frome

Frome (/ˈfruːm/ FROOM) is a town and civil parish in eastern Somerset, England. Located at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills, the town is built on uneven high ground, and centres on the River Frome. The town is approximately 13 miles (21 km) south of Bath, 43 miles (69 km) east of the county town, Taunton and 107 miles (172 km) west of London. In the 2011 census, the population was given as 26,203. The town is in the Mendip district of Somerset and is part of the parliamentary constituency of Somerton and Frome.

In April 2010 a large hoard of third-century Roman coins was unearthed in a field near the town. Frome was one of the largest towns in Somerset until the Industrial Revolution, and was larger than Bath from AD 950 until 1650. The town originally grew due to the wool and cloth industry. It later diversified into metal-working and printing, although these have declined. The town was enlarged during the 20th century but still retains a very large number of listed buildings, and most of the centre falls within a conservation area.

The town has road and rail transport links and acts as an economic centre for the surrounding area. It also provides a centre for cultural and sporting activities, including the annual Frome Festival and Frome Museum. A number of notable individuals were born in, or have lived in, the town. In 2014, Frome was called the “sixth coolest town” in Britain by The Times newspaper. Frome has recently been shortlisted as one of three towns in the country for the 2016 Urbanism Awards in the ‘Great Town Award’ category.

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A project, Compassionate Frome, to combat loneliness in the town was established by a local GP in 2013. It is claimed that it reduced emergency hospital admissions by 17% over three years when in the rest of the county they rose by 29%

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intro’d to Frome via George‘s post

Todd Hoskins (@toddhoskins) tweeted at 6:34 AM – 21 Feb 2018 :

Beautiful and brilliant. We need more stories and more data on the impact of connectedness. From @GeorgeMonbiot https://t.co/wBc9SaC4j5(http://twitter.com/toddhoskins/status/966305012476534784?s=17)

Frome in Somerset has seen a dramatic fall in emergency hospital admissions since it began a collective project to combat isolation..a newfangled intervention called community..t

The Compassionate Frome project was launched in 2013 by Helen Kingston, a GP there.

Remarkable as Frome’s initial results appear to be, they shouldn’t be surprising. A famous paper published in PLOS Medicine in 2010 reviewed 148 studies, involving 300,000 people, and discovered that those with strong social relationships had a 50% lower chance of death across the average study period (7.5 years) than those with weak connections. “The magnitude of this effect,” the paper reports, “is comparable with quitting smoking.” A celebrated study in 1945showed that children in orphanages died through lack of human contact. Now we know that the same thing can apply to all of us.