Etymology

The name Shepton derives from the Old English scoep and tun, meaning "sheep farm"; the Domesday Book of 1086 records a settlement known as Sceaptun in the hundred of Whitstone.^[3][4] The current spelling is recorded at least as far back as 1496, in a letter from Henry VII. The second part of the name derives from that of the Norman family of Malet. Gilbert Malet, son of William Malet, Honour of Eye, held a lease from Glastonbury Abbey around 1100. The second letter "l" appears to have been added to the spelling in the 16th century.^[5][6]

Prehistoric settlement

The Market Cross

Archaeological investigations have found evidence of prehistoric activity in the Shepton Mallet area, with large amounts of Neolithic flint and some pottery fragments of the late Neolithic period. Two barrows on Barren Down, to the north of the town centre, contained cremation burials from the Bronze Age; another Bronze Age burial site contained a skeleton and some pottery. The remains of Iron Age roundhouses and artefacts such as quernstones and beads were found at Cannard's Grave, as was a probable Iron Age farming settlement at Field Farm.^[7] Nearby countryside provides evidence of Iron Age cave dwellings in Ham Woods to the north-west, and several burial mounds at Beacon Hill, a short distance to the north.^[8]

Roman occupation

Shepton Mallet is about halfway between the Roman towns of Bath and Ilchester on the Fosse Way. Although there are no visible remains apart from the line of the Roman road, there is archaeological evidence for early military and later civilian settlement lasting into the 5th century. Domed pottery kilns, with pottery still present, were identified on the site of the Anglo-Bavarian Brewery in the mid-19th century, suggesting military activity in the 1st and 2nd centuries. Several hoards of Roman coins ranging from the 1st to 4th centuries have been found and more than 300 fibula brooches, potsherds and other artefacts. A few isolated burials near the Fosse Way were found in the 19th century.^[7]

A lead coffin in a rock-cut grave was discovered at a site by the Fosse Way in 1988. This discovery and impending commercial development of the site by the landowner, Showerings, led archaeologists to excavate more extensively in the 1990s. The grave belonged to a cemetery containing 17 burials aligned roughly east and west, indicating probable Christian beliefs. Two smaller cemeteries had graves aligned north–south, possibly signifying pagan religious practices. One burial was in a substantial stone coffin positioned beneath a mausoleum, whose foundations remained.^[7][9]

One find in the Fosse Way burials was a Chi-Rho amulet, thought then to be from the 5th century and considered among the earliest clear evidence of Christianity in England.^[9] A copy was presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, by the churches of the Diocese of Bath and Wells. The amulet is in the Museum of Somerset, but analysis by Liverpool University in 2008 using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy showed it was a fake: its silver content dates from the 19th century or later.^[10][11][12]

Excavations in the 1990s confirmed the presence of a linear settlement along the Fosse Way for perhaps a kilometre, with cobbled streets, wooden and stone workshops and houses (some with two storeys) containing hearths and ovens, workshop areas and a stone-lined well. The many artefacts found included local and imported pottery such as Samian ware, items of jewellery such as brooches, rings and bracelets, toilet items including tweezers, ear scoops and nail cleaners, bronze and iron tools, and a lead ingot which probably originated from the Roman lead mines in the Mendip Hills. Coins minted across the Roman empire were also found. The finds indicate occupation from the late 1st or early 2nd centuries to the late 4th or early 5th centuries. As no public buildings were found, the settlement was probably not a town.^[7][9]

Saxon and Norman periods

Evidence of Saxon settlement includes some Saxon stonework in the parish church of St Peter and St Paul.^[7] A charter of King Ine of Wessex, from 706, witnessed by nine bishops including the Archbishop of Canterbury, records that the area where Shepton Mallet now stands was passed to Abbot Berwald of Glastonbury Abbey.^[13] According to some legends Indract of Glastonbury was buried in Shepton.^[14] The town was in the Whitstone Hundred; the hundred courts were held at Cannard's Grave, just south of the town.^[15][16]

The Exeter Domesday Book records that on the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066, the site was held (probably by lease from the Abbey) by one Uluert, and then by Roger de Corcella at the time of the Domesday survey in 1086. When Corcella died, sometime before or around 1100, the land passed to the Malets, a Norman family whose name was added to that of the settlement (and another of their holdings, Curi – now Curry Mallet).^{[16][17][18][19]}

