TO CELEBRATE the fact that Taunton Rugby Club are currently enjoying their first season at the highest level in their 147-year career, history of the club has been researched and written by Somerset-based author and sports historian Kerry Miller.

The club’s ups and downs from its very humble beginnings at Fullands School to the County Ground, Jarvis Fields, East Reach Athletic Ground and Priory Park to their magnificent Hyde Park in 2000 are documented along with the trials and tribulations of the players, officials and supporters.

Almost a century and a half of rugby cannot be condensed and trivialised and Kerry’s work covers the effect wars, hunger, poverty, fires, floods and pandemics have had on the town and wider area as well as the playing ups and downs in almost 500 A4 pages fully illustrated in hard back.

Thousands of men and women have pulled on a Taunton shirt in that time and many of them are mentioned, where their own lives and deaths have coincided with happenings at the club and the work is broken up into eras rather than the more formulaic season by season.

As befits a club with such a rich history, there have been gold medal winning Olympians, future England internationals, MPs, Knights of the Realm, African political leaders, War heroes in abundance and famous cricketers, boxers and footballers, while Kerry has unearthed dozens of remarkable stories, buried in the vaults of the newspaper archives.

Richly illustrated with pen pics, cartoons, match programmes, team pics and newspaper cuttings the work runs to more than 250,000 words and is being published by the Friends of Taunton Rugby on December 4 before the club match with Cambridge RFC, at the newly named Veritas Park.

Horse Drawn Brake to Hyde Park- The Complete History of Taunton RFC is available priced £30 plus postage and packing, and can be obtained by contacting Tauntonrfchistory@gmail.com.

Alternatively you can purchase the book from Somerset County Sports at the Cooper Associates County Ground in Taunton and from Cafe Culture, 49 High Street, Taunton.