Andrew Swift ascends the Mendips, following a path that treads through memories of some darker moments in history and rewards you with welcome Spring sights in equal measure
This month’s walk heads to the highest point on the Mendips, a bleak stretch of moorland where Bronze Age burial mounds and the remains of a World War Two decoy town command spectacular views in all directions. En route, it also takes in the remains of the Mendip lead mining industry, a lost Roman settlement, complete with amphitheatre, and a hidden woodland, carpeted in late spring with bluebells and wild garlic.
The walk starts in the tiny village of Charterhouse on Mendip. To find the parking area, turn down a lane by the Charterhouse Outdoor Centre, signposted to Blackmoor Reserve (BS40 7XR; ST501558). If the car park is full, more parking is available in a lay-by 400m south of the Outdoor Centre, from where a footpath leads up to the starting point.
As soon as you step out of the car, you are in a strange and almost entirely man-made landscape. Lead has been mined and smelted on Mendip since the early Iron Age, but it was the Romans who established it on an industrial scale. Tacitus, writing some 50 years after the Romans invaded Britain in AD 43, claimed that one of the main reasons for the invasion was to gain control of the country’s mineral wealth. They were shipping Mendip lead out across the empire within six years of their arrival, and built roads linking the leadworks with ports on the Bristol and English Channel coasts.
Lead mining continued after the Romans left and in the Middle Ages was controlled by Carthusian monks from Witham Friary, near Frome – which is how the village came to be called Charterhouse. Early smelting methods were fairly primitive, and the vast piles of slag left behind contained enough lead to make them worth resmelting when new techniques were developed. What you see around you today is almost entirely the legacy of 19th-century efforts to rework earlier slag heaps.
A dark history
Follow a broad track leading north out of the car park and, after a few metres, when it forks, bear left. After another 175m, turn left to follow a footpath sign down four steps and continue past a pond, dammed as part of the lead-making process. After crossing a stream, go through a kissing gate (KG) and carry straight on.
Another KG leads onto a road, on the other side of which is the site of a Roman town. Dispel any thoughts of gracious living, however – this would have been a grim place, built for the lead workers, many of whom would have been slaves or prisoners of war, and the dire effects of lead poisoning would have been endemic.
Turn right along the road and after 150m turn left up a lane (ST503562). After about 500m, look out for humps and bumps in a field to your left. This is the site of a Roman amphitheatre, but we can only guess as to the nature of the spectacles laid on here. At the top of the lane, bear left by the wireless masts along a bridleway. After 850m, a gateway leads onto Black Down (ST490569). Two tracks lie ahead – take the deeply eroded one on the right with a Mendip footpath waymark.
This high moorland is characterised by heather, gorse, scrub and bracken. As you carry on, the trig point marking the highest point on Mendip – Beacon Batch, 325m above sea level – comes into view ahead. As you approach it, look out for three Bronze Age burial mounds on your right, part of a group of 16 known as the Beacon Batch barrow cemetery. The views from here are fantastic, with the whole sweep of the Bristol Channel – from the Severn Bridges to beyond Porlock – visible on a clear day, while far below Blagdon Reservoir nestles in a fold of the hills.
Decoy war town
Carry on westward from Beacon Batch along a straight and stony path (not marked as a public footpath on the OS map). The little mounds alongside the path date not from the Bronze Age but from 1941, when a decoy town was laid out across Black Down. Here, in the darkest days of World War Two, lights shone and fires burned to trick the Luftwaffe into dropping bombs on Mendip instead of Bristol.
After 550m, when a bridleway cuts diagonally across, carry straight on along a rougher path, indicated by a small post with a footpath sign. After another 600m, when you come to a rough strip of grassland cutting across the path, turn left to weave your way past pools of water – something of a surprise on this high plateau and much resorted to by the wild ponies that roam the down.
After 200m, as you approach a gate, you will spot a large mound on the right, covering a bunker from which the lights and fires of the decoy town were controlled (ST471569). After going through the gate, carry on along a rocky path between fences; when you come to a lane, turn left.
The lane passes GB Gruffy Nature Reserve, which you can turn aside to explore if you wish. A little further along the lane, turn right across a cattle grid along a drive (ST479564). This leads past the evocative ruins of an ancient long house, just past which the drive forks. Bear right and after another 250m – just before a pair of sturdy gateposts – turn left through a handgate with a West Mendip Way waymark (ST477557).
Carry on alongside a wall for 900m, before going through a handgate and following a stony track downhill through Long Wood, whose banks are carpeted in late spring with bluebells and wild garlic. Go through a KG at the bottom (ST487550) and carry straight on before turning left through another KG signposted to Charterhouse.
This leads into a valley with the intriguing name of Velvet Bottom, where you are once again surrounded by the ruins of the Mendip lead industry. The broken-down walls you have to negotiate are the remains of dams, built as part of the refining process. An information board further up provides copious information on the history of this dry, silent valley. As for its name, that is due to the rabbits who keep the grass so neatly cropped.
After 1700m go through a KG and turn right along a road for 60m. Go through a gate on the left and follow the path as it curves left to return to the car park.
Distance: 6.5 miles
Time: 3.5 hours
Level of challenge: Generally straightforward, although with rough and muddy stretches, especially on Black Down. Dog owners need to be aware that basking adders may be encountered in the undergrowth.
Map: OS Explorer 141
Discover more of Andrew Swift’s work at akemanpress.com. All photos provided courtesy of Andrew Swift.
