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The original wooden watch tower was built by the eccentric Roland Pavey, who called it his Mystic Tower, with its views of Glastonbury Tor. This was replaced in 1936 with an open wrought iron Lookout Tower, which has 48 steps leading to a circular viewing platform. |
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You look down into the steep sided valley of the Gorge, formed by torrents of water, from the melting glaciers at the end of each Ice Age, cutting deeper and deeper through the limestone rock. During the periods between the Ice Ages, known as interglacials, once the permafrost in the rock thawed, acidic rainwater seeped through the cracks in the limestone slowly forming a network of underground rivers. Water no longer flows through the Gorge, instead the Cheddar Reservoir is filled from the Gough's Cave underground river – the biggest underground aquifer or water catchment system in Britain. |
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Cheddar Gorge cleaves north-east into the Mendip Hills. The Somerset Levels lying to the south, once saltwater marshes now flat, lush water meadows, were reclaimed from the sea by the Abbots of Glastonbury and Kings since C13th using a network of rhynes (or ditches). Axbridge town, with its historic houses laid out in "burghal strips" and picturesque Market Square, Cheddar village with its Market Cross, a preaching cross roofed over in Mediaeval times for market stalls, and the fields of early-season Cheddar strawberries, a prized local delicacy, shelter in the lee of the hills. |
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The windswept hilltop plateau to the north, 900 feet above sea-level, which runs for 22 miles east to west and 3 to 5 miles north to south was a magnet for the occupying Roman Legions. They seized the open cast lead mines at Charterhouse in 43AD to supply the Roman Empire's insatiable demand for lead pipes to carry water. The mines were still flourishing in the late C18th, when Hannah More attempted to improve the miserable conditions of the lead miners from Cheddar and Shipham, who became violent, were driven mad and died young from lead poisoning. |