Middle Ages

The Malets retained the estate until the reign of King John, when on the death of William Malet (fl. 1192–1215) and the payment by his sons-in-law of a fine of 2000 marks for participating in a rebellion against the king) it passed through his daughter Mabel to her husband Hugh de Vivonne. Some generations later, the part of the estate containing Shepton Mallet was sold to a relative, Sir Thomas Gournay. His son, also Thomas, took part in the murder of Edward II. His estates were confiscated by Edward III in 1337, but returned some years later. When Mathew de Gournay died childless in 1406, the estate reverted to the Crown and was then granted to Sir John de Tiptoft. It was again confiscated from his son by Henry VI during the Wars of the Roses, when the family sided with Edward IV, but restored to Sir John's grandson, Edward Tiptoft, when Edward IV regained the throne. He died without issue, and there followed a succession of grants and reversions until Glastonbury Abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII, and its lands, including Shepton Mallet, were granted to the Duchy of Cornwall in 1536.^[17][20][21]

Charters for markets and fairs were granted in 1235, but revoked in 1260 and 1318 after objections by the Bishop of Wells to the competition it represented to the market in his city. This shows that the town was developing and prospering in the 13th and early 14th centuries.^[7][22][23] The Black Death struck in 1348, reducing the population to about 300.^[24] In the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the population and economy were boosted by craftsmen and merchants arriving from France and the Low Countries, who were escaping wars and religious persecution. They introduced cloth-making, which together with the local wool trade, became a major industry in Shepton and other Somerset and Wiltshire towns.^[25][26] Wool became such a source of riches that when Henry VII needed money to fight the Scots in 1496, he called on the wool merchants of Shepton to contribute £10.^[27]

To our trusty and wellbeloved John Calycote of Shepton Malet...
...because as we here ye be a man of good substaunce—we desire and pray you to makelone vnto us of the som of ten poundes whereof ye shal be vndoubtedly and assuredly repayd in our Receipt at the fest of Seynt Andrewe next coming...

— Henry VII, Letter under King's sign manual and Privy Seal, 1 December 1496

Stuart era

In 1675, a House of Correction was set up in Shepton Mallet.^[28][29]

In the English Civil War, the town supported the Parliament side, although Shepton appears largely to have escaped conflict apart from a bloodless confrontation in the market place on 1 August 1642 between Royalists under Sir Ralph Hopton and Parliament led by Colonel William Strode.^[30][31] In 1645 Sir Thomas Fairfax led the New Model Army through the town on the way to capturing Bristol,^[4] and in 1646 the church organ was apparently destroyed by Cromwellian soldiers.^[32][33]

During the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, the Duke of Monmouth was welcomed when he passed through Shepton Mallet to stay at Longbridge House^[34] in Cowl Street on the night of 23 June, with his men quartered around the town, before setting out for Bristol next day. Many Shepton men joined the cause, but Monmouth failed to take Bath or Bristol and had to return to Shepton on 30 June. After the Battle of Sedgemoor, the Duke fled, spent the night of 6 July at Downside, a mile north of Shepton, and was captured two days later. After the Bloody Assizes, twelve local supporters of Monmouth were hanged and quartered in the market place.^{[35][36][37][38]}

In 1699 Edward Strode built almshouses, close to the rectory that his family had built, to house the town's grammar school, which lasted until 1900.^[4]

18th–20th centuries

In the 17th and 18th centuries thriving wool and cloth industries were powered by the waters of the River Sheppey.^[39] There were said to be 50 mills in and around the town in the early 18th century,^[40] and a number of fine clothiers' houses survive, particularly in Bowlish, a hamlet on the western edge of Shepton Mallet.^[41] Although these industries still employed some 4,000 towards the end of the century,^[42] they were beginning to decline. Discontent at mechanisation of the mills resulted in the deaths of two men in a riot in the town in 1775. This apparently discouraged mill-owners from modernising further.^[43][44] The decision resulted in Shepton's cloth trade losing out to the steam-powered mills in the north of England in the early 19th century.^[42] The manufacture of silk and crepe revived the town's fortunes somewhat,^[45] and Shepton's mills made the silk used in Queen Victoria's wedding dress.^[46] However, these industries also died out eventually.

