Chiselborough is a village in Somerset. It is situated on the River Parrett, 5 miles west of Yeovil. The village consists largely of small cottages built in the local golden hamstone quarried at the local Ham Hill. The village was recorded in Saxon times as 'Ceoselbergon' and was later mentioned in the Domesday Book as 'Ceolseberge' in the holding of Robert, Count of Mortain. The name derives from the Old English cisel and beorg (gravel and hill). The parish was part of the hundred of Houndsborough. The Earls of Ilchester held most of the village until 1914 when the estate was sold, having inherited it from the heirs of Joan Wadham, Lady Strangways, first wife of Sir Giles Strangways (1528-1562) of Melbury Sampford, sister and co-heiress of Nicholas Wadham, co-founder of Wadham College, Oxford. The current Baron and Baroness of Chiselborough do not reside in the area. The annual Chiselborough Fair was held on common ground near the street now known as Fair Place. This camera was installed and is maintained by the Environment Agency and can be viewed
here All content is available under the
Open Government Licence v3.0. The Parrett has only one gauging station, at Chiselborough, fairly close to the source. It measures flow from the first 29 square miles of the drainage basin, or about 4.3 per cent of the total. The mean flow measured by the Environment Agency at Chiselborough was 42 cubic feet per second (1.19 m3/s), with a peak of 6,100 cubic feet per second (173 m3/s) on 30 May 1979 and a minimum of 2.5 cubic feet per second (0.07 m3/s) over a seven-day period in August 1976. Tributaries of the Parrett with gauging stations include the Yeo, Isle, Cary, and Tone. The lower Parrett has a fall of only 1 foot per mile between Langport and Bridgwater. To the northeast of the River Parrett's mouth, the Bristol Channel becomes the Severn Estuary, which has a tidal range of 46 ft. The rate and direction of flow of the Parrett is therefore dependent on the state of the tide on the River Severn. In common with the lower reaches of the River Severn, the Parrett experiences a tidal bore. Certain combinations of the tides funnel the rising water into a wave that travels upstream at about 6 miles per hour, against the river's current.
