page_title: Evershot
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Evershot / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Site of Evershot station, 1995. View southward, towards Dorchester and Weymouth: ex-GWR (London, Bristol etc.) - Westbury - Yeovil - Dorchester - Weymouth main line. The station was closed 3/10/66 and the line singled about that time. This was the summit of a stiff climb in both directions.
context_page_description: Evershot is a village and civil parish in the county of Dorset in southwest England, situated approximately 7 miles south of Yeovil in Somerset. It is the second highest village in the county at 175 metres above sea-level. Evershot parish encompasses part of the nearby hamlet of Holywell, 1.25 miles east of Evershot village. Dorset County Council's latest estimate of the parish population is 210. The village has connections with the writer Thomas Hardy.
context_section_description: It is hard to trace the history of the village before the Norman conquest, but it is believed Evershot began as a boar pen approximately 1,100 years ago. Due to its close proximity to the River Frome a settlement was built nearby.
  The oldest remains to be found in Evershot are three standing stones named the Three Dumb Sisters, now a bench. Local legend says that these are three sisters turned to stone for dancing on the Sabbath. It is believed that they originate from a plot of land close to the village, but it is not known when they were built or moved. They are possibly Bronze Age in origin.
  In 1628 Christopher Stickland founded Stickland's School "...for reading, writing and grammar... for the instruction and breeding of men children ... a schoolmaster there for ever to train up, instruct and teach the same child in good learning, true religion and the fear of God."
  In the 18th and 19th centuries economic activities in the village included tanning, turnery and coopery. Local timber supplies provided raw materials for these industries, such as oak bark for tanning. Products such as tanned hides, bowls, ladles and cheese vats were sent for sale as far away as Bristol, and subsidiary trades evolved to support the village's population, which reached 600 in 1851.
  In 1857 the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway (later the Great Western Railway) opened a line through the parish with a station for the village at Holywell, though difficulties were encountered in constructing a tunnel through the area's greensand.
  A fire in the village in 1865 destroyed eighteen buildings and left more than a hundred people homeless. Three fire engines were required to extinguish the blaze. It is likely that, had there not been the river nearby, the entire village would have been destroyed. Not a single person was killed during the 'Great Fire of Evershot,' and a considerable amount was raised to help the homeless (£70 in two days, the equivalent of over £3000 today).
caption: The site of Evershot's station at Holywell
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "157", "Image YResolution": "157", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:05:17 19:03:49", "Image ExifOffset": "172", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "310", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5908", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2362", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1379"}