Mendip Hills Attractions

The famous cheese town of at the foot of the Mendip Hills (10mi/16km northwest; pop. 2,500) is not particularly attractive; in contrast the Cheddar Caves, magnificent dripstone caves discovered in 1877, are both interesting and overcrowded. Cheddar Gorge, approximately 1mi/1.6km long and 492ft/150m deep, is equally as impressive. Cheddar pinks, a type of carnation found only here, bloom throughout the summer.

Despite intensive Victorian restoration, the church at Rowberrow, beneath the Dolebury hill fort, has a fragment of a Saxon church.Calamine was mined in the village. Surrounding foliage was destroyed by the poisonous fumes sent out during the refining of the mineral. Mining ended in the 1870s.

The 30-mile / 48-kilometer trail traces the western edge of the Mendips, between Wells and Uphill. The walk begins at the Wells Cathedral, goes out of the town and past several villages, the Wookey Hole caves, Cheddar Gorge and Shipham, before crossing to Crook Peak, past Bladon Hill and on to the Bristol Channel.

This is a large gorge, although it is quite smaller than the nearby Cheddar gorge. Augustus Toplady (1740 - 78) wrote the lines for the hymn "Rock of Ages Cleft for Me," while hiding here during a severe storm.

Chewtown Mendip has an interesting towered church with stones bearing marks of Saxon workmanship. There are also several dairies that make traditional Cheddar cheese from Fresian and Ayrshire cows.

Trowbridge (pop. 23,123) was a center for the cloth industry and many of the buildings are linked to the textile industry. The Trowbridge Town Hall building on Market Square was completed in 1889.

The name Shipham comes from 'sceap ham' which means sheep enclosure in the Saxon dialect. The village was used for calamine mining until the late 1800s.