Our estate is crammed full with all kinds of cutting edge all-mod-cons conveniences. What a symbol of high modernity a prefab is! One minute you are retrieving a bowl of custard from a gleaming enamel-walled refrigerator and the next minute you are stretching out your legs out in a sparkling enamel bath! It is little wonder that those of us who live on the cusp of the technology of the future are prone to yearn for the simplicity of a more gadget-free past.
The doctor's surgery in Twiverton has a reassuring sign on the entrance to the waiting room which says "The ancients are not far away!" If a hundred years is equated to one life span, then the Roman colony of Twivertonium was here just twenty life spans ago! Go back two life-spans and the vineyards left by the Romans were still thriving! Dig up a back garden in Twiverton today and there is every chance that you will unearth the remains of a Roman coffin! No wonder they say that we take the vistas of eternity in our stride!
Back in Anglo-Saxon times Twiverton was known as Weir Town - no, not Weird Town - and its assets were sizeable enough to get it a mention in the Doomsday Book. A few centuries later it was known as 'Two-ford-town' (which is what 'Twiverton' originally meant). In 1876 it was officially re-named 'Twiverton-on-Avon', although the 'on-Avon' part is seldom heard. This change in title was not some nouveau riche bid at latching on to a grander title. If this had been the case 'Twiverton-upon-Avon' would have become the new name. 'Twiverton-on-Avon' was an act of desperation. It was a bid to stop letters being mistakenly sent to Tiverton in Devon - which is something which continues to this day. So send all those letters, parcels and postcards back to us, you pillaging piratical Tivertonians!
In 1792 Twiverton's home-based weavers were dealt a mortal blow when 'Blue Dye' Bamford and Cooke opened up a Worsted Spinning Mill by the river. ('Blue Dye' because of the blue stains that the mill's workers soon to be covered with). In 1839 a Twiverton heavy squad was dispatched across the river to support a 'votes for working-class men!' Chartist rally in Weston village. Even today the Ruling Classes still tremble at the mention of the sans culottes of Twiverton! In the 1840s churches in neighbouring cities organised special collections to stop unemplyed Twivertoniand from starving. The railway that cut its way through Twiverton in 1840 gave London and Bristol-bound train passengers a heart-rending glimpse of just how bad things were here.
Members of the upper middle-class in the nearby city of Bath used to purse their lips and adopt a sniffy tone of voice if the word 'Twiverton' ever came up in conversation. (Nowadays they ensure it never does). The book Highways and Byways in Somerset was a favourite read in these circles. It was published in 1911 - three years before the start of World War and the Age Of Technological Genocide. The book has never been on sale in Twiverton. This is not simply because there has never been a bookshop in Twiverton. It is because the author, Mr Edward Hutton, comes out with the horrendous howler that "Twiverton is not to be altogether despised, for it is very old."
In 1805 Jane Austen reported going on a "pleasant walk" to Twiverton. Being "a good egg" (to use a favourite phrase of the old man) she does not mention despising anything.