Radstock has been settled since the
Iron Age. Its importance grew with the construction of the
Fosse Way, the
Roman road that ran along what is now part of the
A367 in Radstock. As a result, the town was known as
Stoche at the time of the
Domesday Book of 1086, meaning
the stockade by the Roman road, from the
Old English stoc. The
rad part of the name is believed to relate to red; the soil locally is reddish
marl. The parish of Radstock was part of the
Kilmersdon Hundred, The
Great Western Railway, and the
Somerset and Dorset Railway, established stations and
marshalling yards in the town. Radstock was the terminus for the southern branch of the
Somerset Coal Canal, which was turned into a tramway in 1815. It then became a central point for railway development, with large coal depots, wash houses, workshops and a gas works. As part of the development of the Wiltshire, Somerset and Weymouth Railway, an line from Radstock to
Frome was built to carry the coal. In the 1870s the broad-gauge line was converted to standard gauge and connected to the Bristol and North Somerset Line which linked the town to the
Great Western Railway. The Radstock Railway Land covers the old marshalling yards and sheds and comprises an area of approximately 8.8 hectares of land which is the subject of ongoing planning and development applications to redevelop the area. The town is close to the site of the
Radstock rail accident, a rail crash that took place on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, on 7 August 1876. Two trains collided on a single track section, resulting in the deaths of 15 passengers. The last passenger train services in Radstock closed in 1966, and the last
coal mines closed in 1973.
Manufacturing industries such as
printing,
binding and
packaging provide some local employment. More recently Radstock has become a
commuter town for the nearby cities of
Bath and
Bristol, leading to traffic problems at peak hours.
Coal mining In 1763, coal was discovered in Radstock and mining began in the area. In, 1896 the pits were owned by the Trustee of Frances, late Countess of Waldegrave. The
Waldegrave family had been
Lords of the Manor of Radstock since the
English Civil War. Between 1800 and 1850, Ludlows, Middle Pit, Old Pit, Smallcombe, Tynings, and Wellsway mines opened. There were also a series of pits east of the town at
Writhlington and under different ownership. In 1896, they were owned by Writhlington, Huish and Foxcote Colliery Co.; a new company, Writhlington Collieries Co., was set up to run the mines. The Upper and Lower Writhlington, Huish and Foxcote were all merged into one colliery. The spoil heap is a now
Writhlington Site of Special Scientific Interest. The site and includes 3,000 tons of Upper Carboniferous spoil from which more than 1,400 insect fossils have been recovered. These include
Phalangiotarbida, and
Graeophonus. and the world's earliest known
Damselfly. It is a
Geological Conservation Review Site. The complex geology and narrow seams made the coal extraction difficult; three underground explosions, in 1893, 1895 and 1908, were amongst the first attributable solely to airborne coal dust. Tonnage increased throughout the 19th century, reaching a peak around 1901, when there were 79 separate collieries and annual production was 1.25 million tons per annum. However, due to local geological difficulties and manpower shortages, decline soon took hold and the number of pits reduced from 30 at the beginning of the 20th century to 14 by the mid-thirties, 12 at
nationalisation to create
National Coal Board on 1 January 1947, 5 by 1959 and none after 1973. ==Governance==