URPoint Details
The name Batcombe comes from Saxon and means "Bat's Valley".
Around 1 mile (1.6 km) from the hamlet of Westcombe is an Iron Age hill fort on Smalldown Knoll which dates back to the Iron Age and possibly the Bronze Age.
Batcombe is thought to have been established around 660 CE following the Saxon invasion of Great Britain. Both settlements are recorded in the Domesday Book written after the Norman invasion of England in 1066. The parish of Batcombe was part of the Whitstone Hundred.
Above this lovely little remote hamlet on the lofty Batcombe Downs, a grand viewpoint, is the curiously carved ‘Cross-in-hand’ pillar, familiar to lovers of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles’.
The Church of St Mary the Virgin dates from the 15th and 16th centuries and was restored in the 19th. The tower contains five bells dating from 1760 and made by Thomas Bilbie, of the Bilbie family, in Cullompton. It has been designated by a Grade I listed building
Location: 5 miles south-east of Shepton Mallet
- Type:
- Landmark