Black Down

Black Down stands on the Mendip Hills in Somerset, south-west England. It is the highest hill in the range and overlooks the Chew Valley and the Bristol Channel near Weston-super-Mare. The summit carries an Ordnance Survey trig point whose base was rebuilt by the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty authority. The shortest walking route starts from Burrington Combe car park and is about one kilometre long. The hill is an open-access moorland of heather and bracken, its name coming from the Old English words for bleak down. The rocks form an anticline with Old Red Sandstone at the top, laid down 400 to 362 million years ago in the Devonian period. Younger limestone and sandstone lie on either side, shaped by the Variscan mountain-building event. The harder sandstones and volcanic rocks resist weathering and create the highest points, including Black Down at 325 metres. The steeper slopes are covered in bracken while the flatter summit carries heather and grasses instead of pasture. At the summit area called Beacon Batch lie Bronze Age round barrows, one of which supports the trig point. The main group has nine bowl barrows, one bell barrow and one disc barrow, with smaller groups nearby. During the Second World War a bombing decoy town was built here to mimic Bristol’s lights and railway yards. Fires, glow boxes and oil drums were used to simulate incendiary raids, while anti-aircraft rockets stood ready. Both the barrow cemetery and decoy site are on English Heritage’s Heritage at Risk Register because of erosion from visitors.