Priddy
The name comes from the Old English
words “prid” and “ea” meaning respectively
“hill” and “water”. Priddy is a medieval
market centre 245m (800 feet) above sea level where Mendip wool
was collected for clothiers down in the valleys. Legend has it that
the plague in 1348 drove the annual Sheep Fair up here from Wells,
but it is likely that the high city tolls were a more significant
factor. The fair takes place in August on the Wednesday closest
to the 21st. There is a stack of hurdles on the green which, though
no longer used for sheep pens, serves as a kind of traditional guarantee
that it will continue.
The village church of St.Laurence
dates from the 13th Century. It has a Norman font and in a glass
case on a wall there is a 15th century cloth used to cover the altar
(a pall). The centre of the rood screen and a chest are Jacobean;
the pine roof is Victorian. Gill’s Croft field to the west
contains an early Bronze Age burial mound, as does the field behind
the hedge to the north.
The upper storey of a barn at Manor Farm is used as a changing room
for cavers heading for Swildon’s Hole. This is the main entrance
into one of Britain’s most extensive cave systems and the
stream flowing into it is one of the sources of the River Axe. This
river emerges at the bottom of the Mendips at Wookey Hole. Other
sources are marked by so called Swallet Holes, some of which are
marked on maps (North Hill Swallet and St. Cuthbert’s Swallet
are examples).
The plaque to James Green commemorates
the arrival of piped water to the Priddy in 1865
Lead
Mining
The first to make use of the area’s considerable deposits
of lead ore were the Ancient Britons. The Romans greatly expanded
the industry and built a road which passed a mile north of Priddy
on its NW to SE direction from Charterhouse (where more lead mining
occurred). The Romans made extensive use of this lead (and silver)
at Aquae Sulis (Bath). Lead mining reached its height in the mid
17th century. The Bishops of Bath and Wells were the “lords
royal” of this part of the Mendips and their tenth share of
production was 17 tons (and worth £177) in 1634. The biggest
expansion occurred in the decade from 1567 when it quadrupled so
that the tenth share was over 9 tons in 1577.
Lead production finally ceased
in 1908 with the closure of St.Cuthbert’s Leadworks. That
area today is a mass of long abandoned opencast mining pits, shiny
black slag heaps and occasional bits of ruined buildings, one of
which has been rebuilt and now serves as a centre for cavers. The
nearby pools were the source of the water used for washing the ore.
The washings landed up at Wookey Hole, at the bottom of the Mendips,
after a two mile underground journey, and the water supply pollution
they were causing down there contributed to the mine’s closure
– as did the dramatic decrease in price of imported lead.Fair
Lady’s Well marks a parish boundary dating from 1296, and
the boundary between St.Cuthberts and its one time rival, the Chewton
minery. In the 1860s there were lawsuits about water rights between
them. This minery’s water source was Priddy Pools (also known
as Waldegrave Pool). Bits and pieces of old flues can be found near
the path between Lady’s Fair Well and Priddy Pools - horizontal
ones allowed heavy fumes to settle out and anything left went up
into the air through bigger vertical flues.
Neolithic
remains
Priddy Circles are now really only
clearly visible from the air, where three big circles and a somewhat
detached and barely recognisable northern fifth circle can be seen
covering a distance of about a mile from GR 520522 to 521523.They
were probably ceremonial henge monuments, similar to early form
Stonehenge, dating from the late Neolithic (or early Bronze) Age
– 2000 or 2500 BC. Their diameters range from 160 to 170m
and it is possible the “gap” once contained a fifth
circle which was obliterated by the Roman Road built there. The
area would have been a centre for religious and tribal meetings.
Bronze
Age remains
Around Priddy the
OS map is littered with “tumuli”. These are usually
burial sites for cremated wealthy leaders of the local community
and are more commonly referred to as Barrows. They date from the
early Bronze Age during the era of the “Beaker” people
– 2300 to 1400 BC. Our word “barrow” is derived
from the Old English word “beorg” meaning both burial
mould and hill.
At GR 521493 and 100m west across the
road from Deer Leap CP (2km south of Priddy along Pelting Drove)
a 2m high, 18m diameter barrow is visible amongst trees near a Dutch
Barn.
From GR520522 to 521523, alongside
the B3135 a kilometre north of Priddy, there are a total of four
partially removed barrows.
There are two barrows near Priddy church.
One is 140m west at GR527514 in Gill’s Croft field and the
other is just north at GR 528514, was excavated by the local vicar
in 1895.
The most well known barrows are the
two series of barrows NE of the village. People confuse them, not
least because both seen to contain nine barrows and Nine Barrows
Lane is nearest the Ashen Hill series. An isolated barrow adjacent
to Nine Barrows Lane is often mistaken as part of Ashen Hill’s
eight barrows.
A footpath from Nine Barrows Lane passes
between the 1.2m high the isolated barrow at GR 535522 and Ashen
Hill Barrows. Most walkers cut across from this footpath to walk
just north of the first four of the Ashen Hill Barrows at GR 539523
until they meet another footpath which runs N to S from the B3135.
That footpath then cuts through the Ashen Hill series and heads
towards the Priddy Nine Barrows on North Hill at GR 539515
Ashen Hill Barrows are a group of 8
round barrows, aligned roughly W to E and 295m above sea. They were
less than expertly excavated by John Skinner, vicar of Camerton,
in 1815 who found creation burial remains and sold his finds to
raise church funds. Now at between 1.5m and 2.7m high they are lower
than in Skinner’s days.
Priddy Nine Barrows consists of a curving
group of seven barrows separated from the remaining two barrows
in the group. Dips in the top of these and other barrows indicate
the fact that throughout the ages grave robbers have been at work.
The footpath south from Ashen Hill Barrows passes to the east of
the two barrows before reaching a stone wall, behind which is the
other seven. This wall marks an extremely old parish boundary and
within medieval parish surveys there are mentions of these “Nine
Barrows” -- a 1296 document refers to “Nigheberwes”
for example. The barrows, at 307m (1000 ft) above sea level on North
Hill are up to 3m high and 45m diameter.
Droves
Eastwater Drove and Dursdon Droves are but two of a multitude of
ancient tracks originally used for the movement of livestock in
the Priddy area. One appeal was that unlike the turnpike roads they
didn’t charge tolls!
Long
Distance Paths
The Mendip Way passes through Priddy.
It is an 80 km long route which roughly follows the Mendip Hill
from Uphill, on the outskirts of Weston-Super-Mare, to Frome via
Wells and Shepton Mallet.
The Monarch’s Way passes close to Priddy. It is a very meandering
long distance path, about 1000 km long, which attempts to follow
the route taken by Charles II after his escape from Cromwell's forces
after the Battle of Worcester in 1651 |
