ENGLISH HERITAGE RESEARCH DEPARTMENT Project proposal: the historic environment of the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Elaine Jamieson June 2006 (revised text) Figure 1. The Mendip Hills looking west. © English Heritage. 1. BACKGROUND Description of the area The Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) was designated in 1972 and covers 198 sq km, of which 121 sq km lie within the county of Somerset with the remainder divided between North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset. The AONB includes the western and central area of the Mendip Hills range and stretches for some 27 km from Bleadon in the west to Chewton Mendip in the east (Figs. 1 & 2). The central feature of the Mendip Hills is the gently undulating Carboniferous Limestone plateau which is criss-crossed by distinctive dry-stone walls, partly the result of 18th-century enclosure. The southern boundary of the AONB largely follows the foot of the limestone escarpment which rises abruptly from the Somerset Levels to over 300m above OD. The plateau combines the classic features of a karst landscape including complex underground cave and river systems, ENGLISH HERITAGE 1 (version 0.2) (version 0.2) ENGLISH Stanton Weston-super-Mare Drew HERIT AGE Locking Churchill Chew Blagdon Valley Banwell Lake Hutton Lake Blagdon Ubley Winscombe Shipham Compton Martin West Harptree Bleadon East Harptree Charterhouse Axbridge Cheddar Reservoi Cheddar Chewton Mendip Priddy Circles Draycott Priddy Rodney Stoke Ramspits KEY > 300m Westbury- 100-150m 250-300m sub-Mendip Ebbor Gorge 50-100m 200-250m Wookey Hole M 5 Easton < 50m 150-200m Boundary of Mendip Hills AONB 0 3km Figure 2. Wookey Wells Location map 2 gorges, dry valleys, surface depressions, swallets and fast-flowing springs. The majority of the plateau is agriculturally improved pasture with the exception of four outcrops of Old Red Sandstone, at Black Down, Beacon Hill, North Hill and Pen Hill, which support heathland and acid grassland. To the west of the plateau, the land breaks up into groups of individual hills which rise to no more than 100m above OD. The settlement on the plateau and western slopes takes the form of scattered farmsteads with compact villages located along the spring line below the steep escarpment slopes to the north and south. Within the AONB lie many sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and two National Nature Reserves (NNRs), the latter lying along the southern escarpment at Ebbor Gorge and Rodney Stokes. The area contains varied and important natural habitats including limestone pastures, ancient woodland and gorge cliffs. The historic environment There are at present over 1200 entries on the National Monuments Record (NMR) for the Mendip Hills AONB and just over 600 listed building records. There are 192 Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAMs) and although many of these are individual barrows or barrow groups, they cover a diverse range of monuments including sites such as the prehistoric hillfort of Dolebury and the Second World War bombing decoy complex on Black Down. The Mendip Hills are particularly noted for their outstanding range of prehistoric features including settlement and ritual landscapes. Deposits discovered in the caves and fissures of the plateau edge and the highlands of the plateau itself represent important evidence of early man. The significance of the Neolithic ritual landscape of the area, including mortuary monuments and the more enigmatic ritual monuments such as the Priddy Circles, has recently been highlighted (Lewis 2005). There are approximately 300 barrows across the Mendip plateau, constructed during the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age, which combine to form a ritual landscape of national significance. Mineral extraction has also played an important role in the formation of the Mendip Hills landscape, with the major mining settlement at Charterhouse dating from the Roman period if not earlier. Exploitation of the area’s lead deposits continued into the post-medieval period and experienced a revival in the 19th century. Attempts were also made to extract other minerals from the area including calamine ore, and to a lesser extent manganese and iron ore, all of which has left the area with a distinctive industrial legacy. Many factors have combined to create the diverse and complex archaeological landscape which we see today, making the Mendip Hills AONB an area, not only of regional, but of national importance. Previous work In other upland areas of the south west, such as Exmoor and the Quantock Hills, there had been little archaeological research prior to the work carried out by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) and English Heritage (Riley & Wilson- North 2001; Riley forthcoming). In contrast, the Mendip Hills have been the focus of significant archaeological study. The volume of work undertaken is too great to allow anything more than a brief illustration of its diverse nature to be attempted here. The archaeological work undertaken on the Mendip