Shepton Mallet Prehistory

The Mendips have been an important area for human settlements for some five thousand years, and there is considerable evidence for widespread habitation around the Shepton Mallet area.

The Ordnance Survey maps of the area show a bewildering array of prehistoric remains, clustered in a strip fifteen miles long and a mile or two wide. Starting from Shepton Mallet, it leads north-west along the high ground to the towns of Winscombe and Shipham. Literally hundreds of tumuli dot the landscape, and there are dozens of cairns, earthworks, barrows, and henges. Occasional remains are to be found outside this small strip, but at nothing like the density.

The sheer volume of remains show that during the Neolithic period (the late Stone Age, around 5,000 to 3,000 BC), this must have been a vibrant area. The light soils of the limestone uplands were ideal for human settlement, and were very popular among the early inhabitants of Britain. The early settlers cleared away the thick forests which covered the area, mainly by burning them down, and they introduced systems of land management and agriculture.

Numerous flint tools - scrapers, axes, knives, and arrowheads - have been discovered locally, many of which can be seen in local museums.

To the north of Shepton lies Maesbury hill fort, a vast earth stronghold which must have been one of the centres of prehistoric power. It more or less marks the south-west end of the dense neolithic strip of settlement, while the north-west end is marked by the hill fort at Blackers Hill, near Gurney Slade.

Further to the south-west, one finds the hill fort at Chesterblade. There are a few nearby tumuli, but this is on an isolated patch of high ground, and seems cut off from the main area of upland development. Still further to the south-west, the massive hill fort of South Cadbury, fifteen miles away, marked a centre of power which not only held sway in prehistoric times, but which returned to prominence after the Romans left, some two thousand years later.

Evidence of the status of the Shepton area comes from six iron age burial mounds which were discovered in 1953 by Max Unwin, then Curator of the Shepton Mallet Museum. This group of tumuli at Beacon Hill are the largest known group of ancient burial mounds in Somerset. Sadly, only a few days after they were discovered, the Forestry Commission ploughed the hilltop for tree planting, and all but destroyed the mounds.

By the first millenium BC, the local inhabitants had moved into the Iron Age. With the tools that the new material afforded them, they moved down into the valleys from the easily worked uplands, and began to exploit the fertile loam of the forests. In Ham Woods, to the West of Shepton, there is evidence of iron age cave dwellings.

The settlers moved right up to the waterlogged Somerset levels, a vast flat, marshy area almost unbroken save for the huge outcrop on which Glastonbury Tor now stands. At this time, encampments were made on the modern sites of Wells, Pilton, West Pennard and Ditcheat. Small farms and villages were established all around, making use of the good quality agricultural land and the easy availability of water.