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A
Brief History of Banwell
A
Short Tour of the Village
Situated at the west end
of the Mendips on the north side about 5 miles from the coast of the
Bristol channel at Weston Super Mare, besides the main village it
consists of the hamlets of Winthill, Yarborough, Whitley Head, Hill
End, Knightcott, Wolvershill, West Wick, St Georges, Waywick,
Rolstone and Towerhead.
The settlement may have started on the south side of the Mendip
ridge at Winthill but finally settled on the north side where there
is a fine spring that produces up to 7 million gallons a day in the
winter season, this spring ran mills from at least Doomsday up until
the 1920's when the spring was capped and the water used for the
ever expanding Weston Super Mare, at this time the village also lost
its pond that made an excellent front piece for the mainly 15th
century parish church.
The doomsday book lists three mills in Banwell, we do not know if
they were fed from the pond as it may not have been there but they
were certainly fed by the waters of the spring, where these mills
were we do not know but what we do know is that since the early 18th
century there has been a mill near the spring head fed from the pond
where the bowling green now is,. The buildings of the mill who's
wheels stopped turning in 1921 are still there, one of the building
that looks like a bungalow with a lawn in front just before the
steps down to church street is where the water wheel was that drove
the mill stones.
To the west side of the Grist Mill in the 18th & 19th
century was a Paper Mill that was turned into a Brewery in the
1850's and lasted until 1906. The mills were owned by the Emery
family and were run by the Castle family and later the Willet family
ran the gristmill.
The Castle family who ran the brewery had various partners which
change the name on the product, Thomas Castle, Thomas Castle & Son,
Castle & Rogers, Castle, Son & Wood. The brewery owned public houses
around the district where it supplied the beer. The old pond site
now a bowling green and the old mill buildings down to the Brewers
Arms public house reside in the ownership of the Waterworks Company.
Banwell was one of the manors of the Bishops of Bath & Wells who had
a residence to the east side of the church which they vacated in the
18th century and has been used as a private residence
since, it has been called the Court House and latterly Banwell Abbey
the name that is used to this day, this monastic title seems to have
arrived from ancient times when Alfred gave Asser "a monisterium at
Banwell" how big or what they meant by a monisterium we do not know.
Around 1874 the house was rebuilt to its present style by Dyer
Sympson who built the Castle, the Abbey property was split into four
during the 1950's.
As mentioned before the mainly 15th century church has a
100 foot high tower that contains10 bells from the 18th
to 20th century and a clock dated 1884. The body of the
church has a nave with a clerestory, north and south aisles and it
is said, a rather short chancel considering the proportions of the
rest of the church. The font dates from the 12th century
carved stone pulpit from 15th century and a beautiful
carved rood screen built and set up in 1552 and escaped the
reformation, there are also some very early bench pews given to date
of the 1480's. The church has undergone major restorations in 1812,
1862 and the mid 1960's.
It is unfortunate that five roads of the village, Church Street,
East Street, Castle Hill, High Street and West Street, meet in the
square where once the village cross stood, this cross was moved and
rebuilt in the 1754 and removed altogether around 1798 as it was
thought to"incommoded the traffic", traffic has been and still is
the bane of Banwell life and although a bypass was pegged out in the
1930's it has never been built.
Church Street goes North past the old 1874 Chapel of the free
Methodist and later the Baptist, past the church entrance and the
sites of the old, Mill and Brewery, Wagon works, the Gas Works of
1865-1926 and the Poor Houses then follows Banwell river to the Moor
which contained many large farms with fine houses that brought
prosperity in to the village but alas many now just private houses.
East Street, once called Gay Street starts at the Bell and goes
past the Old Non Conformist Chapel of the 1790's, the
Vicarage, the old 1887 Fire Station, Banwell Abbey, the old village
Pound and on to Towerhead where Bishop Godwin built a large house in
the 16th century, this house was rebuilt in the 19th
century and called Towerhead House.
Just over the parish boundary at Towerhead was Sandford and Banwell
Railway Station, now Sandford Stone, built on the new railway line
from Yatton to Shepton Mallet in 1869 called the Cheddar Valley line
or locally known as the Strawberry Line, this line closed in the
Beaching cuts of the 1964.
Up until 1967 East Street was very narrow will just enough room for
a bus so to help the traffic flow, or so it was thought, the
complete line of terrace cottages and shops on the south side of the
road were pulled down, sadly this did not help the traffic that
much. The pulling down of the butchers shop opposite the Bell Hotel
in the early 1970s lost the shape of Banwell's Square which is now
just a junction at the end of the road.
