The village of Clutton is a large parish covering some four square miles in north Somerset, nine miles south of Bristol, eight west of Bath and eleven miles north of Wells and Shepton Mallet. The name is found in the Domesday book as “Clutone” and it is said to originate from the saxon word “clud” meaning a hilly place and “ton” a settlement – hence ‘settlement on a hill’. The name of the neighbouring village, Temple Cloud, has the same origin but means the hilly place of the Knights Templars who settled there much later in history. Clutton was the first place coal was known to have been discovered in Somerset, it is said as far back as Roman times. It was first mined in shallow bell-pits and later, a number of deep collieries were established under the stewardship of the Earl of Warwick who owned the title to the village.
The collieries demanded a workforce and housing was needed for them and so in the early 1900s Maynard Terrace, visible from the rallyfield, was built of Clutton-made brick, and named for a son of the Earl. Soon after completion however in 1909 the large colliery, Greyfield (a corruption of Greville, the Warwick family name) closed due to flooding and the last few houses were let to railway workers. Within a couple of years, another pit Burchells, was opened on a farm in the village centre but it closed finally in 1921 and is now a housing estate. A legacy of the mining industry is the ‘Miner’s Welfare Hall’, now the village hall and situated in Venus Lane which, it is said, was itself once a ropewalk for laying out the colliery ropes.
The Bristol & N.Somerset railway through to Frome was found necessary to get the coal away to the port of Bristol and beyond; the first work on the line and the opening ceremony was at Clutton in 1871. A branch line ran from Clutton station to Greyfield worked by a Peckett locomotive “Daisy”, again named after a wife of the Earl. The rallyfield, called ‘Rudges’, is not only bisected by the disused railway line but has the remnants of a colliery of the same name in it on the other side of the former track. Clutton always held the award for the best kept station on the line and excursion trips came from Frome, Bristol and Bath to Clutton when the Flower Show took place each year as it has since at least the turn of the last century. It is probably the oldest established event in the village and well known locally.
The church, a few minutes walk from Rudges, has a tower built in local red stone, mined on the hills to the northeast of the village and is unusual in a normally limestone area. The rest of the building is a Victorian rebuild, this time in a local grey pennant stone mined on the southern fringe. The farm behind the church is one of the oldest houses in the village and from it, reached through the churchyard, is an avenue of trees mainly chestnuts, covering a footpath linked to the main A37 road. Another old house is Maypole Farm, now a private residence where ancestors of Sir Henry Irving the actor once lived. Cholwell House, though strictly in Temple Cloud was one of the former homes of Sir William Rees-Mogg’s family which had strong connections with Clutton.
Being a mining village, Clutton used to boast five public houses, there are now three. The Warwick Arms was an old coaching inn on the turnpike road and alas, has lost its former character but is possibly the best of the three remaining. The Hunter’s Rest was a beerhouse but has gone upmarket and is on the northern boundary with Farmborough. The nearest pub to the rally field however, is the Temple Inn, much more of a village pub than those in Clutton. Near the Railway Inn can be found the School, Post Office and the Country Butchers, the latter by far the smallest but best stocked shop in the area and well worth paying a visit.
There are many footpaths in the village, five cross the rallyfield and one, to the east across the railway, leads to Greyfield and a picturesque waterfall in the woods. The old railway line through the remains of the station and towards the north is now an interesting footpath leading to yet another colliery, Fry's Bottom, or on to Chelwood. On the way it passes behind Dawsons, the famous steeplejack’s yard and the red brick chimney of the air shaft of Burchell's Pit can still be seen in the woods.
Source - Eric Brain
Clutton Map (post 1882)
