Council archives offer up touching tale of a popular town clerk

DURING the years I worked in the old Yeovil Borough Council's Town Clerk's Department on King George Street I would spend the occasional lunchtime in the strong room reading past council and committee minute books, and believe it or not they could be quite interesting!

- JACK SWEET Yeovil historian

The minute books, which are now in the safe keeping of the Somerset Archives and Local Studies at Taunton, went back to the early years of the 19th century and were handwritten by a council clerk until about 1910 when some began to be typed.

However, for some 20 or so years from the late 1880s much of the handwriting was in one distinctive hand which suddenly stopped in the summer of 1912.

I presumed that the writer had either been taken over by the typewriter, retired or moved on to another job.

Subsequently, I found out that the writer was Mr Adolphus Linnett and a little later I discovered why he had stopped writing the minutes.

In 1886, Adolphus Linnett joined the office staff of Mr H.B. Batten, who in addition to his legal practice, was town clerk of Yeovil Borough Council, clerk to the Education Committee and clerk to the Burial Board, and Mr Linnett was engaged primarily in the work of the borough council and other public bodies.

For many years he held the post of deputy town clerk and on the death of Mr. H.B. Batten in February 1912, Mr. Linnett became temporary town clerk pending the appointment of a successor.