The Mendip Summits, Charterhouse and Gorsey Bigbury

Beacon Batch

This is the highest point on the Mendips and, strangely, it constitutes ancient and modern archaeological sites. The modern one was a decoy and bombing range in WW2. The ancient one is a series of Bronze Age barrows from around 2000 BCE, a hilltop ritual burial site which forms part of the Mendip complex. It has impressive views in several directions.

Charterhouse

Charterhouse lies below Beacon Batch and above Cheddar Gorge. The general area will have been a major area of ancient settlement not only because of its location at the crossing point above the descent into Cheddar Gorge, but also because of its major lead deposits. This was a prosperous and strategic area from ancient and through Roman times, into the Middle Ages.

Lead was a rare and valuable metal in ancient times, for use both as an ingredient in alloys, but also for its pliability and inertness as a metal - almost an ancient plastic. Arguably, one of the key reasons Rome invaded Britain was for lead - and to stop the Britons exercising economic power in the Roman empire through lead price and supply manipulation (not unlike Iraq and Saudi Arabia today). This is the site of quite ancient industrial devastation - the Mendips too will have been stripped of trees at an early date, to fire smelters.

A small Roman town was here, linked by roads east ward toward Bath and Salisbury, and west toward the coast at Uphill, whence lead was exported by boat. Apparently the town was not successful longterm. The miners themselves will have been Britons and foreign slaves.

There is a tradition that Jesus visited not only Glastonbury, but also Priddy, a few miles away. The tradition has it that his uncle or relative Joseph of Arimathaea was a rich metals trader - and it is presumably because of the lead deposits at Charterhouse and Priddy that Joseph and then Jesus came to visit.

So Charterhouse and nearby Velvet Bottom, a delightful upper valley feeding into Cheddar Gorge, was more an ancient industrial area than a sacred area. But sacredness and economics were not far away - the nearby henge at Gorsey Bigbury being one example. In slightly warmer times, life on the Mendips will have been quite pleasant. Except perhaps for the wretched miners.

Gorsey Bigbury

Gorsey Bigbury is a circular henge - a ditch with a bank outside it, with a causeway leading north. It is not in itself notably attractive or interesting, except if you go to the place, go inside yourself and feel the historic presence of the place.

A lot has happened here, and its proximity to Cheddar Gorge and the .lead mines and other ancient remains of the Mendips makes it a part of a bigger 'megalithic park'. A direct alignment passes through it, continuing south through Westbury Beacon, Glastonbury Tor and Butleigh Church.

Over 4,000 flint flakes were found here, together with pottery, charcoal and hearths, dating back to 1900-1700 BC. Unfortunately most of the finds and archives concerning Gorsey Bigbury were destroyed in WW2.