The former Anglo-Bavarian Brewery

While wool, cloth and silk declined, other industries grew. In the 19th and 20th centuries brewing became one of the major industries. The Anglo-Bavarian Brewery,^[47] built in 1864 and still a local landmark, was the first in England to brew lager. At its height, it was exporting 1.8 million bottles a year to Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, South America and the West Indies. It closed in 1921.^[48] However the town, home of Babycham, is still a centre for cider production.

For some of the Second World War, Shepton Mallet Prison was used to store national records from the Public Record Office, including the Magna Carta, the Domesday Book, the logbooks of HMS Victory, dispatches from the Battle of Waterloo and the "scrap of paper" signed by Hitler and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain at the Munich Conference of September 1938. The prison also became a US Army detention facility. Between 1943 and 1945, 18 US servicemen were executed within the prison walls, after convictions for murder, rape or both.^[29]

In the 1960s and 1970s many historic buildings were demolished to build Hillmead council estate in the north of the town and a retail development and theatre in the market place.^[49]

The population of Shepton Mallet was fairly stable through the 19th century and the first part of the 20th: 5,104 in 1801 and 5,117 in 1851, then 5,446 by 1901, falling back to 5,260 in 1951.^[50][51] By 2001, it had grown again to 8,981.^[52]

Nearby cave systems

To the north of the town are several caves of the Mendip Hills, including Thrupe Lane Swallet, a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI),^[63] and the St. Dunstan's Well Catchment, a cave system with a series of spectacularly-decorated caves totalling about 4 miles (6.4 km) of mapped passage.^[64] The caves at Fairy Cave Quarry were formed mainly by the erosive action of water beneath the water-table at considerable pressure ("phreatic" development), but as the water table has fallen, many now lie well above it and the system contains a variety of cave formations (stalagmites, stalactites and calcite curtains) which in extent and preservation are among the best in Britain. Shatter Cave and Withyhill Cave are generally seen to be among the finest decorated caves in Britain in terms of sheer abundance of pure white and translucent calcite deposits.^[65][66] Small numbers of greater horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum), lesser horseshoe bat (R. hipposideros) and Natterer's bat (Myotis nattereri) hibernate in the cave system. An area of nationally rare species-rich, unimproved calcareous grassland of the Sheep's-fescue-Meadow Oat-grass type lies in a field to the east of Stoke Lane Quarry.^[64]

Countryside

The countryside around Shepton is mostly farmed, although there are nearby areas of woodland. About 1.8 mi (2.9 km) to the north-east is Beacon Hill Wood, owned by the Woodland Trust),^[67] at the junction of the Fosse Way and a Roman road topping the Mendip Hills, which contain a number of tumuli.^[68] To the north-west of the town are Ham Woods,^[69] within which are the Windsor Hill railway tunnels and a viaduct,^[70] – remnants of the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway.^[71] The East Mendip Way long-distance path passes round the northern edge of Shepton Mallet and through Ham Woods.

South-west of the town is the Friar's Oven SSSI, site of herb-rich calcareous grassland classified as the Upright Brome (Bromus erectus) type,^[72] and north-east is the Windsor Hill Quarry geological SSSI and the Windsor Hill Marsh biological SSSI, a marshy silted pond with adjacent damp, slightly acidic grassland of interest for its diverse flora, largely due to varied habitats present within a small area. Two species present are rare in Somerset: Flat-sedge (Blysmus compressus) and Slender Spike-rush (Eleocharis uniglumis). Other marshland plants include Purple Loosestrife, Yellow Flag (Iris pseudacorus), Hard Rush (Juncus inflexus), Soft Rush (J. effusus), Flowering Rush (Butomus umbellatus), Devil's-bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis), three species of Horsetail Equisetum and seven sedges Carex spp.^[73]

