Banwell

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Banwell
Coordinates: 51.3313° N 2.8677° W
Population	2923
OS grid reference	ST395595
Unitary authority	North Somerset
Ceremonial county	Somerset
Region	South West
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Weston-super-Mare
Dial code	01934
Police	Avon and Somerset
Fire	Avon
Ambulance	Great Western
UK Parliament	Weston-super-Mare
European Parliament	South West England
List of places: UK • England • Somerset

Banwell is a village and civil parish in North Somerset, England, about six miles east of Weston-super-Mare. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 2,923.

Contents 1 Geography 2 History 3 Perambulation 4 Amenities 5 Housing 6 Caves 7 References

[edit] Geography

Banwell is situated at the west end of the northern side of the Mendip hill range, roughly 5 miles from the coast of the Bristol channel at Weston-super-Mare. Besides the main village, Banwell consists of the hamlets of Winthill, Yarborough, Whitley Head, Hill End, Knightcott, Wolvershill, West Wick, St Georges, Waywick, Rolstone and Towerhead.

The original settlement may have started on the south side of the Mendip ridge at Winthill, but finally became situated on the north side, where there is a spring that produces up to 7 million gallons a day in the winter season. This spring ran mills from the time of the Domesday book up until the 1920s when the spring was capped and the water used for the rapidly growing town of Weston Super Mare. At this time the village also lost its pond that formed a front piece for the mainly 15th century parish church of St Andrew, which is a grade I listed building.^[1]

[edit] History

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.^[2] 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 popular theory that Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Banwell.

Nearby is a Victorian castle built in 1847 by John Dyer Sympson, a solicitor from London. Originally built as his home, it is now a hotel and restaurant. It is a grade II* listed building.^[3] 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 1960s. One of the important finds at Winthill was a Roman glass bowl engraved with hunting scenes and a verse "VIVAS CUM TVIS PIES" which translated into modern English means "long life to you and yours drink and you will live". The bowl is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Banwell was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Banuella, meaning 'Prayer well' from the Old English ben 'Prayor' and wiell 'well'.^[4]

At the back of West street is a field called 'Ten Acres' that formerly belonged to the Brewery. A horse show was held here from the 1880s to 1930s although it alternated with the Abbey ground on the other side of the river. Ten Acres has not been developed as it might have been, for in 1967 a pipe track dug near to the river by the water works revealed 4th century Roman buildings with mosaic floors. A small excavation was made of the site but the full extent of the building is not known. The site is now scheduled and so will not be built on, meaning it may never be fully excavated. To the west side of Ten Acres where the Scout Hut and Community Centre stand is the former site of Banwell Sewage works, which closed in the 1970s; the car park above this area off West street was created by pulling down one of the ancient cottages that partly survived the 1940s bombing.

The Domesday book lists three mills in Banwell; it is not known 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 is not known either, but what is known 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, the wheels of which stopped turning in 1921, are still present today.

To the west side of the Grist Mill in the 18th & 19th century stood a Paper Mill that was turned into a Brewery in the 1850s and lasted until 1906. The mills were owned by the Emery family and were run by the Castle family. Later on the Willet family ran the gristmill.

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. This 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. It is grade II* listed.^[5] 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 is not known. 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 1950s.

The Castle family who ran the brewery had various partners which led to various names 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.

[edit] Perambulation

The mainly 15th century church has a 100 foot high tower that contains 10 bells dating 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 and there is a carved stone pulpit from 15th century and a beautiful carved rood screen built and set up in 1552, which escaped the reformation. There are also some very early bench pews given dated to the 1480s. The church has undergone major restorations in 1812, 1862 and the mid 1960s.

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 have "incommoded the traffic". traffic has been and still is the bane of Banwell life and although a bypass was proposed in the 1930s 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 are now private houses.

East Street, once called Gay Street, starts at the Bell and goes past the Old Non Conformist Chapel of the 1790s, 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 during the Beeching 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 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 76 feet deep.

High Street then follows the north side of Banwell hill past mainly modern buildings interspersed with restored 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 a housing development known as Elborough Village.

The fifth street off the Square is West Street, the main street, which starts at what was once The Ship Hotel a Coaching Inn. It runs past the War Memorial where the village Lock-up stood in the 1830s 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.

[edit] Amenities

Banwell from the mid 19th century thrived with more than its share of shops and businesses. Many gentry families resided there, 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 it is down to 8 shops compared to the 26 or so of the 1940/50s.

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. The Fire station is still opened on fair day but it is a museum now as the county fire service was withdrawn from here in the 1980s. 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 1790s the first just off the Square in East Street two doors from the vicarage which it is believed caused some problems. It is said the windows were broken by the church people, and so this chapel was replaced 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 Methodists in 1872 the chapel was eventually sold to the Baptist church in the 1940s, then became the church hall in the 1950s and is now a private business premises.

There are only now three pubs in the main village - The Brewers Arms next to the river below the Old Brewery, The Whistling Duck on Knightcott Road on the way to Weston which is on the site of an earlier pub The Smiths Arms, and The Bell in the Square, which 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 whom 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 . Nearby, opposite the Bell, was another ancient large inn called the Ship which sadly went out of business in the 1990s, but thankfully very nicely restored to business office accommodation. (The were two pubs in High Street up until the 1960s 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 1950s in conjunction with the current school of 1926 in West Street.

After about sixty 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.

[edit] Housing

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 terraced 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 1950s to the poor designs of that time.

In the 1950s 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 1960s 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.

[edit] Caves

:see: Banwell Caves & Banwell Ochre Caves 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 1830s 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.

The material was excavated by two nineteenth century collectors, the Revd. David Williams and William Beard - see Quaternary Mammal Project

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 one 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 1980s 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.

[edit] References