Secret Frome

The town of Frome, in the heart of the ancient royal forest of Selwood that straddles the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset, was once renowned for its prosperous woollen cloth industry and is now noted as an emerging provincial centre for the arts and crafts. The town and its environs has a fascinating and little known history. Here we will discover stories of medieval kings and bishops, political intrigue and judicial murder, religious dissent and rebellion, battles and sieges. Here too we will find eminent philosophers, scientists, theologians, and witch-finders. As well as tales of witchcraft, the dark, forbidding, bandit-filled woods around Frome have spawned legends of spirits and demonic black dogs. Tales are still told of big cats – allegedly escapees from the Longleat estate on the edge of the town! In recent times UFOs, it is said, have filled the night-time skies above the prehistoric earthworks on Cley Hill. At nearby Rode a horrible act of infanticide in the mid-nineteenth century was investigated by a London detective, the man who became the model for the fictional detectives invented by Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan-Doyle. Daniel Defoe is just one of several great writers who visited and wrote about the town, and its artistic legacy includes the famous bronze statue of Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, on Westminster Bridge, cast by J.W. Singer & Sons of Frome. Fully illustrated throughout, this book investigates many of Frome's secrets and invites the reader to discover the lesser-known facts and enjoy the town's hidden history.