The first mention of Huntspill is around 796 AD, when the area was granted to Glastonbury Abbey by Aethelmund, a nobleman under King Offa of Mercia.

Huntspill was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Honspil, meaning ‘Huna’s creek’ possibly from the Old English personal name Huna and from the Celtic pwll.  An alternative origin is from Hun’s Pill in Old English, meaning a port on a tidal inlet, or pill, belonging to a Saxon lord, or hun.

The mouth of the River Brue had an extensive harbour in Roman and Saxon times, before silting up in the medieval period.  The village was flooded in the Bristol Channel floods of 1607.   Huntspill ‘River’ is actually a canal dug during WW2, firstly to supply fresh water to the Ordinance Factory for munitions manufacture and secondly to drain the peat moors to stop them flooding on an annual basis. Therefore its official name is the ‘Huntspill Drainage Canal’. It was dug in part by Italian prisoners-of-war. In fact, one of our Parish Councillor’s ancestors (Gordon Boyer) was one of the carpenters that worked on its construction.

 

 

 

Shunter D2119 runs past Huntspill box at 3 o’clock one afternoon, on its way from Bridgwater to Highbridge to collect the milk from Bason Bridge. It returned at about 3.30. 16.6.65