A talk by John Page

John started by showing a map of the lighthouses of Somerset including one at Hinkley Point, three at Burnham, two at Clevedon and one which is not in Somerset but which is very important for ships entering the Bristol Channel which is on Flat Holm. Although lighthouses are, of course, there as a warning to shipping and to aid navigation it is, as Daniel Defoe pointed out, the land with its rocks and sand banks and not the sea that makes a storm lethal to ships.  John explained that on old maps the Bristol Channel was actually called the Severn Sea. He then showed a video of a map which shows where the various lighthouses are in Somerset, a map complete with appropriate flashing lights. There are a lot of lights!

John went on to describe some of the earliest lighthouses stating with the first one, which was on Pharos in Alexandria and was built circa 200BC. It was badly damaged by 3 earthquakes between 900AD and 1300AD and eventually became a ruin. It was operated at night by fires on top of it and by day by mirrors that reflected the sun.

The earliest lighthouse in Britain was at Dover and was built by the Romans. It was clear from reports that not everyone wanted to have lighthouses around their shores. The use of lights to guide shipping could, of course, also be used by smugglers who used them to wreck ships and steal their goods. An account in 1736 described one such case where a ship was driven onto Perrin Sands to steal the cargo.

In the early days it was not just lights that were used to guide ships. Other markers  such as hills, mills and churches; the white painted church tower at East Brent being one example.

He explained the difference between onshore and offshore lights with offshore lights being either on small islands such as Lundy or towers built on rocks.

Using photographs, drawings and old documents John then described lighthouses in the Bristol Channel. The St Nicholas Chapel in Ilfracombe, he explained, is the oldest example of a tower and has been in use as such since the Middle Ages. In those days the light came from fires.

Hook lighthouse was also lit by fire and is situated at Wexford. It was built by monks in the C14^th  and is still in use today.

As John explained, the increased trade into the Bristol Channel had made it inevitable that more lighthouses would be built.

The first lighthouse at St Ann’s Head was built in 1662 and was coal–fired. Charges to shipping for entering ports at this time could only be made when the ships were in port and a patent had to have been granted to allow charges to be made. At St Ann’s in 1662 the charges were only voluntary and not surprisingly they found that very few people paid them money and so they pulled down the lighthouse. Recognising the need for a lighthouse due to the number of ships being wrecked, however, Trinity House granted a patent for a lighthouse on the site and two towers were built in 1714, which were also coal-fired. The charge was 1d per ton of cargo for British vessels and 2d per ton of cargo for foreign ships. The current lighthouse was built in 1844.

Flatholm: Local people had to agree to the building of a lighthouse and also had to run them and apply for a Government patent. Merchants and trading gentlemen living in Bristol wanted to build one at Flat Holm but couldn’t get the necessary agreements until a ship carrying 60 soldiers was lost in 1735.

On December 3rd  1737 they received a patent and a lighthouse was built on the island. The island also had an isolation hospital. The light was produced from coal which came from Swansea but by 1753 the two men who had started it went bankrupt and Caleb Dickinson who had lent them the money to build it ended up owning it. John explained that the Somerset Record Office has a large number of documents relating to the family, which show the accounts relating to the lighthouse.

John went on to talk about the people who ran the lighthouses. The onshore ones had people living nearby but offshore ones were different. Here, there were normally 4 keepers per lighthouse. This was because in the early days there were only 2 keepers but on one occasion one of them died and the other was so worried that he might be accused of murder that he took the body and hung it outside the lighthouse in a bag to prove that the man had died of natural causes.

After that they always had 4 keepers per lighthouse, 3 on duty and one on leave. These would be a principal keeper, an assistant and a supernumerary or trainee, all of whom worked 8 hour shifts. Their duties were clear and included keeping a log, reporting on wind speed, visibility, barometric pressure and windforce which apparently they guessed by how it felt on their cheek   Since cleaning was also part of their duties they didn’t touch the brass rails on the stairs. Apparently no keeper would touch the rails!

Reading from her account of her life on Flat Holm, John told us about Mrs Trezise who was there in 1926-9. At that time Flat Holm was considered the worst land lighthouse to work in but when her husband was appointed keeper there she was delighted. There were 9 people there at that time including the caretaker and his wife who looked after the hospital. In one year the weather was so bad that they couldn’t get provisions for nearly two months and had Christmas with no perishable food. To make matters worse one woman had a baby during this time and they nearly ran out of Nestlés milk!! In 1929 it was re-designated as a Rock Lighthouse and Mrs Trezise went to live in Swansea.

Mrs Trezise’s account can be read here

Instructions from those days included: lighting lamps and trimming them every three hours, maintaining watch, no bed or sofa was to be kept in the lantern room or watch room, everything had to be cleaned and polished and they should not cause any damage. They also had to either attend Church or the Principal Keeper had to conduct a service and deliver the sermon. Temperance, cleanliness and high standards of morality were also key demands.

John also talked about how the various lights were used and how they operated. The Mumbles lighthouse in 1794, for example, had two levels of fires. Lighting was by candles and bonfires until the introduction of lamps and clearly there were many dangers. After this they had oil lamps. Improvements came with the Argand lamp, which had an air flow up the centre which was more efficient than previous versions and was lit with heavy oil like whale oil. Later versions used kerosene. Improvements continued and soon came the introduction of reflectors at the back and large lenses at the front. Later still they used the Fresnel lamp which had rotating optics and was much more efficient.

