The original Middle English name was Lega, and the village became Abbots Leigh in the mid-12th century when Robert Fitzharding purchased the manor, having been rewarded as Lord of the Manor of Portbury by the king. He also purchased Bedminster, Hareclive and Billeswick manors. He went on to found the Abbey of St Augustine at what was Billeswick, and bequeathed the income from the parish to support the abbey. Because of this connection to the abbey, when the Diocese of Bristol was carved out of the Bath and Wells, Gloucester and Worcester diocesan territories the new diocese's boundary was drawn to include the parish, including the Saxon enclosure at Hamgreen which had been part of Portbury manor lands until then. All the surrounding parishes in Somerset are in Bath and Wells diocese. The parish map shows this meandering historic boundary which puts St Katherine's School and Chapel Pill Farm both within the parish. The parish of Abbots Leigh was part of the Portbury Hundred. The manor house here, also named Abbot's Leigh or Leigh Court, was a resting place of Charles II during his escape to France in 1651. He arrived on the evening of 12 September, and stayed at the home of Mr and Mrs George Norton, who were friends of the King's travelling companion, Jane Lane. The Nortons were unaware of the King's identity during his three-day stay. A description of the house appears in the book The Escape of Charles II, After the Battle of Worcester by Richard Ollard:
"Abbots Leigh was the most magnificent of all the houses in which Charles was sheltered during his escape. A drawing made in 1788, only twenty years before it was pulled down, shows a main front of twelve gables, surmounting three storeys of cowled windows; a comfortable, solid west country Elizabethan house."
While staying at Abbots Leigh, Charles deflected suspicion by asking a trooper, who had been in the King's personal guard, to describe the King's appearance and clothing at the Battle of Worcester. The man looked at Charles and said, "The King was at least three inches taller than you." The King's escape route is commemorated in the Monarch's Waylong distance footpath which passes through the village.
Hymn tune
In 1942, during World War II, Rev. Cyril Vincent Taylor, then a producer of Religious Broadcasting at the BBC and stationed in the village, wrote a hymn tune which he named after it. The tune was originally written for the hymn "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken". This hymn had usually been sung to the tune "Austrian Hymn", or Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, but since the German national anthem was also sung to that tune, new music was needed in wartime Britain. Other hymn texts now commonly sung to the same tune include "Father Lord of All Creation", "God is Here", "Go My Children, With my Blessing" and "Lord, You Give the Great Commission".
