Frome in Wessex
Tunnels at Shepton Mallet
Abstract
© 1998. Contents Updated: Thursday, 26 October 2006
Tunnels at Shepton Mallet
The Western Daily Press of Saturday 10 January, 1998, carried a short illustrated article about tunnels at Cranmore near Shepton Mallet, just ten miles from Frome.
Apparently a cow grazing near the croquet lawn of an 18th century grade 1 listed building, Southill House, fell through the turf into a forgotten passage way. The tunnel was 200 yards long and four feet high, leading back to the cellars of the house, but sealed by a stone at each end. Two seven feet high vaulted tunnels leading from the cellars were already known, so it was beginning to look as though stories of a labyrinth of tunnels might be true. The stories are that tunnels run from the house to Doutling, a hamlet, a mile and a half away.
Edwin Charles Cox, a Victorian servant at the house, wrote about life there and described how workmen digging in the grounds uncovered a vault big enough to drive a hay waggon along. Legend had it that the ghost of a previous owner had been banished by twelve exorcists to live in vaults beneath the house and no one would venture in. Mr Cox was persuaded to explore it with the offer of a half a crown reward. It only contained old furniture and bottles.
The arched doorways of the stone lined passages look much older than the house itself and it seems that the house was built on the site of a medieval manor. A stream of water runs in all the tunnels suggesting that they were drainage channels for this old manor but that seems unikely for the two large tunnels. The County Historian, Dr Robert Dunning, believes the smaller tunnels are indeed simply for drainage and the higher ones were meant to be a secret way of getting from the house to a summer house or gazebo in the garden, now lost.
The house is a 15 room mansion in a park of ten acres. It’s facade was rebuilt by John Wood the Younger, an architect who designed some of Bath’s Georgian buildings. Before then it was home of the Strode family who were visited by the Duke of Monmouth, pretender to the throne of England in 1685 AD, a year before he was defeated at Sedgemore and beheaded. It is supposed that Monmouth’s supporters might have hidden in the vaults after the battle.
Andrew Cotterell, a computer specialist, his wife, Tracey, and their four children live there at present. They would like to hear from anyone who can tell them more.
