Brent Knoll Village, Somerset
Brent
Knoll is situated in the South West of England on the
edge of Sedgemoor and within three miles of the Bristol
Channel. It is an attractive village which clings round
the western slopes of the Knoll, an outlier of the nearby
Mendip Hills. From its summit of 137 meters, (449 feet)
above sea level, it gives a spectacular panorama of the
surrounding area, including the Bristol Channel, The Mendip,
The Welsh, The Quantock and The Polden Hills, Glastonbury
Tor and Cheddar Gorge. The M5 Motorway skirts the Knoll's
eastern flank. The London to Penzance main line railway
passes north-south to the west of the village.
Some
4,000 years BC, Bronze Age people lived on or near the
Knoll which became an Iron Age Fort about 2,000BC. Later
the Romans used its summit as a fortification. The surrounding
area was held later by the Glastonbury Estates until the
Dissolution of the Monasteries in AD 1,536. During the
Second World War the Home Guard had a gun emplacement
on the summit. The population of the village in 2,001
was 1,250.
Originally
a farming village, Brent Knoll is now home to several
businesses and amenities which can also be accessed through
the separate links.
The
architecture of the village is varied and includes seventeenth
century farm cottages, now modernised, plus up-to-date
housing.
A
large information board by the Village Green gives more
details of aspects of Brent Knoll.
