Summary (by AI): I enjoyed my visit to the quaint town of Castle Cary, where I found the history and unique architecture of the Roundhouse to be truly fascinating.
Blog: I started looking for what kinds of obscura locations were around in Somerset. It turned out there were quite a few options. In fact, there were so many that I had to work out if I could possibly wedge some of them into other categories, like architecture or views, just to spread them out, but doing that sorting left me with the Roundhouse in Castle Cary as my official choice for the category. So, I journeyed over to have a look.
Castle Cary is a tiny, quite quaint little country town. Unfortunately, there was a load of work going on when I arrived; they seemed to be renovating a large building right in the middle of town, so there was a lot of noise and banging around. But there it was: the Roundhouse.
It is a really interesting place. It’s a round stone building that measures just 2.1 meters square on the inside. It was originally designed to lock people up—basically for holding anyone who was drunk and disorderly or committing petty thefts in the late 19th century. This was back in the days before county-wide police forces were established, so a lot of the town’s governance was controlled by the local hierarchy.
And one of the things this local hierarchy decided—being very puritanical at the time—was that it was illegal for kids over the age of seven or eight to play in the street on a Sunday. If you were caught as an eight or nine-year-old playing, laughing, and joking in the street on a Sunday, you were thrown into the Roundhouse. Which is just remarkable to think about.
On a lighter note, there are a couple of fantastic, ingenious facts about this place today. Firstly, the town council actually managed to get the building licensed, so you can now get married inside it. They market it as a "lock and key wedding," which is brilliant and very funny. Apparently, there’s just enough space inside for the bride, the groom, and the vicar, while all of the guests have to stand outside.
But the most fantastic thing about the Roundhouse is its shape. If you look at the photos—and I tried to capture this in one of mine—the roof is dome-shaped with a round stone ball on the very top. It looks exactly like the old-style helmet that police officers used to wear. There is no direct historical evidence of a link, but looking at the imagery, you can't help but wonder if this building was the inspiration for the classic Bobby's hat. It really does look like it.
All in all, Castle Cary was a lovely town. It was a boiling hot day, so I was incredibly thankful for an ice cream from a local shop. I think the traffic warden walking his rounds would have been pretty thankful for one too—he looked absolutely roasting out there.
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