On Monday, July 18, the monthly parish council meeting was held in the Memorial Hall.

Wiveliscombe Community First Responders kindly ran two first aid and defibrillator courses in June where 18 residents completed this life-saving training. A donation to Wiveliscombe First Responders was approved at the meeting.

The chance of survival from a cardiac arrest is directly proportional to the time in minutes that defibrillation commences with a 90 per cent survival rate where defibrillation occurs within one minute falling to 10 per cent survival rate where defibrillation does not commence until nine minutes after the arrest. For this reason, Nynehead Parish Council is urging all residents to have a handy list of local neighbours who could be contacted in an emergency. Even if a neighbour does not help with the resuscitation, they will be needed to collect the defibrillator, help direct the paramedics and give moral support. A ‘buddy group’ list, with phone numbers of neighbours, kept in a prominent place can be a real life-saver.

As there is currently a vacancy for the footpath liaison officer for Nynehead, members agreed to the suggestion from Ben Tingay for residents to report sections of path that are starting to get overgrown to Jeremy Toye via Nynehead Now on WhatsApp. Mr Toye will then pass on these messages to Mr Tingay or Steve Wadham who can then update when cleared. Other issues such as damage to stiles can be directed to Somerset Council or a blockage from a fallen tree can be directed to the landowner via the parish council. The parish council is very grateful to Mr Tingay who routinely strims sections that get overgrown and Mr Wadham who clears the longer field sections with the tractor and flail mower.

Emergency Plan for Nynehead: It was agreed that ‘hub’ volunteers will be sought for Upper, Lower and East Nynehead, Hornshay, Poole and Chipley. If an emergency were to occur, these hub volunteers would be asked to communicate any necessary actions required of their local residents, in line with the emergency plan.

For some time all parish and town councils have being encouraged to change to a gov.uk email and website address. Confirmation of the new gov.uk domain for the website and clerk’s email has been received. Mrs R Ball Risk together with the web developer will work to change www.nynehead.org to the new address. The clerk will work to change all accounts to the new clerk’s email address: [email protected]

The meeting concluded with the usual parish council administration.

The next parish council meeting is on Monday, October 20, at the Nynehead Memorial Hall commencing at 7.30pm.

The Friends of The Museum of Somerset (FOTMOS) were pleased to welcome to their August meeting Mary Siraut, who is the editor of the Victoria County History of Somerset. Her subject for the evening was ‘Booze, Blood and Baskets: electing Taunton’s MPs.’

In the 18th Century, only certain men were qualified to vote in parliamentary elections. Some of these were called ‘potwallopers’ as they were householders with their own fireplace where they could cook their food. They would travel to an appointed place to declare their votes – secret ballots did not come in until the 19th Century.

At that time, a rotten or pocket borough was a parliamentary constituency which had a very small electorate, and a seat in the House of Commons could be won completely out of proportion to its population, e.g. the South West counties provided a quarter of the MPs (two per constituency), whereas many new towns were inadequately represented. Manchester, for instance, which had expanded rapidly during the Industrial Revolution, was merely part of the larger county constituency of Lancashire and did not elect its own MPs. Local gentry were preferred as candidates, for example in Taunton the Portman and Hammet families.

MPs were little interested in supporting their electors; they wanted the patronage and opportunity which came with the position, and they would often bribe to obtain this – e.g. buying potwallopers beer in alehouses, (Hogarth’s cartoons often depicted the results of this) as well as with money. Parliamentary seats could also be inherited.

The year 1754 saw a very violent election in Taunton, when 700 voters were disqualified and the result caused rioting locally, during which two people were killed. There was not another contested election in Taunton for almost twenty years, and during that time the Taunton Market House Society was set up with the aim of preventing the bad blood of a contested election, and to spend money on improving the town that would have otherwise been spent on campaigning.

By the 19th century, potwallopers preferred to be offered tea and coffee (luxury goods in those days) rather than money for their votes. 1832 saw the introduction of the Electoral Reform Act aimed at improving electoral probity.

By 1850 support for a secret ballot was growing, and in 1872 Taunton was chosen to show how it worked. By the 1890s constituencies were returning just one MP each.

The next meeting of FOTMOS will be on Tuesday, September 16, at 7.30pm, when John Young will give a talk on Sir Edward Burnett Tyler (1832-1917). Guests are always welcome. For details, please email [email protected]