Street

Sister cities

• Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon
• Isny im Allgäu

History

The settlement's earliest known name is Lantokay, meaning the Llan (a sacred enclosure) of Kea, a Celtic saint. The place-name 'Street' is first attested in Anglo-Saxon charters from 725 and 971, where it appears as Stret. It appears as Strete juxta Glastone in a charter from 1330 formerly in the British Museum. The word is the Old English straet meaning 'Roman road'. The centre of Street is where Lower Leigh hamlet was, and the road called Middle Leigh and the community called Overleigh are to the south of the village. In the 12th century, a causeway from Glastonbury was built to transport stone from what is now Street for rebuilding Glastonbury Abbey after a major fire in 1184. It consists of thin blue argillaceous, or clay-like, limestone. The Blue Lias contains many fossils, especially ammonites. Fossils discovered in the lias include many ichthyosaurs, one of which has been adopted as the badge of Street. There is a display of Street fossils in the Natural History Museum in London. The churchyard of the Parish Church has yielded one Iron Age coin, however the origin and significance is unclear, A number of Roman pottery fragments, now in the Museum of Somerset. Remains of Roman villas exist on the south edge of Street near Marshalls Elm and Ivythorn. Buried remains of a Roman road were excavated in the early 20th century on the flood-plain of the river Brue between Glastonbury and Street. Llan or Lan is a common place name element in Brythonic languages such as Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric, and possibly Pictish. The original meaning of llan in Welsh is "an enclosed piece of land", but it later evolved to mean the parish surrounding a church. One biography of St Gildas has the saint spending some time in Glastonbury Abbey, and moving to a site by the river,…

Geography

The River Brue marks the boundary with Glastonbury, to the north of Street. At the time of King Arthur, the Brue formed a lake just south of the hilly ground on which Glastonbury stands. This lake is one of the locations suggested by Arthurian legend as the home of the Lady of the Lake. Pomparles Bridge stood at the western end of this lake, guarding Glastonbury from the south, and it was here that Sir Bedivere is thought to have thrown the sword Excalibur into the waters after King Arthur fell at the Battle of Camlann. The old bridge was replaced by a reinforced concrete arch bridge in 1911. Before the 13th century, the direct route to the sea at Highbridge was blocked by gravel banks and peat near Westhay. The course of the river partially encircled Glastonbury from the south, around the western side (through Beckery), and then north through the Panborough-Bleadney gap in the Wedmore-Wookey Hills, to join the River Axe just north of Bleadney. This route made it difficult for the officials of Glastonbury Abbey to transport produce from their outlying estates to the Abbey, and when the valley of the river Axe was in flood it backed up to flood Glastonbury itself. Sometime between 1230 and 1250, a new channel was constructed westwards into Meare Pool north of Meare, and further westwards to Mark Moor. The Brue Valley Living Landscape is a conservation project based on the Somerset Levels and Moors and managed by the Somerset Wildlife Trust. The Walton and Ivythorn Hills biological Site of Special Scientific Interest south of the village lies at the end of the Polden Hills. This site is owned and managed by the National Trust. Walton and Ivythorn Hills support a complex mosaic of semi-natural habitats which includes unimproved calcareous grassland, dense and scattered…

Most-observed species

• Carrion Crow

  Corvus corone Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  6,045
• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  6,016
• European Robin

  Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  5,820
• Great Egret

  Ardea alba Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  5,787
• Mute Swan

  Cygnus olor (J.F.Gmelin, 1789) · Aves
  5,291
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  5,143
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  5,107
• Meadow Brown

  Maniola jurtina (Linnaeus, 1758) · Insecta
  4,978

Most recent

• M 3.4 — 2023-02-24
  1 km ENE of Brynmawr, United Kingdom
• M 3.4 — 2019-12-05
  1 km ESE of Taunton, United Kingdom
• M 3 — 2019-05-19
  7 km ESE of Swanage, United Kingdom
• M 2.7 — 2011-06-23
  4 km WSW of Bovey Tracey, United Kingdom
• M 2.5 — 2006-08-14
  1 km E of North Petherton, United Kingdom
• M 3.7 — 2004-01-29
  2 km E of North Petherton, United Kingdom