Southwards from the
square is Banwell Rhoddy now called Castle Hill that leads of course
past the Castle built in 1847 as a private residence and then on to
Winscombe the next village. If you bear right before the Castle and
right again you will go past the Roman/ Medieval site at Winthill.
To the West of the Square is High Street which confuses many
visitors that venture up it hoping to find the main street but find
a narrow winding hill with cottages either side. Until the 20th
century this road was called Harding's lane, for what reason is not
known although a Harding's Barn is to be found in Harding's Lane on
an 18th century estate map. On the first steep part of
High Street you pass two old pubs now closed, The George and The
White Hart. Near the top of the hill you pass the old school of
1867, then two paths to Banwell Hill, Rock path and Hill path.
Follow through the "narrows" with cottages on either side you find
on the right hand site the Jubilee Well of 1887 which is a 76 feet
deep.
High Street then follows the north side of Banwell hill past mainly
modern buildings inter-dispersed with restored old cottages, at the
west end of High street is situated the Caves house once the
residence of Bishop Law, under this house are the Bone and
Stalactite caves, further to the west is Hillend where a "shadow
factory" was built during the war for aeroplane building, the
factory site is now Elborough Village.
The fifth street off the Square is West Street, the main street, it
starts at what was once The Ship Hotel a Coaching Inn, past the War
Memorial where the village Lock-up stood in the 1830's and where
nearby a German bomb fell in 1940, pass the Methodist Chapel built
in 1862 and "Pruens Lane" on the right the entrance to Ten Acres the
field behind the shops that was used for Banwell Horse Show and
where the remains of Roman buildings were found in 1967. A short
lane next the last of the shops leads to the Malt House that once
belonged to the Brewery. Here the flats next to the Malt House and
the flats next to the car park are replacement for houses also
bombed in 1940, opposite the car park the New School built in 1926.
Next to the car park is the Grange one time home of the Emery family
which in years gone by had a Tan Yard behind it.
Wolvershill road turns right off West Street and goes to Worle
passing Stonebridge and Westwick on the way, West Street carries on
pass the Wolvershill turning to the Recreation field where it
becomes Knightcott Road.
Banwell from the mid 19th century thrived with more than
its share of shops and businesses, many gentry families resided here
which gave trade and employment but with the rise of Weston Super
Mare and the traffic problems Banwell has declined so that at the
turn of the 20th to 21st century we are down
to 8 shop from the 26 odd of the 1940/50's
Banwell had two fairs, January and July; the January has survived in
a very very small way. This fair was for cattle and sheep; the whole
of East Street where it was held was shuttered up from the Square to
the Abbey gates. The fair had all the trappings with sideshow
entertainers and traders selling all kind of wares. Also open on
fair days was the fire station that adjoins the Abbey estate in East
Street. We still open the Fire station on fair day but it is more a
museum now as the county fire service was withdrawn from here in the
1980's.
The Fire station was the gift of Miss Fazakerley of Chorley in
Lancashire in who came to the abbey in 1883 for her health, in 1887
she supplied an up to date fire engine for the fire station with
equipment and uniforms for the crew. Miss Fazakerley also supplied
instruments and uniforms for a village band.
There has been a
Wesleyan church in Banwell since the 1790's the first just off the
Square in East Street two doors from the vicarage which I believed
caused some problems, it is said their windows were broken by the
church people, this chapel was replace by one in West Street in 1862
The old chapel became for want of a word a village hall called the
Literary Institute where most village functions were held, it later
became a builder and undertakers workshop and is now a private
residence. There is also an old chapel in church street started by
the free Methodist in 1872 the chapel was eventually sold to the
Baptist church in the 1940's, then became the church hall in the
1950's and is now a private business premises.
There are now only three public houses in Banwell village and one at
St Georges the Woolpack. Historically St Georges is part of Banwell
Parish but I suspect soon to be part of Worle or Locking Castle.
There are only now three pubs in the main village the Brewers Arm
next to the river below the Old Brewery, the Whistling Duck on the
Knightcott Road on the way to Weston which is on the site of an
earlier pub The Smiths Arms. The Bell in the Square is an ancient
inn that had stables off an entrance in Church Street. In the 18th
century the Bell belonged to the Tuckey family two of who were
parish clerks and whose beautiful writing can be seen in the old
churchwardens account books, which date from 1519 to the present
day. The Tuckey's were also stone carvers and a masterpiece can be
seen in the Bell front bar, a Royal coat of arms by Edward Tuckey
dated 1764 . Near by opposite the Bell was another ancient large inn
called the Ship which sadly went out of business in the 1990's, but
thankfully very nicely restored to business office accommodation.