River Sheppey

The centre and older parts of Shepton Mallet are adjacent to the River Sheppey, in a valley about 115 m (377 ft) above sea level. The edges of the town lie about 45 m (148 ft) higher. The river has cut a narrow valley, and between Shepton Mallet and the village of Croscombe, to the west, it is bounded by steeply sloping fields and woodland. However, it flows through much of Shepton Mallet itself in underground culverts.^[62] It occasionally floods after heavy rain, as on 20 October 2006,^[74] and again on 29 May 2008,^[75] when the rainfall was too heavy for the culverts. Some houses round Leg Square, Lower Lane and Draycott Road were submerged to a depth of 1 metre (3 ft 3 in). A study by the Environment Agency identified that the current standard of flood protection in these parts of the town is insufficient, as it was of a 5–10-year event-standard, whereas current guidelines require protection of a 50–200-year standard.^[76] In the summer of 2010, the Agency began constructing a flood alleviation scheme at a cost of about £1.3 million.^[77]

Town areas

Kilver Court Gardens

Shepton Mallet has distinct areas that originated as separate communities around the central point of the church and Market Place.^[78][79] The town centre consists of two streets: High Street, running south from the Market Place towards the Townsend Retail Park, and the pedestrianised Town Street running north to Waterloo Bridge. To the east, separated from the Market Place by the Academy complex, is the parish church of St Peter and St Paul. Lower Lane, under Waterloo Bridge along the bottom of the river valley to the north of the town centre, is one of the few parts where the River Sheppey runs above ground. At the eastern end is Leg Square, surrounded by three large houses originally built by owners of some of the town's mills.^[80][81][82] Close by is Cornhill, on which the former prison stands.

Roughly eastwards, Garston Street, also in the valley-bottom, consists of a row of weavers' and other artisans' cottages dating from the 17th century.^[83] The eastern end of the area, adjacent to Kilver Street, is now occupied by cider breweries. Across Kilver Street (the A37) is Kilver Court, which in the 20th century was a factory, headquarters of a brewing business, and then headquarters of a leather-goods manufacturer.^[84] Behind are Kilver Court Gardens, originally built by Showerings for the recreation of its staff^[84] and set against a backdrop of part of the Charlton Viaduct. These are now open to the public.^[85] On the eastern edge of the town is Charlton, which has former breweries and mills, now converted into a trading estate.^[84] Right on the edge of the town is Charlton House, a luxury hotel and spa.^[86]

Norah Fry Hospital, formerly the Shepton Mallet Union Workhouse

On the south side of the town is a triangle of land bounded on the east by the A37, on the north by the former East Somerset Railway, and on the west by Cannard's Grave Road: Tadley Acres is a modern housing development built on land partly belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall. The development has been praised for its design quality and use of local, natural building materials.^[87] North of the former railway is Collett Park. Across Cannard's Grave Road from Tadley Acres is the Mid-Somerset Showground. Just to the south-west of the town centre, on a site which at the start of the 20th century had been the grounds of the former Summerleaze House^[88] and then a shoe factory, is the Townsend Retail Park, built in 2006–2007.

West Shepton, the south-west corner of town, contains the former Shepton Mallet Union Workhouse, a Grade II listed building of 1848.^[89] Later serving as the Norah Fry mental hospital, it is now a housing development.^[90] On the nearby western edge is a modern community hospital. Down the valley are the hamlets of Darshill, once the site of several mills,^[91] and Bowlish, which contains several grand clothiers' houses.^[41] The sloping fields by the river between Bowlish and the rest of Shepton are known as The Meadows. To their east is Hillmead, a council estate of the 1960s.^[49]

Climate

Like much of South West England, Shepton Mallet has a temperate climate wetter and milder than the rest of England. The annual mean temperature is about 10 °C (50 °F) with seasonal and diurnal variation, but due to the modifying effect of the sea, the range is less than in most other parts. January is coldest, with mean minimum between 1 °C (34 °F) and 2 °C (36 °F). July and August are warmest, with mean daily maxima around 21 °C (70 °F). In general December is the dullest month and June the sunniest. South-west England is favoured, particularly in summer, as the Azores High extends its influence north-eastwards to the UK.^[92]

Cloud often forms inland, especially near hills, and reduces exposure to sunshine. The average annual sunshine totals around 1600 hours. Rainfall tends to tie in with Atlantic depressions or with convection. In summer, convection caused by solar surface-heating sometimes forms shower clouds and much of the annual precipitation falls as showers and thunderstorms at that time of year. Average rainfall is 800–900 mm (31–35 in). About 8–15 days of snowfall is typical. November to March have the highest mean wind speeds, June to August the lightest. The prevailing wind is from the south-west.^[92]