Nothing much ever happened at West Coker. No great man was born or lived or died there. No battle was fought near it nor did any constitutional crisis have its rise in its neighbourhood. It was never the centre of great industry nor the source of widespreading trade. No relic of saint nor monument of art nor scene of natural beauty ever attracted visitors to it.

Its records are scant. Of old inscriptions there are none. The manor and the hundred have left behind them no court rolls. No musters remain from early calling-up of soldiers. The church registers that have been preserved are comparatively late in date and the churchwardens' accounts only begin 220 years ago. Of civil documents pertaining to the parish, no old ones remain. There is no collection of letters written from the village.

The worker who has come to this unpromising field has brought to his task no aptitude or training for historical or economic research. He has no knowledge of dialect nor instinctive appreciation of folklore and has had no special opportunity for collecting facts from records or tradition.

And yet–and yet, the Annals of West Coker have seemed to him worth the compilation. The development of that part of England where the Coker villages lie, though it has followed similar lines to that of other parts, has had differences due to the antecedents, heredity and environments of the people and to the climate, soil and surface of the land.