John went on to talk about Burnham lighthouses.  In 1895 a newspaper gave the origins of the Burnham Lighthouse and stated that legend had it that originally the “lighthouse” was simply a candle in the window of a cottage which a woman had put there to guide her husband home and due to its success was asked to do it permanently. Although this story has often been repeated, John said it was not quite accurate. Newspapers in 1846 reported that the first light was actually lit by a person on Stert Island, then an isthmus, to warn sailors of the dangers. Whatever the truth of the matter the first actual lighthouse was erected by the Rev David Davies of St Andrew’s Church, who paid for a tower to be built next to the church in 1801.   The number of vessels using the port increased after the lighthouse was built from 600 to 3000 and Trinity House took over its control from Rev Davies. A second tall lighthouse was put at the end of the channel and a third was erected on the beach because there was a blind spot. John explained that the one on the beach still works and that now all lights are remotely controlled.

In conclusion John mentioned briefly Watchet harbor light, Blackmore Point at Portishead which had a post in the middle to help rotation of the light and which was turned by a clockwork mechanism powered by a weight which had to be wound up every 2 hours, and finally Lundy which had a lighthouse situated so high that the top was often lost in the mist, so much so that another lighthouse had to be built lower down.

At which point time ran out. It was a fascinating story and clearly much more to be told.

We had a very interesting talk on November 15^th from Richard Brunning about the recent excavations at Beckery, the site of a medieval Chapel.

He started by explaining that Beckery would have been an island of hard geology sticking out of the flood plain. Today it is a rather curious landscape, with an industrial park at one edge, and a sewage farm at the other, but the centre line of the chapel lines up with Glastonbury Tor.

Speaking about the derivation of “Beckery”, Richard suggested that it might have meant either ‘bee-keeper’s island’ in Old English or is Irish for ‘Little Ireland’.

There are numerous legendary stories linked with Beckery. Medieval writers told of a visit to Beckery by St Brigit who visited the island in 488 AD and is said to have left behind some items including a necklace, small bell, a bag and some weaving implements. These relics were displayed in the medieval chapel named after her for pilgrims to view. King Arthur was also said to have visited the site and allegedly saw an image of the Virgin Mary. Although the former is possible, Richard suggested, that the latter was probably something made up by Glastonbury Abbey for publicity and financial reasons.

The site was first excavated by John Morland in 1887-1888. This found the remains of two chapels, a smaller Saxon timber chapel built around 700 AD and a larger Norman chapel which replaced the former and which was built around 1000 AD and enlarged in 1290. They also found the walls of what was thought to be a priest’s house and 6 graves with human remains. The location of the bodies seemed to confirm that the chapel had indeed been built in two phases.

The site was re-examined in 1997-8 by Philip Rahtz. This excavation uncovered further evidence of buildings on the site, which confirmed that a later chapel had indeed been built around the earlier chapel. They also found an extensive cemetery of 63 bodies. One grave was lined with slabs and there were post holes nearby indicating that it was of some significance and it appeared that the first timber chapel had been built around this.   They also found some human remains below the foundations of the Chapel indicating an earlier site.

Almost all of the bodies were of adult males, leaving little doubt that this was a monastic graveyard. The only exceptions were two juveniles who may have been novices and a woman who may have been a patron or a visiting nun. In those days radiocarbon dating was in its infancy and the results showed that the bones were dated between 600-1000 AD. This led Rahtz to conclude that this was a site of a late Saxon monastery.

The conclusion was that wooden building had been replaced in the C11^th by another Chapel, which was then re-built in 1291 with a Priest’s house. In 2004-6 a resistivity survey by Beth Francis revealed the presence of a third building and geophysics revealed the possibility of an enclosing ditch.

The recent excavations at Beckery sought to extend the dig beyond that undergone by Rahtz and it confirmed the presence of a third building and found evidence for a fourth. It also showed that there was a wall that went far beyond the chapels that Rahtz had identified. Richard suggested that the stone from this wall could have been taken and re-used elsewhere after the dissolution of the monasteries.

The first trench was dug over the site of the enclosing ditch in which Iron Age pottery was found as well as a variety of animal bones which have been dated c.1020 AD -1155 AD.

The main aim of the excavation was to date the site more accurately. Although the skeletons found by Rahtz have been lost there were some remaining under the Chapel walls and the new excavation uncovered human remains on 5 sites. Seven individuals were dated from three largely complete burials, two partial burials that had been badly damaged by the foundation trench for one of the medieval chapels, one person represented by a single extra leg bone in one of the complete graves and a jaw fragment from the 1960’s backfill. One was of a male of about 167cm, which showed a fracture in one arm and teeth which were very worn but which showed few cavities. Isotope analysis suggests that they had a meat rich diet although the last individual dated had clearly had a more vegetarian diet and showed similarities with bones found at Glastonbury Lake Village.

Radiocarbon dating found that the earliest bones were from between 406 AD and 544 AD, which predates the conquest of Somerset by the Saxon kings of Wessex in the 7th Century. Later bones found were dated from about 618 AD – 710 AD and suggest that the monastic use of the site may have ended in the later 9th century when Somerset was attacked by Viking armies.

These dates provide the earliest archaeological evidence for monasticism in the British Isles. There were earlier sites in France but these findings show that this may have been the earliest monastic site in the UK and pre-dates Glastonbury Abbey. Richard suggested that the ancient origins of the Beckery site may explain why later medieval writers linked it to figures such as King Arthur and Saint Brigit.

There were many interesting pottery finds in the site. There was a lot of Saxo-Norman pottery circa 950 AD -1150 AD, Iron age pottery and lots of animal bones dating from C12^th – C16^th some of which were found in a new building identified on the site which may have been used for stabling.

Further isotope analysis is planned in order to try to determine if the monks were from the local population or if they had come from further away.

 In conclusion Richard said that the monastery could have been there when St Brigit visited the area. Imported medieval pottery found there suggest that it was of high status and Richard suggested that this might mean that the the monastery had a secular power base before the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Wessex which might have led to its destruction and its replacement by a Chapel. More work needs to be done but the findings are very significant for the history of the area.

We had a very interesting talk on 18th October from Ian McCaskie (a visitor services volunteer) about the SS Great Britain. The bare bones of the history of the ship’s launch to re-launch is fairly well known and details are on their website, (www.ssgreatbritain.org) but the extra details Ian gave us were fascinating.

