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Peasedown St John

Civil parishes in SomersetEngvarB from October 2013Somerset coalfieldVillages in Bath and North East Somerset
Peasedown St john main road
Peasedown St john main road

Peasedown St John (commonly referred to as Peasedown) is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, standing on a hilltop roughly 5 miles (8 km) south-southwest of the city of Bath, and 2 miles (3 km) north-east of the town of Radstock at the foot of the Mendip Hills. Peasedown used to be a coal mining village, and after the last of the mines shut in the 1970s it became a dormitory village for Bath, Trowbridge and to a lesser extent Bristol. Its size was increased by substantial housing developments in the 1960s, 1970s and late 1990s, making it one of the largest villages in Somerset.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Peasedown St John (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

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Latitude Longitude
N 51.315 ° E -2.424 °
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BA2 8HJ
England, United Kingdom
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Peasedown St john main road
Peasedown St john main road
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Somerset Coal Canal
Somerset Coal Canal

The Somerset Coal Canal (originally known as the Somersetshire Coal Canal) was a narrow canal in England, built around 1800. Its route began in basins at Paulton and Timsbury, ran to nearby Camerton, over two aqueducts at Dunkerton, through a tunnel at Combe Hay, then via Midford and Monkton Combe to Limpley Stoke where it joined the Kennet and Avon Canal. This link gave the Somerset coalfield (which at its peak contained 80 collieries) access east toward London. The longest arm was 10.6 miles (17.1 km) long with 23 locks. From Midford an arm also ran via Writhlington to Radstock, with a tunnel at Wellow. A feature of the canal was the variety of methods used at Combe Hay to overcome height differences between the upper and lower reaches: initially by the use of caisson locks; when this method failed an inclined plane trackway; and finally a flight of 22 conventional locks. The Radstock arm was never commercially successful and was replaced first with a tramway in 1815 and later incorporated into the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. The Paulton route flourished for nearly 100 years and was very profitable, carrying high tonnages of coal for many decades; this canal helped carry the fuel that powered the nearby city of Bath. By the 1880s, coal production declined as the various pits either ran out of coal or were flooded and then closed. In 1896 the main pump at Dunkerton, which maintained the canal water level, failed. The resultant lowering in level meant that only small loads could be transported, which reduced revenue, thus the canal company could not afford a replacement pump. The canal became disused after 1898 and officially closed in 1902, being sold off to the various railway companies who were expanding their networks. In September 2014, restoration work began on the canal section from Paulton to Radford, with the aim of restoring the entire canal to navigation in the future. The largest canal drydock in England has been revealed at Paulton; culverts and bridges nearby are being reinstated or rebuilt; and about 2⁄3 mile (1 km) of canal from Paulton to Radford has been in water since mid-2015.