(The were two pubs in High Street up until the 1960's called the
George and White Hart).
There has been a school in the village since the end of the 18th
century that included one associated with Hannah More. One of the
schools in High Street was converted from a Temperance Hall in 1867
and was used until the 1950's in conjunction with the current school
of 1926 in West Street.
Most of the early buildings in the main village are on the North
sides of East Street and West Street, and both side of Church
Street, there are many other ancient buildings mainly farm houses
scattered around the outlying parish. There also seems to have been
quite a few large Houses for the gentry built or rebuilt in the 19th
century.
In September 1940 a stray stick of bombs fell on the village killing
five people and destroying four early terrace cottages in lower West
Street and the Post Office and General store at the top end of West
Street towards the Square. Sadly all these were rebuilt in the
1950's to the poor designs of that time.
In the 1950's a council estate was built to house local people and
families that had been displaced by the war and were residing in
squatter camps at Hillend and Summer lane, the name squatters was
not used then as a derogatory name as it is today. The council
estate was enlarged through the 1960's and infill around this estate
continued with private bungalows and houses which attracted a lot of
retired people from the Midlands, later development has carried on
Westwards on both sides of the road towards Knightcott.
After sixty odd years of trying Banwell finally built a Village Hall
near the Westfield estate on part of the Recreation field left to
the village by Robert Day in the 1902. The rest of this field is
still used for recreation and is the site for the village carnival
in July. The field was in the past also used for the Harvest Home
and the fun fairs that went with it.
At the back of West street is another field called Ten Acres that
belonged to the Brewery, here from the 1880's to 1930's the Banwell
Horse show was held although it did alternate with the Abbey ground
the other side of the river below the Abbey sometimes. Ten Acres
luckily has not been developed, as it might have been for in the
1967 a pipe track dug near to the river by the water works revealed
4th or 5th century Roman Buildings with mosaic
floors. A small excavation was made of the site but the extent of
the building is not known, the site is now scheduled so will not be
built on but sadly it may never be fully excavated. To the west
side of Ten Acres where the Scout Hut and Community Centre stand was
the site of the Banwell Sewage works closed in the 1970's, the car
park above this area off West street was created by pulling down one
of the ancient cottages that partly survived the 1940's bombing.
To the east of the village is Banwell wood with a knoll that was an
iron age fort where the ramparts can still be seen, to the west of
this fort is a low earth and stone bank in a cruciform shape
surrounded by a rectangular bank the whole likened to a rabbit
warren, when it was put there or for what reason is not known
although some have suggested it has an association with the thought
that St Patrick was born in Banwell.
Nearby is a Victorian castle built in 1847 by a London Solicitor as
his home, it is now a hotel and restaurant. To the west of the
castle on the south side of the hill is Winthill where roman and
medieval occupation was found during excavations in the 1960's. One
of the important finds at Winthill was a roman glass bowl engraved
with hunting scenes and a verse "VIVAS CUM TVIS PIES" translated I
am told "long life to you and yours drink and you will live",
the bowl in now in the Asmolian Museum in Oxford.
Follow this south side of this hill westwards past Whitley Head and
we come to the Bone and the Stalactite caves, the latter was
discovered by miners in the 17th century but then lost.
In the 1830's the land on which the cave was thought to be came into
the ownership of the Bishop of Bath & Wells, George Henry Law
1824-1845, at this time the lost cave (Stalactite) was found
again and opened up, in trying to find a better entrance to the
Stalactite cave another cave was found containing a great number of
bones of amongst other things Bison, Wolf, Large Brown Bear,
Reindeer, red fox and Arctic Fox, hence its name.
The buildings around the caves were gradually extended into a
mansion with all the grounds set out as ornamental gardens with
various follies and building such as a small museum to house some of
the finds from the bone cave. On the hill behind the mansion the
Bishop built a 50-foot high tower with a balcony at the top where
you can get a fine uninterrupted view in every direction of the
surrounding countryside. The whole estate gradually fell into
disrepair in the mid 20th century but with the new owners
of the house in the 1980's and help of the farmer of the estate
lands the whole area is being brought back to life and restored, the
Bone cave and tower are open now at selected time of the year, but
the Stalactite cave is restricted to those with caving ability.
Sadly many people see Banwell as a village with a traffic jam but
you will see from the above if you wander around on foot you will
see Banwell in a different light.
The above information
has come from my own and many other sources including articles by
various authors in Search the journal of Banwell Society of
Archaeology. I have endeavoured to give the correct information but
if you know anything written to be incorrect please contact me. I
hope to update these pages from time to time.
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