He began by outlining the historical context. In the 1830’s steam engines had an enormous impact on the way that we were able to travel on land and water. A lucrative contract was on offer for the provision of 4 wooden paddle steamers to carry Royal Mail from England to America. Cunard was expected to tender for the contract but a rival company was set up to compete for it; this was the Great Western Steamship Company and the directors decided to appoint Isambard Kingdom Brunel as their chief consulting engineer. Although Brunel had never designed a ship before, he was asked to do so on the basis of his work with the Great Western railway.

In the event he delivered only one wooden paddle steamer. This was “The Great Western” which was launched in 1837 for the Atlantic run and there is a plaque to it on the side of the M Shed museum in Bristol. In his lifetime Brunel built only 3 ships, the third one being the Great Eastern, which he built in London and which laid the transatlantic telegraph cable

When it came to designing his second ship, Brunel started to think about how it could be improved. Up until then all ships had been made from timber but Brunel realised that a timber construction had limitations. It limited the size of the ship and because of the density of wood it was heavy and therefore slow. Around this time a coastal vessel called the “Rainbow” came into Bristol, which had an iron hull that made it much lighter and therefore faster in the water. Brunel suggested to the directors of the Great Western Co. that their second ship should have an iron hull and they agreed.

Although the contract for the Royal Mail to the US was subsequently given to Cunard the company realised that iron ships were the way forward.

Brunel had observed from building the Great Western that the propeller worked unevenly in the open seas and so, having seen another ship, the “Archimedes”, which came into Bristol at this time and which had a screw propeller, he designed his second ship with a screw propeller.  The SS Great Britain was, therefore, the first ship with an iron hull and a screw propeller and was then the biggest, fastest ocean-going transatlantic liner.

LAUNCH DAY

In 1843 it was ready to launch. Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria, attended the launch and was thankfully on hand to throw a second bottle of champagne at the ship when the lady designated to do it had missed with the first bottle!

Having undergone sea trials, the SS Great Britain then went from Liverpool to New York. There were berths for 250 first and second-class passengers on its maiden voyage but only 45 tickets were bought. It’s thought that this was because people were concerned about the safety of the vessel.
Wood floats and iron doesn’t!

 

The SS Great Britain made only 4 transatlantic crossings.  On the fifth voyage out they left Liverpool on a rather foggy night, missed the Calf of Man light and so continued to sail due west and ended up grounded in Northern Ireland on Dundrum Bay beach.  Brunel travelled over there to oversee the ship’s recovery. Fearing the approach of winter storms he made a breakwater around the stern of the ship which saved it from the worst of the winter weather but, although it was successfully re-floated and returned to Liverpool the following year, the cost involved had been enormous and the Great Western Steamship Company went bankrupt, forcing the sale of the SS Great Western and the SS Great Britain to Gibbs Wright and Co in 1847

From then of the ship had a fairly chequered history.

When gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, there was a sudden massive demand for ships to take people out there and the ship underwent a radical re-fit by the new owners Gibbs Bright & Co to become a 3 masted square–rigged sailing ship with auxiliary engines, which could do the voyage non-stop from Liverpool to Melbourne. In 1852 they carried 700 passengers. It cost 70 guineas (equivalent now to £5000) to travel to Melbourne first class and even in steerage it cost the equivalent of £1500 in today’s money. The journey took just 2 months.

A record of a trip in 1860 reveals that they also took a lot of live animals including 38 pigs, 2 bullocks 30 turkeys, 133 sheep, 400 geese, 420 chickens and 300 ducks and a dairy cow!

In the 1850’s the ship was requisitioned by the British government to take troops to the Crimean war and also to the Indian Mutiny and in 1861 it took the All England cricket team, including W.G. Grace’s brother, to Australia.

Passenger diaries have revealed what they did on board during those long trips: they played board games, sang, played music and even had their own newsletter called The Great Britain Times which has been an invaluable resource in piecing together what life was like on board.

Passengers on these voyages were always segregated by class and gender with males and females being separated at either end of the ship and with families and married couples in the middle. Clearly this didn’t always work to plan!!  In one woman’s diary she reveals that a certain Mrs Hodgson in First Class became “rather familiar” with a “rather shady man” and all the ladies “cut her” and she was referred to as a “lively woman” by the sailors.

In a honeymoon diary the writer says that there was an enormous amount of food consumed which was of excellent quality. Apparently they had breakfast at 9am, lunch at 12, dinner at 4pm, and tea at 7.30. The menus were very impressive!

J.M.Hardwick’s diary entry on 26 August 1852 recalls :
“…dinner which was first rate, quite such as you would get at the best hotels: soup, grouse, pigeon and veal pies, pork, ham and other meat dishes, sundry puddings and tarts and jelly, blancmange, cheese, celery and after all a dessert.”

Clearly all the passengers ate extremely well, although there were also reports in the diaries of a lot of sea-sickness. And there were a lot of rats!! One woman in first class says that she had seen rats in her cabin and reported that one woman had her toe-nails bitten by a rat.

By the late 1870’s the ship had been round the world over 30 times and had transported 16000 emigrants but the demand for trips to Australia was diminishing and Gibbs Bright laid the ship up on the Mersey.

In 1882 due to a demand from America for high-grade coal, Antony Gibbs & Son, bought the ship, stripped out the engines and the passenger accommodation and converted the ship to a windjammer cargo ship. As Ian pointed out, it seemed that, technologically, the SS Great Britain had gone backwards from her days as a great transatlantic liner.

Worried about the strength of the hull, once everything had been stripped out, the owners covered the iron in pine planking and soon it was taking coal from Penarth in Wales to San Francisco via Cape Horn. They made two round trips but on the third trip out, in 1886, it was damaged in a storm going round Cape Horn and was taken to the Falkland Islands where they hoped to repair it.

