| Castle Street | |
|---|---|
 Commemorative plaque | |
  Location within Somerset | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Georgian |
| Town or city | Bridgwater |
| Country | England |
| Coordinates | 51°07′46″N3°00′09″W / 51.1295°N 3.0025°W Coordinates: 51°07′46″N3°00′09″W / 51.1295°N 3.0025°W |
| Construction started | 1723 |
| Completed | 1728 |
| Client | James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Benjamin Holloway |
Castle Street in Bridgwater, Somerset, England was built in the 1720s, on a site previously occupied by Bridgwater Castle, by Benjamin Holloway or Fort and Shepherd, the Duke's London surveyors for James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos. It was originally called Chandos Street. [1] Many of the buildings have been designated as Grade I Listed buildings.
Bridgwater is a large historic market town and civil parish in Somerset, England. Its population currently stands at around 35,886 as of 2011. Bridgwater is at the edge of the Somerset Levels, in level and well-wooded country. The town lies along both sides of the River Parrett, and has been a major in-land port and trading centre since the industrial revolution. Most of its industrial bases still stand today. Its larger neighbour Taunton, is linked to Bridgwater via a canal, the M5 motorway and the GWR railway line.
Somerset is a county in South West England which borders Gloucestershire and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east and Devon to the south-west. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel, its coastline facing southeastern Wales. Its traditional border with Gloucestershire is the River Avon. Somerset's county town is Taunton.
Bridgwater Castle was a castle in the town of Bridgwater, Somerset, England.
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The buildings are made of red and yellow Flemish-bond brick, with moulded stone coping to the parapet, and follow very similar lines. They form an important group, unusual for their scale and ambition outside London's West End. [2]
The buildings close to the quay on the River Parrett were built for the merchants who managed trade through the port, with the first bridge having been constructed in 1200 AD. [3] Quays were built in 1424; with another quay, the Langport slip, being built in 1488 upstream of the town bridge. [3] The river was navigable, with care, to Bridgwater town bridge by 400–500 tonne vessels. [4] By trans-shipping into barges at the town bridge the Parrett was navigable as far as Langport and (via the River Yeo) to Ilchester. Many of the buildings still have undercroft vaults, some of which were used by the Customs House which was once at the lower end of Castle Street and led to the naming of Bond Street which adjoins Castle Street. [5]
The River Parrett flows through the counties of Dorset and Somerset in South West England, from its source in the Thorney Mills springs in the hills around Chedington in Dorset. Flowing northwest through Somerset and the Somerset Levels to its mouth at Burnham-on-Sea, into the Bridgwater Bay nature reserve on the Bristol Channel, the Parrett and its tributaries drain an area of 660 square miles (1,700 km2) – about 50 per cent of Somerset's land area, with a population of 300,000.
Langport is a small town and civil parish in Somerset, England, 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Somerton in the South Somerset district. The parish has a population of 1,081. Langport is contiguous with Huish Episcopi, a separate parish that includes much of the town's outskirts.
The River Yeo, also known as the River Ivel, is a tributary of the River Parrett in north Dorset and south Somerset, England.
Castle Street was used as a location in the 1963 film Tom Jones .
Tom Jones is a 1963 British adventure-comedy film, an adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), starring Albert Finney as the titular hero. It was one of the most critically acclaimed and popular comedies of its time, winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film was directed by Tony Richardson and the screenplay was adapted by playwright John Osborne. The film has an unusual comic style: the opening sequence is performed in the manner of a silent film, and characters sometimes break the fourth wall, often by looking directly into the camera and addressing the audience, and going so far as to have the character of Tom Jones suddenly appearing to notice the camera and covering the lens with his hat. Another unusual feature of the movie is the presence of an unseen narrator voiced by Micheál Mac Liammóir. Mock-serious commentaries between certain scenes deplore the action of several characters as well as the weaknesses in the human character and provides a poetic denouement for the movie.
In 2008, during sewer renovation work under Castle Street, a section of the curtain wall of the castle and a tunnel used to transport goods from the port were discovered. [6] [7]
