East Coker

Coordinates: 50°54′36″N 2°38′55″W / 50.9101°N 2.6485°W / 50.9101; -2.6485

East Coker is a village and civil parish in the South Somerset district of Somerset, England. Its nearest town is Yeovil, which is situated two miles north from the village. The village has a population of 1,667. The parish includes the hamlet of Vole.

History

A Roman villa was discovered in East Coker in the 18th century and subsequent excavation has discovered artefacts including a mosaic, however further work is needed to fully identify the plan of the building.

In the Domesday Survey of 1086 the villages of West and East Coker were known as Cocre.

The parish was part of the hundred of Houndsborough.

In 1645, soon after the English Civil War, 70 people in the village died of the plague.

In 2011 South Somerset Council published a plan for local housing which included a proposal for the construction of 3,700 new houses on land between East Coker and Yeovil. Local opposition has been vocal. It included an application, supported by Andrew Motion, for World Heritage Site listing based on associations with T. S. Eliot who wrote the poem East Coker, the second of his "Four Quartets" in 1940 after a visit to the village.

East Coker (poem)

East Coker is the second poem of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. It was started as a way for Eliot to get back into writing poetry and was modelled after Burnt Norton. It was finished during early 1940 and printed for the Easter edition of the 1940 New English Weekly. The title refers to a small community that was directly connected to Eliot's ancestry and was home to a church that was later to house Eliot's ashes.

The poem discusses time and disorder within nature that is the result of humanity following only science and not the divine. Leaders are described as materialistic and unable to understand reality. The only way for mankind to find salvation is through pursuing the divine by looking inwards and realizing that humanity is interconnected. Only then can people understand the universe.

Background

In 1939 T.S Eliot thought that he would be unable to continue writing poetry. In an attempt to see if he could still, he started copying aspects of Burnt Norton and substituted another place: East Coker, a place that Eliot visited in 1937 with the St Michael's Church, where his ashes were later kept. The place held a particular importance to Eliot and his family because Andrew Eliott, Eliot's ancestor, left the town to travel to America in 1669. A plaque dedicated to Eliot and his ashes reads "In my beginning is my end. Of your kindness, pray for the soul of Thomas Stearns Eliot, poet. In my end is my beginning."