Horrington is a collection of three small villages (South Horrington, East Horrington and West Horrington) in the parish of

St Cuthbert Out St Cuthbert Out, sometimes Wells St Cuthbert Out, is a civil parish in the county of Somerset, England. It entirely surrounds (but does not include) the city and parish of Wells as an enclave. According to the 2021 census it had a population ...

or east of Wells,

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

, England. South Horrington is a relatively new village created in the late 1990s from the defunct

Mendip Hospital Mendip Hospital opened in 1848 as the Somerset and Bath Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Horrington, near Wells, Somerset, Wells, in the English county of Somerset. As a county asylum, it was replaced by Tone Vale Hospital in 1897, but it continued to h ...

that was closed in 1991. The original hospital opened on 1 March 1848 and was built to house 400 patients and staff. The principal architect was

George Gilbert Scott Sir George Gilbert Scott (13 July 1811 – 27 March 1878), largely known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he ...

, who is better known for his designs of

St Pancras Station St Pancras railway station (), officially known since 2007 as London St Pancras International, is a major central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is the terminus for Eurostar services from Belgium, F ...

and the

Albert Memorial The Albert Memorial is a Gothic Revival Ciborium (architecture), ciborium in Kensington Gardens, London, designed and dedicated to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort, Prince Albert of Great Britain. Located directly north of the Royal Albert Ha ...

in London. His work has largely been retained and the main buildings have been converted into a range of flats and houses. Newer houses have been built on the original

kitchen garden The traditional kitchen garden, vegetable garden, also known as a potager (from the French ) or in Scotland a kailyaird, is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden – the ornamental plants and lawn areas. It is used for grow ...

s and orchards although the front grounds remain largely unaltered. The nearby

Maesbury Railway Cutting Maesbury Railway Cutting () is a 2 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest between East Horrington and Gurney Slade in Somerset, notified in 1995. It was part of the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. This is a Geological Co ...

of the

Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway The Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway (S&DJR, also known as the S&D, S&DR or SDJR), was an English railway line Joint railway, jointly owned by the Midland Railway (MR) and the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) that grew to connect Bat ...

exposes approximately 135 metres of strata representing the middle and upper Lower

Limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

Shales Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

and the basal

Black Rock Limestone Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''Psyc ...

. Both formations are of early

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a Geologic time scale, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the ...

( Courceyan) age. William Catcott, born 27 Feb 1808 in West Horrington was known as the Baker Poet. He had a book of his poems called "Morning Musings" published which was about the local Mendip Hills and his family. He became a baker in Wells, Somerset and died on 13 Nov 1870. The local paper carried an obituary. Wells Cricket Club are based in South Horrington. The former church of St John at East Horrington was built in 1838 to the designs of Richard Carver.

Gallery

File:southhorrington-evening.JPG, South Horrington evening shot File:West-horrington-str.jpg, West Horrington from Hill End

References

External links

{{Commons category-inline, Horrington Villages in Mendip District