A 1663 will by Richard Harvey of Exeter established Almshouses which became Harvey’s Hospital. These were rebuilt in 1870 largely of stone from previous building. . In 1685 during the Monmouth Rebellion, the pretender James Scott was proclaimed King in the Town and several locals joined his forces. Commander of the pursuing Royalist army, John Churchill, made a severe cautionary speech to the Townsfolk in St Mary’s. After the rebellion collapsed, Chard witnessed the execution and traitor’s death of 12 of the Duke of Monmouth’s rebels, who were summarily tried and condemned at Taunton Castle by the infamous Judge Jeffries. They were hung, drawn and quartered near the Tesco roundabout by the ‘Handcross tree’. The tree was removed by the railway in 1864 amid loud local protests.
There was a fulling mill in the town by 1394 for the textile industry. After 1820 this expanded with the town becoming a centre for lace manufacture led by manufacturers who fled from the Luddite resistance they had faced in the English Midlands. Bowden’s Old Lace Factory and the Gifford Fox factory are examples of the sites constructed. The Guildhall was built as a Corn Exchange and Guildhall in 1834 and is now the Town Hall. On Snowdon Hill is a small cottage which was originally a toll house built by the Chard Turnpike trust in the 1830s, to collect fees from those using a road up the hill which avoided the steep gradient.