rest. The crypt beneath the chancel is of much
interest. The single central pillar supports a fine groined roof. The
church has few interesting details, but the magnificent lectern with
its undecipherable inscription and a couple of brasses will be
noticed. There are but few old houses in the centre of the town.

[Ilustration: YEOVIL CHURCH.]

The usual excuse of disastrous fires is offered, and one did occur in
1449 when 117 houses were destroyed, but more probably ruthlessness on
the part of eighteenth-century owners is responsible for this dearth.
In Middle Street is the George Inn, an old half-timbered house, and,
opposite, the still older "Castle," said to have been a chantry house.
The Woborne Almshouses were founded about 1476, but no portion of the
early buildings remain.

One of the most delightful views in South Somerset is that from
Summerhouse Hill, about half a mile away; another, magnificent in its
extent, can be had from the Mudford road that runs in a north-easterly
direction. The great central plain is spread before one with distant
Glastonbury Tor on the horizon. The environs of Yeovil are delightful.
One of the best short excursions is to East Coker, the birthplace of
William Dampier, two miles to the south. The church and Court are
beautifully placed above the old village and a picturesque group of
almshouses line the upward way to them.

Five miles north of Yeovil on the Fosse Way, where a branch road
leaves the ancient Bath-Exeter highway for Dorchester, stands the old
Roman town of Ilchester, or Ivelchester. An unimportant one at that,
for the Romans made but little attempt to build in the wild and remote
country that was to be the home of an obscure Saxon tribe--the
Somersetas. Ilchester to-day is strangely uninteresting and we have to
depend entirely upon the imagination for even a plan of the Roman
town, of which no vestiges remain. Possibly these disappeared during
the Civil War when the town was fortified. The church has an octagonal
tower with the rare feature that its sides are the same form from base
to parapet. The older portions of the building are Early English, but
it has suffered from a good deal of pulling about. This is the only
one remaining of the five churches of which Ilchester could once
boast. A much maltreated market cross stands in the main street with a
sundial stuck on the summit of its shaft. Otherwise there is little to
detain the stranger. Roger Bacon, philosopher a