Blagdon

The Anglican Church Of St Andrew in Blagdon, within the English county of Somerset, was built in the 15th century. It is a Grade II* listed building.The church has a 116 feet (35 m) high tower with pinnacles and a cusped lozenge pattern parapet, with a stair turret spirelet in the north-east corner. The tower dates from the 15th century and is one of the tallest in Somerset. The tower contains a bell dating from 1716 and made by Edward Bilbie of the Bilbie family. The remainder of the church was rebuilt in 1907–09 by Lord Winterstoke (of the Wills tobacco family)The interior includes a romanesque piscina set into the south wall of the chancel.The lychgate to the east of the church is a Grade II listed building in its own right. Above the door are four primitive Norman carvings which survived three rebuildings.Augustus Toplady was serving as curate of St Andrew's in the 1760s when he wrote the hymn Rock of Ages. It is believed that he was inspired to write the lyrics while sheltering under a rock in nearby Burrington Combe.In 2013 fundraising was undertaken to provide toilets and a new kitchen in the church. Improvements were also made to the damp proofing and insulation.The parish is part of the benefice of Blagdon with Charterhouse, Compton Martin and Ubley within the Diocese of Bath and Wells.

Blagdon railway station is a closed terminus railway station situated in the village of Blagdon in North Somerset, England. The station opened on the 4 December 1901 when the Wrington Vale Light Railway opened the line from Congresbury.The station closed to passengers on 14 September 1931.Despite the station being closed for passengers it was host to a GWR camp coach from 1935 to 1939. Camp coach occupants were transported to the station on the daily goods train from Yatton.The station closed to goods on 1 November 1950. The site is now a private house.

Blagdon Lake lies in a valley at the northern edge of the Mendip Hills, close to the village of Blagdon and approximately 10 miles (16 km) south of Bristol, England. The lake was created by Bristol Water (Bristol Waterworks Company as it was known then), when it dammed the River Yeo, starting construction in 1898, to designs by Charles Hawksley, and completing this in 1905. The Wrington Vale Light Railway was constructed primarily to bring building materials for the lake. The reservoir was formed by the construction of a dam and provided water to the pumping station which originally contained four Woolf compound rotative beam pumping engines, built by Glenfield & Kennedy of Kilmarnock, which have now been replaced by electric pumps. Two of the steam engines have been preserved, with one in working order as part of the visitor centre which also includes educational facilities for children. The pumping station is now a Grade II* listed building. The 8,456,000,000-litre (1.860×109 imp gal; 2.234×109 US gal) lake still provides 9,547,000,000 litres (2.100×109 imp gal; 2.522×109 US gal) of drinking water each year, but also acts as a fishing lake. It provides a habitat for a range of flora and fauna and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The original suction tanks, which formed the water supply for the steam boilers powering the pumping engines, are now used for trout rearing.

Charterhouse was a town in the Roman province of Britannia. Its site is located just to the west of the village of Charterhouse-on-Mendip in the English county of Somerset. Its Latin name may have been Iscalis, but this is far from certain. Based on inscriptions on a pig of Roman lead BRIT. EX. ARG. VEB, meaning "British (lead) from the VEB... lead-silver works", the Roman name has been reconstructed as Vebriacum (with Iscalis more plausibly placed at Cheddar).It is associated with the Iron Age hill fort, Charterhouse Camp. The Roman landscape has been designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Bourne SSSI, Avon (grid reference ST484600) is an 8.47 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest near the village of Burrington, North Somerset, notified in 1992. This site is of considerable importance because it has provided detailed information upon the composition of a north Mendip Pleistocene alluvial fan. An alluvial fan is a fan-shaped deposit formed where a fast flowing stream flattens, slows, and spreads typically at the exit of a canyon onto a flatter plain. At Bourne sections have shown highly weathered gravels overlain by sandy silts and clay loams, the highest levels in the sequence showing evidence of cryoturbation. Two phases of fan sediment deposition were separated by a long period of subaerial weathering, which may represent an interglacial period.

Charterhouse Camp is a univallate Iron Age hillfort in the Mendip district of Somerset, England. The hillfort is situated approximately 0.6 miles (0.97 km) east from the village of Charterhouse. There is some evidence, in the form of burials in local caves, of human occupation since the late Neolithic times and the early Bronze Age. The site is associated with Charterhouse Roman Town and may have been the site of Iscalis. The site is a scheduled monument.Hillforts developed in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, roughly the start of the first millennium BC. The reason for their emergence in Britain, and their purpose, has been a subject of debate. It has been argued that they could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture. The dominant view since the 1960s has been that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in Britain. Deposits of iron ore were located in different places to the tin and copper ores necessary to make bronze, and as a result trading patterns shifted and the old elites lost their economic and social status. Power passed into the hands of a new group of people.Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe believes that population increase still played a role and has stated "[the forts] provided defensive possibilities for the community at those times when the stress [of an increasing population] burst out into open warfare. But I wouldn't see them as having been built because there was a state of war. They would be functional as defensive strongholds when there were tensions and undoubtedly some of them were attacked and destroyed, but this was not the only, or even the most significant, factor in their construction".

Burrington railway station served the village of Burrington, North Somerset, England, from 1901 to 1950 on the Wrington Vale Light Railway.

Charterhouse, also known as Charterhouse-on-Mendip, is a hamlet in the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in the English county of Somerset. The area between Charterhouse and Cheddar Gorge including Velvet Bottom and Ubley Warren is covered by the Cheddar Complex Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Black Down is the highest hill in the Mendip Hills, Somerset, in south-western England. Black Down lies just a few miles eastward of the Bristol Channel at Weston-super-Mare, and provides a view over the Chew Valley. The summit is marked with an Ordnance Survey trig point, the base of which has been rebuilt by the Mendip Hills AONB authority. The shortest route of ascent goes from the Burrington Combe car park and is approximately 1 km long. Black Down is an open-access area mostly consisting of moors, with dense cover of associated vegetation such as heather and bracken. According to a local organization's newsletter, the name "Black Down" comes from the Saxon word 'Blac' or 'Bloec' meaning bleak, 'Dun' meaning down or fort.

The Anglican Church of St Hugh in Charterhouse, within the English county of Somerset, dates from 1908. It is a Grade II* listed building. The church is dedicated to Hugh of Lincoln. It was built in 1908 by W. D. Caröe, on the initiative of the Rev. Menzies Lambrick, from the former welfare hall for the local lead miners.The roof-truss, screen, rood, and altar are all made of carved whitened oak, with fittings in the Arts and Crafts style. The walls are rough brick and it has a tiled roof. It includes stained glass by Horace Wilkinson showing the nativity scene.A cross in the churchyard and the churchyard wall are also listed buildings. It is part of the benefice of Blagdon with Compton Martin and Ubley within the Diocese of Bath and Wells.

Manor Farm Swallet is a cave in the limestone of the Mendip Hills, in Somerset, England which was subject to numerous failed digging attempts between 1947 and 1973 as the surface shafts kept collapsing. In 1973 access to the cave was gained by an artificial shaft and walling it against collapse.

Burrington is a small village and civil parish in Somerset, England. It is situated in the unitary authority of North Somerset, 5 miles (8.0 km) north east of Axbridge and about 10 miles (16 km) east of Weston-super-Mare. The parish includes the hamlets of Bourne and Rickford and has a population of 464.