The cost of repairing the ship  was considered uneconomical and so she was sold to the Falkland Island Company for £2000 where it became a warehouse primarily for coal, wool and grain and was moored at Port Stanley Harbour.  It remained there until it was so rotten that they moved it to Sparrow Cove in 1937 where it was scuttled.  Despite being abandoned, she still had some uses. In WWI she was used as a bunkering station and in WWII plates were taken off her to repair damage which had occurred to the HMS Exeter during the Battle of the River Plate.  Throughout her time at Sparrow Cove the children of the island greatly enjoyed her presence, using her as an adventure playground and picking mussels from the hull to take home for their tea.

In the late 1960’s Ewan Corlett (a noted maritime architect) wrote to the Sunday Times about the tragedy that this great ship had been left to rot and suggested she be brought home.  The Admiralty did a survey and thought it was possible to do so but that it would be expensive. A committee was formed under Lord Strathcona, which launched an appeal to save her and, in early 1970, Sir Jack Hayward gave the money to pay for the salvage operation.

The idea was to remove the 3 remaining masts and to float the ship on a floating pontoon and tow it back to the UK. It was found, however, that the islanders had a cut a hatchway in the middle of the hull to facilitate its use as a coal store and, after it had been scuttled, a crack had developed and there was an 18 inch wide split in the hull. Clearly they couldn’t re-float her like that and so Lord Strathcona launched an appeal for mattresses and the islanders responded. Twenty mattresses were cut into strips which divers then jammed into the crack. Concrete was also used to repair the split, air was pumped into the pontoon tanks and  in the spring of 1970, ready to embark on the 8000 mile tow back to Bristol.

The ship was taken to Avonmouth and remained on the pontoon for 49 days while they made her water-tight by bolting steel over the cracks so that she could come off the pontoon.

On July 5^th 1970 she went from Avonmouth to Bristol where 100 thousand people watched her arrived. Many were astounded that such a rusty old ship was being brought back!! For the first time in her life she went under the suspension bridge and arrived at St Augustine’s reach. The idea was to put her back into the dock she had originally been in, but they had to make sure that the tide was high enough for the keel to be clear of the sill of the dock and on July 19^th she made it. The keel cleared the sill of the dock by 7 inches and the ship was heard to sigh with relief. Apparently!!

Ian pointed out that the date July 19 was a very significant date in the history of Brunel and his ships: the Great Western was launched on that date in 1837, the keel of the SS Great Britain was laid on that date in 1839, the SS Great Britain was launched on that date in 1843 and on that date in1970 she got into the dock on her return from Falklands. A strange coincidence.

On her return the ship was in a very poor condition and Ian showed us several pictures of before and after the renovations.

There were of course problems. When the pine cladding was removed they found that below water line, where she had been sitting in salt water for so long in the Falkland Islands, the hull had started to corrode due to the presence of hygroscopic salts and they were warned in the mid 1990’s that if nothing was done the lower hull would essentially be eaten away and the ship would need to be scrapped. Fortunately Cardiff University designed a dehumidification system which effectively encloses the lower part of the hull and passes dry air into the space and keeps the moisture content of the air around the ship below 20%

So far this seems to be working well but is expensive to run!!

What they have done with the restoration is to reflect the various stages of the ship’s history. They have parts showing its life as a transatlantic liner with the first class promenade deck and first class cabins, the family and steerage accommodation on trips to Melbourne, and what it was like when it was a troop ship and a cargo ship.  A recent innovation has been the recreation of the galley complete with cat and rats! Computer images not real ones Ian hastened to add!!! They have also recreated a first class dining room from the 1840’s, which is used for functions and recently they have even managed to recreate smoke coming out of the funnel using water vapour, which Ian said was an amazing sight. They now get over 200,000 visitors per year.  You can also “Go Aloft” and climb up the rigging. Not something Ian is prepared to do, however!

Ian ended by telling us of a future plan. Brunel is acknowledged as one of the most influential British engineers of the past yet there is nowhere to learn the whole story about him and his achievements.   Two years ago the Great Britain Trust got funding to develop a national Brunel Museum and this will be sited next to the SS Great Britain. There will be a new build, opening in March 2018 and the old Dock Office of the Great Western Steamship Company will be restored to how it looked in Brunel’s time. They will also recreate Brunel’s drawing office. Visitors to the new museum will be greeted by a 2 storey head of Brunel which is currently under construction. Apparently visitors will go up to a mezzanine floor and enter the exhibition through one of his ears and exit through the other!!

What is particularly exciting is that they have access to a private collection of documents relating to Brunel the man as well as the engineer which has not been seen by the public before. Ian ended by showing two items from this collection which he particularly liked; a penknife with Brunel’s initials on it and a leather cigar case embossed with his initials and containing his last cigar!

Ian was an excellent communicator and gave a very interesting and informative talk The SS Great Britain sounds a good place to visit!!

 

 

What’s in a Sherd.

The autumn programme started this year with a talk from our president David Dawson. David’s research into the analysis of excavation pottery has the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the past and it is no wonder that his talk drew an audience from a wide area.

David started by describing in simple terms how to process excavation finds before turning to the more complex matter of identifying the form and fabric of a pot. These two elements of the process can help to determine not only age and function but also where a pot was made and how far it has been traded. Context, he emphasised, is everything. Without this it is impossible to make a valid interpretation.

Since the 1960s, the main method of identifying the fabric has been the ‘eyeball method’ preferably with the aid of a magnifying glass, although David rarely seems to need this. The late Professor D. Peacock of Southampton University improved on this method by taking thin sections which could be examined under a microscope and, while this was useful for identifying the temper or inclusions, it did not help greatly with the identification of the clay matrix.