Hills ranges from antiquarian research, such as the work of the Reverend John Skinner who excavated a considerable number of barrows on the Mendip Hills, to fieldwork carried out by local archaeological societies. The Bristol Spelaeological Society has published numerous articles on work undertaken on the Mendip Hills such as their excavations at the Priddy Circles (Tratman 1967). Leslie Grinsell recorded the mortuary monuments on the Mendip Hills and they are included in his comprehensive list of North Somerset Barrows (Grinsell 1971). The Mendip Hills has been the focus for a number of ENGLISH HERITAGE 3 (version 0.2) undergraduate and post-graduate research projects. The publication Monuments, Ritual and Regionality: The Neolithic of Northern Somerset was based on one such doctoral thesis (Lewis 2005). Major rescue work has also been carried out within the AONB including the Chew Valley Lake excavations undertaken prior to the construction of the new reservoir (Rahtz & Greenfield 1977). There have been more than a dozen excavations undertaken in the Charterhouse area including work by St. George Gray at the “Amphitheatre”, and more recently, by Todd at the Roman Fortlet (St. George Gray 1909-10; Todd 1996). An ongoing project of archaeological investigation is being undertaken around Charterhouse by the Charterhouse Environs Research Team (CHERT). This work, carried out by volunteers, involves the large-scale survey of earthwork features as well as geophysical investigation and historical research. In 1989 the RCHME, now part of English Heritage, undertook large- scale survey work at the deserted medieval settlement site of Ramspits, Deer Leap, on the east side of Westbury-sub-Mendip parish (Pattison 1991). An archaeological assessment of the towns of Cheddar, Axbridge and Wells was undertaken as part of the Somerset Extensive Urban Survey. This work was commissioned by English Heritage and prepared by Somerset County Council with the aim of assessing urban archaeology as part of the Monument Protection Programme (Richardson 1998; Gathercole 1998). The English Heritage Historic Landscape Characterisation Project has also been completed for the Mendip Hills area. Shortly after the designation of the Mendip Hills as an AONB a general study of the Mendip Hills area was published (Atthill 1976). The book, Mendip: A New Study, was intended as a group of thematic papers which cover topics from geology and climate to industry and recreation. The publication considers both the AONB and the east Mendip area, stretching from Frome in the east to Brean Down in the west. An archaeological survey of the Mendip Hills AONB was undertaken by Peter Ellis in the period between 1986 and 1988. The one year project was carried out on behalf of the County Councils of Somerset and Avon and funded by English Heritage. The work involved the plotting of archaeological features from aerial photographs which were subsequently checked in the field and recorded using specifically devised forms. This resulted in a paper entitled Mendip Hills: An Archaeological Survey of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which forms a thematic study of the archaeology of the Mendip Hills AONB (Ellis 1988). The project resulted in the discovery of over 400 previously unrecorded archaeological sites, illustrating the potential for new discoveries within the study area. Reasons for and circumstances of the project The close proximity of the Mendip Hills AONB to large population centres such as Bristol has resulted in ever increasing visitor numbers and subsequent pressure on the fragile archaeological and built environment. Large numbers of people travel to the Mendip Hills each year to visit the famous caves and gorges, to participate in a range of outdoor activities, and to appreciate the superb landscape, geology and natural history. The landscape of the Mendip Hills is also under pressure from extractive industries. The area has been extensively quarried over many years and there is a growing conflict between the interests of those wishing to exploit the mineral reserves of the area and those wishing to conserve the landscape, archaeology and natural habitats. To add to this, the landscape is also under threat from changes in agriculture, which are affecting long-established patterns of land use. This is exacerbated by the currently limited appreciation and understanding of the significance and value of these aspects of the Mendip Hills landscape. The existence of ENGLISH HERITAGE 4 (version 0.2) accurate baseline data to allow monitoring of landscape change and to inform sustainable management is therefore essential. The Mendip Hills Joint Advisory Committee (JAC), now the Mendip Hills Partnership, formed a Heritage Group in 1997 to provide expertise for the management of the conservation of the historic environment of the Mendip Hills AONB. The Heritage Group led the implementation of the Heritage section of the AONB Management Plan (1998) in which there were three Guiding Principles: • Encourage high quality responsible archaeological research programmes.