MONTACUTE, a parish in the hundred of
HULL, county of SOMERSET, 4 miles (w. by N.)
Yeovil, containing 973 inhabitants. The living ig a
discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Wells, and
diocese of Bath and Wells, rated in the king's books at
£8. 10., endowed with £200 private benefaction, and
£200 royal bounty, and in the patronage of Henry
Phelips, Esq. The church is dedicated to St. Catherine.
There are places of worship for Baptists and Wesleyan
Methodists. This place, in the time of the Saxons, was
called Logaresburch, which is said to have been changed
for its present name by William, Earl of Moreton, who,
soon after the Conquest, built a strong castle here, on
the sharp point of a hill. On the same ridge is a doublemoated
Roman camp, called Hampden Hill, about three
miles in circuit, the north-west part of which is further
defended by a high rampart, partly of stone, enclosing
twenty acres, within which many Roman coins have
been found. Several large cisterns have been discovered
in a morass below; and in the neighbourhood are
extensive quarries of freestone, where materials have
been furnished for building many of the churches in
this and the adjoining counties. A priory, in honour
of St. Peter and St. Paul, founded here by William the
Conqueror, was, in the reign of Henry I., amply, endowed,
and granted to the monks of Cluny, by the Earl
of Moreton; its revenue, at the dissolution, was estimated
at £524. 11. 8.