The Peacock method was followed by the I.C.P. method or Inductively Coupled Plasma method using Atomic Emission Spectroscopy. This method does identify the minerals even those in the clay matrix but it presents the results as a list of tables which are not always easy to interpret.

The latest advance which David has been spearheading is called Quemscan and is being developed in conjunction with the Camborne School of Mines. Quemscan is an automated scanning system which has been used to analyse rock samples from the moon. The technique produces a visual map of what is in a sherd picking up the matrix as well as the inclusions and it also produces pie charts showing the percentage of every mineral that is present.

Results to date have shown some interesting correlations between the pottery found in Westbury-sub-Mendip and variously Wells, Chewton Mendip and Hope Wood, Ebbor Gorge. Common types appear to have been traded widely while others were made locally from local clay and local temper much as still happens in Africa today.

David also took the long view of pottery manufacture commenting on the Ceramic Revolution that took place between 1450 and 1650. During this period, ceramic imports increased bringing new forms and functions as well as new types of decoration. It is also possible that potters came too, fleeing religious persecution at home. Whatever the cause, forms and glazes diversified at this time and the country potter flourished until, in the nineteenth century, the process became industrialised and brick and tile manufacture evolved to meet the needs of a housing boom.

We have been privileged to hear David talk about this development while still in its early stages and shall wait with eager anticipation the further insights that are sure to emerge as more results become available.

 

The last summer visit on July 9^th was to the Banwell Bone Caves.

Starting with a lecture on the history of the caves, we were then given a guided tour of the cave where bones can still be seen. These Pleistocene animal bones were discovered in the early part of the 19^th century on land owned by George Henry Law, the Bishop of Bath and Wells and, although many of them were removed, some  are still carefully stacked around the walls of the chamber.

At the time of their discovery there was great excitement as Bishop Law was convinced they provided evidence of Noah’s flood but it’s now agreed that they are of animals from the Ice Age thought to have fallen into the cave when the ice melted about 80,000 years ago. The bones are all of various animals similar to those that can be seen in the Arctic today including reindeer, bison, bear, and wolf.

Bishop Law employed William Beard to manage the caves and it was he who kept the caves open for several years after the death of Bishop Law.

We then walked around the grounds to see the Banwell Tower and the various follies which were built by Bishop Law and which have been carefully restored by the Banwell Caves Heritage Group which has worked hard to restore the site.
It is now classified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). .
The caves are not open to the public except by arrangement but well worth a visit.
Their website is banwellcaves.org.uk

 

HIDDEN WEDMORE

On Wednesday 19th April Hazel Hudson described to us some of the many discoveries in the field of archaeology and local history that have taken place in the parish of Wedmore. She herself has been involved in and often instrumental in the discovery of many of them since her first encounter with archaeology as a sixth former at Sexey’s Grammar School, Blackford in the 1950s. However, taking a chronological theme, she began her talk with the discovery in 1893 of dinosaur bones in the late Triassic deposits being quarried on the hill top close to the Mudgley Road. These bones proved to be unique in that they predate the more well known dinosaurs of the Jurassic and also in that they represent two dinosaurs that have not, as yet, been identified anywhere else in the world. They have been named Avalonia sanfordia and Picrodon herveyi after the men who discovered them. These bones are now on display in Taunton Museum and must surely be worth a visit.

Following this, Hazel described the discovery at Heath House of a variety of artefacts – two Bronze Age Palstaves, three Bronze Age torques and a number of amber beads. The last of these, the beads, must have come from the Baltic. Moving into the Neolithic, a trackway across the levels has been found near Blakeway Farm and this trackway c. 2500BC, made of hazel rods, shows the first evidence of coppicing yet to be identified in the country.

More than twenty sites have been located from the Roman period and Roman field patterns have been observed on the levels between the Isle of Wedmore and the Mendip Hills. Roman salt pans with their accompanying briquetage have also been found in the Westhay Moor area to the south of the Isle of Wedmore.

Evidence of the Saxon period is less clear but in 1853 Tucker Coles discovered a Saxon pot in St Mary’s church yard containing over two hundred silver pennies. Declared treasure trove, most are now in the British Museum but a small number can be found in Taunton Museum. The coins were minted in Lincoln and have been attributed to the reign of King Canute. In 1989, a Saxon ring dated to 5-600 AD was also discovered near the Cheddar Road. The ring consisted of strands of copper alloy wire twisted together. Hazel has a copy which she wears regularly but the design is so charming that gold copies are now made in Wedmore.

Moving to the Norman period, the area seems to have been favoured by the church hierarchy. The site of a Bishop’s Palace has been located and excavated in Blackford and it has been suggested that it was demolished in the late 1300s because it was thought to have been too sumptuous. A grand religious establishment has also been found at Court Garden in Mudgley. First recorded in 1176, it is believed to have been built in the 1100s and to have belonged to the Dean of Wells. Pottery has been found on the site from the twelfth through to the fifteenth centuries. A piece of slate has been found that has musical notation inscribed on it, possibly dating from the 1400s. Is this another first for the area, I wonder?

Other exciting locations include Fernhall Farm, Mudgley, which has shown evidence of occupation from the Mesolithic through to the Present Day and the Old Vicarage, Wedmore, with evidence from the Roman Period onwards. Gog’s Orchard, Wedmore, has produced evidence dating back to the Iron Age including a Roman burial from the 2nd or 3rd century with, as a result, the need for the housing development there to be built on concrete rafts to preserve the archaeology beneath.

Finally, Hazel described a number of details about St. Mary’s Church, Wedmore, many of which had been first noted by Jerry Sampson. She concluded her talk with the observation that the site of the Manor House next to the church was most probably the location of King Alfred’s court in Saxon times.

But, perhaps our own thoughts at the end of her talk must have been to wonder at the extent of Hidden Wedmore that she had revealed to us and to speculate on the excitement and fun that she must have had over the years in helping to uncover it.

