Vestiges of Iron and Bronze Age occupations are also scattered across the whole of the region, the most impressive concentration of them around Priddy, southeast of Cheddar. The nearby escarpment, with its sweeping views over the Somerset Levels, is riddled with literally hundreds of burial mounds, rings and chambers, suggesting that in prehistoric times this area was one of major ritual importance, second only to Stonehenge in neighbouring Wiltshire. Staring across the Levels, which at that time would have formed a shallow lake broken by numerous islands, it’s not hard to imagine why.
After the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD, Velvet Bottom, one of three dry valleys that converge on the head of Cheddar Gorge, rapidly became one of the empire’s principal sources of lead. Mining continued on a reduced scale until the mid-eighteenth century. During Saxon times, the whole of the region served as a royal hunting forest, with its headquarters at Cheddar, where a collection of cathedral-sized wooden palaces were erected. The ruins of these now lie buried under the local Kings of Wessex comprehensive school, on the southern edge of Cheddar. Concrete posts in front of the modern buildings delineate the ground plan of Alfred the Great’s former “King’s Hall”. Subsequent centuries saw control of the uplands remain in the hands of large landowners, as wool overtook lead as the principal source of local wealth. The peasantry, meanwhile, became poorer – and unhealthy thanks to the poisoning of the water supply by lead smelting upstream.
When the social reformer and slavery abolitionist, William Wilberforce, visited Cheddar in 1789, he described the local population as, “ignorant and brutal to a degree which is hard to conceive,” urging his friend, the Bristolian philanthropist Hannah Moore, to inspect the area. Appalled at the poverty she encountered, Moore opened many free schools in and around Cheddar. The extent of her success can be measured in local parish marriage registers, which before her arrival in 1806 were filled with the crosses of illiterate brides and grooms, but thereafter boast lines of proper signatures.
The River Yeo, one of England’s largest underground rivers, first sees the light of day at the mouth of the gorge, where it emerges from eighteen separate springs. These flow into a series of ponds and weirs that formerly fed paper, cloth and flour mills. The old mill buildings still stand, but they were long ago put to use as trinket shops, hotels and cafés servicing the tourism industry that nowadays dominates this lower end of the canyon.
Cheddar’s gimcrackery peaks around the entrance to the show caves, outposts of Lord Bath’s money-spinning Longleat Estate, which owns the whole south side of the gorge. The Natural Trust looks after the northern side, where 130-metre/430-foot High Rock stands as the tallest cliff in Britain – a Mecca for climbers since it was first scaled by a Chris Bonnington-led team in 1965.
Lesser mortals can either ascend the gorge by our more sedate route, or opt for the knee-crunching Jacob’s Ladder – a flight of 274 steps that was recently scaled in a record 56 seconds. Whichever path you follow, the spectacle of the crags plummeting to the tiny ribbon of road winding along the floor of the gorge will more than repay the effort. The finest viewpoints are on the NT’s north side of canyon, accessed via sidetracks off the main path.
As you walk, look out for herds of Soay sheep grazing inaccessible ledges below you. This small, dark-brown breed was introduced from the remote Hebridean island of St Kilda, where it has survived virtually unchanged since Neolithic times, to help keep the vegetation under control. A small herd of wild Exmoor ponies also patrols the pathways, and you might encounter feral goats released by the Longleat Estate to keep the undergrowth down on their side of the valley.
Three separate nature reserves are encountered in the course of this walk, each with its own distinct character. Leaflets stacked in the interpretative panels at the entrances sketch the routes of various nature trails through them, and highlight interesting flora and fauna you might encounter, along with the location of several cave mouths, long since shored up.
The Black Down Decoy - The Black Down plateau, a windswept heather moorland grazed by herds of wild Exmoor ponies, is pock-marked with rows of low mounds. Contrary to appearances, these are not of prehistoric origin, but were made during World War II when the hilltop served as a huge decoy designed to confuse Luftwaffe pilots flying towards Bristol. Electric lights were mounted on the lumps, set out to replicate the shape of Bristol docks. It is, however, doubtful the ruse ever worked. Bristol was blitzed nine times in 1940, while Black Down came through unscathed.
Cheddar Man - In 1903, the owners of Gough’s Cave were blasting open a new drain to cure the problem of winter flooding when they discovered a pile of human bones protruding from the rubble. Modern dating techniques have since attributed an age of 9000 years to what anthropologists claim is the oldest complete prehistoric skeleton ever discovered in Britain. Dubbed “Cheddar Man”, it made international headlines in 1997 when genetic material extracted from its jaw was matched with a sample given by a living resident in Cheddar village, history teacher Adrian Targett – a genealogical world record. You can see a facsimile of Cheddar Man on display at the show caves. The original resides in the British Museum in London. Adrian Targett still lives in Cheddar.