page_title: Taunton
section_title: Landmarks
hierarchical_section_title: Taunton / Landmarks
caption_attribution_description: English: Gray's Almshouses, Taunton. 17th century. Seen from the rear garden, looking NW.
context_page_description: Taunton is a town in Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. It has over 1,000 years of religious and military history, including a 10th-century monastery. Taunton Castle has origins in the Anglo Saxon period. It was later the site of a priory. The Normans then built a stone castle that belonged to the Bishops of Winchester. Today's reconstructed buildings are the inner ward, housing the Museum of Somerset and Somerset Military Museum. Events include the Second Cornish uprising of 1497, when Perkin Warbeck marched a 6000-strong army to Taunton, most of which surrendered to Henry VII on 4 October 1497. On 20 June 1685 the Duke of Monmouth crowned himself King of England at Taunton during a rebellion that culminated in the Battle of Sedgemoor. Judge Jeffreys then lived in the town during the Bloody Assizes held in the Great Hall of the Castle. The Grand Western Canal reached Taunton in 1839 and the railway in 1842. Today Taunton holds Musgrove Park Hospital, the Somerset County Cricket Club's County Ground]] and the headquarters of 40 Commando, Royal Marines. The Taunton flower show has been held in Vivary Park since 1866.
context_section_description: Gray's Almshouses in East Street were founded by Robert Gray in 1615 for poor single women. The red brick buildings bear the arms of Robert Gray, dated 1635, and another arms of the Merchant Tailors. A small room is used as a chapel and has original benches and a painted ceiling. It has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building. St Margaret's Almshouses was founded as a leper colony in the 12th century. Glastonbury Abbey acquired the patronage of the hospital in the late 13th century and rebuilt it as almshouses in the early 16th century. From 1612 to 1938 the building continued to be used as almshouses, cared for by a local parish. In the late 1930s it was converted into a hall of offices for the Rural Community Council and accommodation for the Somerset Guild of Craftsmen. It later fell into disrepair, until the Somerset Buildings Preservation Trust with Falcon Rural Housing purchased and restored it for use as four dwellings of social housing. It is a grade II* listed building.
  The grounds of Taunton Castle include the Somerset County Museum and The Castle Hotel, which incorporates the Castle Bow archway. With the municipal buildings they form a three-sided group just beyond the Castle Bow archway from Fore Street. The centre of the square is a car park, and the plain brick Mecca Bingo hall makes up the west side of it.
  The frontage of the Fore Street Tudor Tavern (now a branch of Caffè Nero) dates from 1578, but the rest of the building is thought to date from the 14th century.
  The area by the river north of the centre is surrounded by Morrisons supermarket, retirement housing and the Brewhouse Theatre. Towards the centre, is the Zinc Nightclub, Bridge Street and Goodlands Gardens. Currently a regeneration programme is being executed north of Bridge Street, which will include redeveloping the County Cricket Ground. The cricket ground hosted large open-air music concerts for Elton John in 2006 and 2012 and for Rod Stewart in 2014.
caption: Gray's Almshouses
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix A607", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Digital Camera FinePix A607    Ver1.24", "Image DateTime": "2005:09:10 15:04:07", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "254", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1254", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10254", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/150", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Action", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:09:10 15:04:07", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:09:10 15:04:07", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "36/5", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "237/50", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "57/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1106", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "3827", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "3827", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}