Madeleine Roberts

On 15^th March, Pat Hase gave an extremely entertaining talk on how to set about doing family history and some of the problems and pitfalls one might encounter.

She began by warning members it could become obsessive but could also be exciting and lead to a better understanding of social history.

She explained that one of the main difficulties with research was deciding what was fact and what was fiction. Her own grandfather told her wonderful tales when she was a small child, but few of them seem to have been rooted in fact and even when they were, they were much embellished. She thinks that many people start their research hoping they will be related to royalty or money but are more likely to uncover a child born out of wedlock, a death in the workhouse or another so-called scandal.

She told a delightful tale of a couple who got married, went abroad for their honeymoon and came back 6 months later with a baby. The explanation given by the mother was that it was hot overseas and things therefore happened more quickly!!

She warned that people should not believe everything they read on the internet. Americans are particularly guilty of passing on misinformation apparently!  People have built their whole family tree on spurious information. One had traced his family back to a Princess Margaret who had apparently married an agricultural labourer (which seems unlikely) and another reported family history of the Puddy family had traced their family back to a John Puddy who, it turned out, actually died aged 5 years.

She showed a photograph of herself as a baby taken in August 1939 pointing out that photographs can be a very useful source of information, not only about your own family, but also about social history as well.

She suggested that people should start with themselves and work backwards and that is was wise to follow the female line. After all, as she pointed out, the man named as a father on a birth certificate might not always be the father of the child! Interestingly it is now possible to get DNA testing done and this is always done on the female line. She also stressed the importance of speaking to relatives and friends as there are often things that your family didn’t bother to tell you but which friends of theirs sometimes know.

The 1939 register, taken as war began, is another important source of information giving, as it does, the ages and occupations of everyone at a certain address at that date. Anyone still living has been redacted from the register. As evidence of the usefulness of this she explained that on the register her grandfather’s date of birth was the 14^th November, which is what he had been told, yet his actual birth certificate stated the 21^st November. It turned out that, as births had to be registered within a certain time, his hadn’t been done within that period and so, to get round this, the registrar had simply added a week to his date of birth. This, not surprisingly, caused him much annoyance when he had to wait an extra week to get his pension.

Pat went on to encourage people to collect family memorabilia; diaries, family bibles etc. but there was a caveat to this. Apparently the Hase family bible has many wrong entries. It turns out that it had been copied by someone who had made mistakes in doing so. Her message, therefore, was to use original documents wherever possible as transcriptions might have errors. Surnames, for example. can vary. Researching the Hase family she has seen umpteen variations of the name. So beware.

Civil registration of births, marriage and deaths started in 1837 and the registration district was the Poor Law District so, for example, the Axbridge registration district actually includes 38 parishes.

Before 1837 you have to search Church records, which give baptisms, marriage and burials. Again, Pat made the point that baptisms do not always follow shortly after births. Some people were christened as adults and sometimes several children were baptised at the same time.

Another thing to be aware of is that between 1754 and 1837 marriages were required to be in church so many of those between non-conformists might appear to be childless, but this could be because the children would not have been baptised in the Church of England.

A useful source of information, she explained, are the census returns, which were done every 10 years from 1841 although a few were done earlier than that. In the 1841 census the information contained is, owever, limited.   It doesn’t give the relationships between family members, where they were born and adults were told to approximate their age to the nearest 5 years (although they could give their right age). Again there was a warning; the census returns can contain errors especially regarding age. This may be due to the person lying or transcription errors. Giving the example of her husband’s grandfather, he appeared to age very rapidly from 1841 to 1851 and on his death certificate in 1859 he had aged considerable yet again!. Transcription errors also often occurred on death certificates. On that of one William Hase, his wife appeared to have a different surname, but this was a simple error made by the person making the record.

Regarding where people lived, it is useful to look at the tithe apportionment maps which are available at the Record Office and which give the names of the landowner and the occupier of the land by tithe number around 1840. The Genealogist website has this information but you do have to pay for it.

Pat recommended drawing out your family tree to help see where people fit together. For families in this area she said that people did not always get married in the Parish of the bride and that some people got married in Bristol churches.

Newspapers are another source of information and the Western Gazette in now available from the Newspaper archive. She found some interesting accounts of the Hase family causing a disturbance in the papers and was quick to point out that she only married into this family!

She ended by going back to the tales her grandfather told her as a child. Apparently the Long family (her own family) was very important in Bristol; her great grandfather watched the riots in Queen Square, her great great grandfather owned a coal mine and her 3x grandfather owned 150 houses used on the London Stage Coach run. Going back another generation her 4x grandfather had entertained Garibaldi in his house when he visited Bristol.

On investigation it turned out the coal mine was actually sand pits and Garibaldi only stopped in Bristol for 10 minutes when the train stopped at Temple Meads.

Despite all her many warnings, her final message was to enjoy doing your family history but don’t believe everything you find.
Pat can be found every Saturday afternoon at Weston Town Hall and is happy to help anyone with their research, and their website www.wsmfhs.org.uk has lots of information on it to help as well.

 

 

On January 18th, Theresa Hall gave a very detailed and interesting illustrated talk about the Winscombe Project which was started by Mick Aston.

She began by explaining the differences between this project and the one previously done by them at Shapwick.  In contrast to Shapwick, which was a nucleate settlement ie one village, Winsombe was an area of dispersed settlements. The medieval records show there to have been between 18 and 22 difference hamlets and a landscape which was more pastoral than arable. Although Shipham is listed separately in the Domesday book, it is thought that it was originally part of Winscombe since Shipham church paid money to Winscombe church every year in lieu of burial rights.

Theresa went on to explain the topography and geology of the area. Half of Winscombe is nestled within the Mendips and is a mix of different topography namely marsh , highlands, and some arable farm land.  In terms of the Geology there are two ridges of limestone hills, Mercian mudstone and ridges of Dolomitic conglomerate which run east to west through the valley and there is marshland in the north. There are several routes through the Mendips and it is probable that Winscombe was one of the main ones and therefore of importance.

