset were merged with Somerset County Council to form the current unitary authority.
Hatch Court, which was built around 1755 by Thomas Prowse for John Collins, contains a small military museum commemorating the life and work of the renowned Brigadier Hamilton Gault, great-uncle of the present owner, MP for Taunton, and member of the Quebec Chamber of Commerce, as well as a decorated Boer War hero. Hamilton Gault was the founder of the British Empire's last privately raised regiment, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
The regiment saw action in both World Wars, and were the first Allied force to enter Amsterdam in early 1945. They were more recently in action against the Taliban in Afghanistan, as part of Operation Anaconda in 2002.
Religious sites
In Hatch Beauchamp the NormanChurch of St John the Baptist has a crenellated 3-stage tower from about 1500. It displays crocketed pinnacles, a pierced parapet with quatrefoils and arcades in the merlons and gargoyles. The church has diagonal buttresses to support the tower whereas, in other churches within this group, angle buttresses are the norm. The buttresses, which finish in the belfry stage, support small detached shafts which rise upwards to form the outside subsidiary pinnacles of each corner cluster.
The Chard Branch Line as it was in 2010, entering the now sealed tunnel immediately prior to Hatch Beauchamp station
In the Victorian era, Hatch was connected to the national railway grid in 1866 as part of the Bristol and Exeter Railway. The village had a chalet-style station, known as Hatch, on the Chard Branch Line which closed in 1963. In 1962, following the Beeching Report, railway services ceased to operate completely, although the railway station remains.
References
↑Batten, J. "The Barony of Beauchamp of Somerset", in: Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 36(1891), pp. 20–59
↑Sanders, I. J. English Baronies, Oxford, 1960, p. 51
↑"Taunton RD". A vision of Britain Through Time. University of Portsmouth. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
↑"Key Statistics". Office for National Statistics. Tables KS001 (Usual resident population) and KS016 (Household spaces and accommodation type). Retrieved 23 June 2025.
↑"Key Statistics". Office for National Statistics. Table KS101EW (Usual resident population) and Table KS105EW (Household composition). Retrieved 23 June 2025.
↑"Parish Profiles". 2021 United Kingdom census. Office for National Statistics. GSS E04008797 (Hatch Beauchamp parish) in tables PP001 (households) and PP002 (sex). Retrieved 5 August 2024.
↑Fox, Michael J. (1999). Railways in and around Taunton: Somerset & North Devon. (Scenes from the Past: 34). Stockport: Foxline Publishing. ISBN1-870119-58-4. pp. 38–43.
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