ANECDOTES ABOUT THE VILLAGE.
John Huntley died at the age or 94 in 1891 having been born in the year 1797.The following are reminscinces of the village told by him to Miss Helen Foxcroft in 1888.
William Smith-the famous Geologist
Broadfield Farm was the home for seven years of William Smith, called "the Father of English Geology".
In 1794 he was appointed as engineer of the Somerset Coal Canal, and while at the farm he may have made his "Epoch making" geological map of England which was published in 1815, as in one of his writings he says he heard the announcement of the victory of Trafalgar (1805) while at Broadfield Farm, Charterhouse Hinton. He must have designed many of his 21 geologically coloured maps of English counties by the window of the present kitchen. William Smith also lived at one time at the Mill House at Midford. Mr. Chancellor of Norton used to tell that his Grand-father often told him that the cellars of Broadfield Farm were used as a depot for smuggled spirits. The spirits were taken off the coaches which ran between Bath and Beckington much to the mystification of the Authorities who apparently never found out how they disappeared on the journey from Bath.