 Pre-history and history: Looking at what they found.
A Paleolithic axe was found at Sidcot Playing Fields, which was about 250,000 years old. When, what they thought was a Neolithic hand axe was found in a garden in Sidcot about a foot below the surface, they were quite excited but, on examination by the Stone Axe group , this was found to be an adze and there were no adzes in Neolithic times. Even more intriguingly, it turned out that this one came from Polynesia. A second one was then found near Sidcot school with some medieval pottery nearby, but this was another Polynesian tool. They can only surmise that perhaps the school had a sort of cabinet of curiosities which was then broken up and dispersed.

They have found some Neolithic bits and pieces, but nothing really exciting.Nothing was found from the Bronze Age and little from the Iron Age, although they did find a possible iron age shard in Barton. Since the Banwell Hill Fort dominates the area they had expected to have found more than this and although it is thought that there may have been hut circles in the area they have, so far, got no evidence for this.

Wint Hill is near the parish on the north side of the valley and the major Roman find there is the Wint Hill Bowl dating back to the 4^th century, originating from Cologne, which was found in the 1950’s. There are photos of the excavation in KJHL. The photographs show some skeletal remains, which were rumoured to have been put down a well by a suspicious farmer. Some of these bones are conserved in the museum and carbon dating suggests that some were from 430-610 and some from 660-810. They had presumed the bones were Roman but they are later than that and extend over a considerable time. It is suggested that they may be part of a Dark Age cemetery and that there might have been a monastic site in the vicinity of Banwell before the Saxon Minster was there, so there may have been a cemetery of an earlier British site on the hill . When the Church was built in Banwell the cemetery would then have ceased to function.

Roman remains associated with that settlement continued down the hill into the valley and were discovered when a pipeline was put in. There were several Roman buildings going down the hill alongside the pipeline and there are also bits of Roman pottery found at Barton and on the site of Star Villa, which is now in Shipham parish. On the Sandford side of the hill not much has been found but some fields have the name Blacklands which is a name associated with Roman times. They conclude that the Roman were in the area, but can not be more specific than that.

History.
Winscombe is first mentioned when King Edgar (959-975) granted 15 hides at Winscombe to Aelfswith. She was the wife of Aeltheah who owned much of the land in Wessex, and was a kinswoman of the previous King Eadwig, In other words they were an important and wealthy couple. Although they might never have gone to Winscombe they could have had an estate there which they could have used if the King was travelling around his kingdom and was, for example, visiting Cheddar or Banwell.   Aeltheah had a brother who was a monk at Glastonbury Abbey and the couple gave lands to the Abbey which included Winscombe, so that from this time Winscombe belonged to Glastonbury Abbey. The Domesday map shows the Banwell estate which belonged to the Bishop of Wells and it is thought that Winscombe was perhaps carved out of this estate. Theresa said that there is evidence that this estate changed ownership several times.

There are no parish boundaries for Winscombe and no charter boundaries although there are two nearby. Compton Bishop has one granted from the 10^th century and Banwell from 1068. This latter included Sandford, yet Sandford was part of the Church lands belonging to Winscombe and therefore belonged to Glastonbury. They think that this might perhaps be because Harold had seized Banwell (which belonged to Wells) and he might have arbitarily decided to take Sandford as well, but it does go back into the hands of Glastonbury later.

At Domesday, much of Winscombe belonged to Glastonbury but there were also people holding knights fees. There is an area around Woodborough of 2 1/2 hides belonging to Roger de Courseulles who also held Shipham. In the north of the parish in an area around Shipham and an area around Nye there is 1 hide and 1 virgate of land held by Ralph Tortemain or Crooked Hands, who held other lands as well. Another half a hide for land at Barton was held by a man called Pipe and, as this is the only land that he owns at Domesday, it is thought he was maybe living there. Both Roger de Courseulles and Ralph Tortemain had their main residences elsewhere.

In 1197 following the death of the Abbot of Glastonbury, Bishop Savaric takes over Glastonbury Abbey as well as being Bishop of Wells. Although this had been allowed by the King the monks were, apparently, not happy. In 1215 they went to the Pope and petitioned for the lands to be given back to them and the Pope agreed. Despite this the Bishop decided to keep four estates at Blackford, Winscombe and 2 others. Later, Bishop Jocelin re-arranged the cathedral Chapter and he gave Winscombe to the Dean and Chapter of Wells and it stayed with the Dean and Chapter until the 18^th century when parts began to be sold off. Had it stayed in the hands of Glastonbury then it would have gone into private hands at Dissolution.

Following the retention of land by Bishop Savaric the monks of Glastonbury continued to take court action against the Bishop over the lands he had retained.  This is evidenced in an account of a duel recorded by John Seldon who wrote a book in 1610 about dueling in which he quotes a deed which refers to the battle between the Abbot and the Bishop over the land. The Abbot appointed a fighter to act on his behalf who was given 10 marks of silver with a further 5 more promised if he won the battle. The account states that on the day of the duel the opponents were barelegged, bareheaded and bared to the elbow and held a red staff of an ells length. We don’t know who represented the Bishop nor do we know who won but it was presumably the Bishop’s man as Winscombe remained with the Dean and Chapter.

There was one tenant of Roger de Courseulles in the 13^th century, Henry Lovestheft, who belonged to the Bishop’s Court and he apparently gave some land away to Woodspring Priory, some to Minchin Buckland and some for the building of St Augustine’s Abbey in Bristol. Although he was only the tenant of the land one can only assume that he did this with permission.

