Chedington is a small village and civil parish in west Dorset, England, situated near the A356 road southeast of Crewkerne in Somerset. Dorset County Council estimate that in 2013 the population of the civil parish was 130. It is administered as part of Parrett and Axe Parish Council. The village lies between the headwaters of the River Parrett, to the north, and the River Axe to the south. The Parrett flows in a northerly direction to the Bristol Channel at Bridgwater, whilst the Axe flows south to the English Channel at Axmouth, thus locating Chedington on the watershed of England's South West Peninsula. Chedington early references The name of the village is Old English for ‘the farm of a man named Cedd’, but it was not included in the Domesday Book, being first mentioned over 100 years later in 1194. It grew up around Chedington Court, although it was the neighbouring village of South Perrott that provided the tradesmen needed to service the estate. Chedington Court itself was completely rebuilt in 1840 by the then owner William Trevelyan Cox, as a flamboyant, Jacobean-style mansion where curvilinear gables feature prominently. Across the narrow thoroughfare, directly opposite to Chedington Court, is the 16th-century Manor Farm, much altered in the 17th c. The porch of this dressed-stone building, bears the inscription "Thomas Warren 1634". Lower Farm, house 250 yards S.W. of the church, is of two storeys built in the 17th century. As John Marius Wilson (1805–1885) put it in the Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870-2, most of Chedington’s eminences command superb views, with Somerset’s Mendip Hills and Hamdon Hills, from which much of Chedington itself is hewn, to the North-East. "Tucked into the deep hills of western Dorset, just off the major tourist routes across England, Chedington is so small that its handful of cottages doesn't even appear on some large-scale maps. Here, far from crowds that haunt Blenheim Palace, Stonehenge, Stratford-upon-Avon, or Haworth, I find the England of my dreams--quiet, pastoral, and sometimes endearingly eccentric...." It is probable Charles II of England whilst on the run after the Battle of Worcester in September 1651, travelled through or close by Chedington and Winyard's Gap on his circuitous six-week journey to escape. He had travelled from the battlefield through a series of safe-houses through Castle Cary to Trent Manor House and then to Charmouth staying at the Queen’s Arms. Continuing to