Rapscallion Magazine Feature: English journeys – high explosives, shopping lists and ancient earthworks on Brean Down in Somerset

By Harry Mottram: I picked up the piece of paper on Brean Down by the fort. It was a shopping list – although an old one. Parsnips, potatoes, butter, cheese and a bottle of cooking sherry. I hadn’t seen the words ‘cooking sherry’ in a cookery book since sometime around when rationing ended. Perhaps this was from the 1940s when the fort at Brean Down was garrisoned – but there was no mention of powdered eggs, Camp Coffee or tripe.

As I pondered the origin of the shopping list, I wondered about all the soldiers and their families who have lived on the windswept peninsular and the furthest western point on the Mendip Hills in Somerset. There was pre-Roman hill fort at one end and the site of a Romano British temple further along – although you needed sharp eyes to spot them since the ancient earthworks were barely more than slight lumps in the ground. At the far end there is a Victorian fortress built in case the armies of Louis Napolean (he’s the other French Napolean) had decided to invade England via Somerset, while in World War Two the peninsular was again garrisoned and even used to test the ‘bouncing bomb’.

A single lane gravel track connects the fort to the lane at Berrow ensuring a horse and cart and later an army truck could supply the building materials, fixtures and fittings, portacabins or Nissan huts for WW2, and above all the food and everyday consumer goods including uniforms and of course munitions to keep the French and later the Germans at bay. From 1870 to 1900 the fort at the far end of the down housed a terrifying number of high explosives – and it’s a wonder it never blew the whole place to smithereens. The gunpowder magazine had to be carefully handled by the soldiers stationed in this lonely posting some miles from the nearest pub or shop.

To walk along the hillocks of the peninsular that protrudes out into the Bristol Channel gives a panoramic view of Berrow and its many caravan sites below. Weston-Super-Mare to the north and across the sea the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm – one being flat and the other steep. Beyond these is the coast of Wales or Cymru and the misty shapes of mountains while just about visible to the southwest is the blue-grey outline of Exmoor and due south the massive shape of the nuclear power stations on Hinkley Point. In short, a view from Neolithic Britain to the radioactive 21^st century – although the jury is still out as to whether Hinkley Point C will ever be finished.

In the Victorian fort are explanatory boards illustrating life of the soldiers and their families in the barracks and munition buildings. The drawing room illustrated looks cosy enough with its armchairs, chandeliers and crockery set out of supper – but just yards away were seven seven-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns ready to blast the French to that Brean Down in the sky. Reassuringly no shots were fired saving the Government of Lord Palmerston in 1862 a few bob. However, in WW2 the military moved in again with new guns installed, a small military camp erected, and rails secured at the end of the headland heading towards the sea – designed to send a prototype bouncing bomb along. It apparently didn’t go to plan and exploded before it hit the wet stuff taking with it the dreams of the boffins at the Admiralty’s Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development.

All a far cry from the peaceful scene I encountered on a spring day in 2024 when the only danger was from walking too close to the cliffs and very steep grassy slopes. A fate that has fallen to various walkers, dogs, cattle and even a goat – although the drunk man as report by the local press in 2018 was saved when he was caught up in brambles inches from a sheer drop on to the rocks below. Where like all good drunks – he fell asleep.

There were courting couples – or should I say a mixture of arguing couples and couples so entwined I doubt if they could see the view since their lips appeared welded together. Two girls dressed as though for a Saturday night out were stood ‘vaping’ halfway up the steps – steps which are a test for any mountaineer since they climb several hundred feet from the beach. And an extended family were having a picnic within the gentle undulations of the ancient hill fort. Two grannies, several children and one rather red-faced dad – or perhaps an uncle who was the subject of sarcastic asides by the women of the group who were opening the plastic carrier bags for the meal. “You forgot the milk and the crisps,” one of them said. He looked embarrassed. If only they had written a shopping list like the one I had found near the Victorian fort.

Rapscallion Magazine is an online publication and is edited by Harry Mottram and is published for his own interest.

Harry is a freelance journalist. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc

Email:harryfmottram@gmail.com
Website:www.harrymottram.co.uk