Methods.
A lot of work was done by Maria Forbes and Mick Aston.
Various surveys were translated including surveys of the Parish dated 1572 and 1650 of the Dean and Chapter lands.   A survey of the Manor of Sandford which was done in 1540 for the Seymours was translated with the help of Frances Neale. Martin Ecclestone also translated the Court rolls and Compotos rolls

Within the Compotos Rolls and court rolls from 1360-1540 there are all the inhabitants on Dean and Chapter land listed by their status. These followed a pattern, so every year you can follow the inhabitants through time ie 1290-1640. The place they lived in is appended to the names of the people so that many of the people listed can be traced through time. As Theresa pointed out, this is easier where there are separate hamlets rather than a village. They hope that test pits on these houses might reveal status changes through looking at the pottery that comes out of the pits

She then went on to describe some of the articles that have been written about the project, which include one that Mick Aston wrote about farming within the Parish and one about the woodland. There is an interesting reference in the woodland records which states that in 1342, 5s 6d was paid for the bark of 16 oak trees which went to St Cuthberts Church in Wells and there are references to this being carted there. This wood can now be found in the chancel roof of the church.

They also looked at various maps of the Parish although there are not a huge number of them. There is a 1792 map of Winscombe made by William White for the Dean and Chapter of Wells. Interestingly this has lots of blanks on it which refer to the parts that the Dean and Chapter didn’t own. These are the areas which equate to those held by the Knights at Domesday so, for example, an area of Sandford which is blank is thought to be the lands held by Ralph Tortemain.

Theresa showed a map of Sandford, done by Mick Aston which shows the land not owned by the Dean and Chapter. This was land owned by individuals who clearly had strips of land intermingled with strips belonging to the Church.   Theresa pointed out that this might be important in understanding the development of the parish.

Edward Seymour the brother of Jane Seymour, owned Sandford Manor which was part of the Cheddar Estate. He had to go to law to get it, however. It had been previously been owned by the Lisle family and, at this time, held by Arthur Plantagenet the illegitimate son of Edward IV. Apparently Edward thought the land was rented by Arthur who thought differently and the matter went to Cromwell to adjudicate. It took 8 years to settle with Cromwell deciding in favour of Edward once Jane became queen.

Theresa showed a slide of Nye Farm which is on one of the islands in the marsh which belonged to Edward Seymour.   There was a moated site at the end of the island which was the main residence of whoever was renting Sandford manor. They have found some earthworks at this site which they will investigate in due course.

A map found in a house in Wells shows Woodborough Common with winding gears drawn on it and it is thought that this was drawn up for the Dean and Chapter when they gave the right to mine to someone who lived in Shipham. They have found some lead weights there of the sort associated with mining.

Theresa showed more maps drawn by Mick Aston. One of the green shows a tiny remnant of land which has been cut off by railway line and appeared not to be owned by anyone. This has now been claimed by the Parish Council and now forms a little orchard garden.

There was also a map of the Lynch from the air. They have found evidence of burials at the western end and at the centre of the Lynch there was a windmill dating back to the 13^th century.  Various other aerial maps have been done.

Another map drawn by Mick Aston is a reconstruction, which shows how meadowland could have been reclaimed from the marsh.

Building surveys were done by The Somerset vernacular group, which has looked at more recent houses.   As well as vernacular building there are a lot of Victorian villas, probably because Winscombe was thought to be a healthy place to live. Of particular interest is West End Farm in Barton which has a cruck beam that dates back to 1278. This is the date of the first the compotos rolls and it is thought that this is the earliest vernacular building in Somerset still lived in.

Techniques
Geophysics has been done and James Bond has done earthwork surveys.
They have done little field walking because of the amount of material it creates although they did look at a field at Max Mills and found some Roman bits.

Test pitting was the main technique they used..

At Tower House they found a lot of roof tiles. In the historical record this area is called Ford and there was free tenant called William Ford recorded, who farmed there.

They have done a total of 189 test pits of which 29 were in Sidcot. They have found some medieval bits from the central area and some smithing remains outside the meeting house. There were 2 smiths in the parish, one in Winscombe and one, who was a free tenant, in Sidcot.

29 have been done in Barton, the main arable area, but these have not revealed very much and not as much as in farms in the hamlets. An orchard site in Barton has revealed some jars and some Saintonge ware which is an import from France and usually only found in cities or on manorial sites, not in rural areas

Other test pits were done at the Lynch around the site of an old windmill.

At Woodborough Mill they have found some medieval material. The Mill was owned at this time by Henry Lovestheft who gave some land to the Church and was allowed in return to get the right to take the water from a spring which, when diverted, added to the water going to his mill. This water would have gone naturally to Max Mill. There was a 17^th century court case because the owner of the Mill had a tenant at the time who had allowed a wall to fall into disrepair and this meant that the water then went to Max Mill. Although the people at Max Mill were quite happy about this there were clearly several arguments and threats of violence over the water, which culminated in the court case. Although we don’t know the result of the court case we can assume that Woodborough Mill won as they had the documentary evidence to support their case

Theresa went on to talk about the settlement of Wyke, the site of which is unknown. Mick thought he’d identified it in one of the fields in the Parish and they have done 3 test pits there. Although they have found no pottery, one pit showed evidence of something industrial and was, perhaps, an iron working furnace.

The Court area. In the test pits they have found fine ware from the 13^th and 14^th century, and coarse ware at the farm end. Outside the court they found no pottery. In the compotos rolls the people who have tenements are nearly all cottars so were presumably servants of the Court rather than farming for themselves.

To finish, Theresa described a Christmas card sent by James Bond to Mick Aston which imagined them in the future doing some penetrating analysis from their armchairs based on the whole landscape being digitised thus saving them all from going out into the cold and wet. An interesting thought!!

There are a lot of articles written about the Winscombe project written by Mick Aston and ones published by SANHS.

This is a link  to Mick Aston’s site

There are also several articles published by SANHS – just go to the SANHS site  and put winscombe project in the search box

Liz Friend