in
Taunton Castle 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 Book of 1086 the villages of West and East Coker were known as
Cocre. The parish was part of the
hundred of
Houndsborough. The Manor of East Coker was held by the Courtenay family of
Powderham from 1306 until 1591. They built
Coker Court as the
manor house which was eventually sold to
Edward Phelips, a wealthy landowner in the region. Upon Edward's death, the manor was left to his trustee, William Helyar, whose family it descended into for the next 300 years. After the last Helyar heir died in the first half of the 20th century, the lordship was acquired by a descendant of the Courtenay family who is the current lord of the manor. 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. ==Governance==