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Treborough

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Treborough

Over Brendon Hill the ridgeway continues to Sminhayes Corner.. There the northern road turns to Treborough. Its name is derived from " Tre berw," meaning the " place of the waterfall," from the cascade rushing over a cliff of black slate behind Sminhayes Cottage. It is known locally as Lincombe Shutts, or Shoots. At Treborough, roofing-slates were quarried, but the derelict mine-shafts and pumping-houses are a memorial to the iron-ore mines which failed. They were worked by the Ebbw Vale Company, who employed some 100 mining families. The influx of Spanish iron-ore, and the expenses of shipping the material from Watchet to be crushed in Wales, killed the new industry. The branch railway from Gupworthy, down the Roadwater valley to the sea, is now deserted. In places it had a gradient of 1 in 4. The chapel, once called Beulah, testifies mutely to the " foreigners " who brought their own religion with them.

Three are barrows of unknown origin on Slowley Farm. Narrow lanes connect Treborough to Luxborough. In 1806 the historian Camden wrote : " On the summit of Monkham Hill, further west, are several barrows, and a circular enclosure of loose stones, piled up 40 feet in diameter, which seems to have a Druidical origin, though perhaps used as a signal station, as it completely commands the whole line of coast from Porlock Bay to Quantock's Head Point." The name of Druid's Combe Wood confirms his opinion. Savage, in his " History of Carhampton," also mentions the cairn.

At Langridge Wood beyond the village, a cairn was destroyed during the levelling of a tough timber-hauling track in 1820. The workmen found a kistvaen, covered with a slab of rock 7ft. long by 2ft. wide. They reinterred the skeleton it contained in Treborough churchyard. The old church at Luxborough has been too much restored to afford interest; but superstition persists in this lonely hill country. As late as 1893, it was believed that witches could turn themselves into white rabbits.

Treborough is now a small hamlet but previously was far more busy in the time when the Treborough Slate Quarry was being actively worked. The name Treborough is probably derived from the Celtic ‘treberg’ — hamlet by the waterfall. Half-a-mile away below Sminhayes, a waterfall slides 40 feet down a moss encrusted rock.

Utterly peaceful and remote the tiny parish of Treborough only 2 miles long and 2 miles wide is in the Brendon Hills. Since most of the green pasture fields are steeply up and down, the views are wonderfully varied for the walker on its high trackways or the roads leading to the isolated farms.

Treborough

Treborough

On the south of the parish is the prehistoric ridgeway, running along the highest ground of the Brendon Hills from east to west and linking all the ancient earth monuments and standing stones, such as the Naked Boy’s Stone in the south-east corner of the parish. The pond in which the River Tone rises is just over the boundary.

Treborough had a busy industrial past, which lasted for more than 500 years. From the early 15th century the blue slates from the Treborough quarries were famous throughout the West Country and only the start of the last war brought the trade to an end. Many of the older houses were hung with slate and slate slabs were used for floors, hearth-stones or dairy benches, to order.

The quarry and, indeed, most of the parish was the property of the Trevelyan Family of Nettlecombe Court for many centuries and they carried out an immense reorganisation of the thirteen farms in the early 19th century. Their estates in Treborough were finally sold in 1944.

St Peters Church Treborough, with its graveyard, is the centre of a small and lonely hamlet, the only collection of dwellings in the parish. Treborough no longer has a school, a shop, a post office or a public house. And yet it is a place with an atmosphere all its own, which gives pleasure to the memory of all those who visit it.

Rufus Salaman, now living in Australia, wrote in with the following:

I grew up near Colchester, but often stayed with my Aunt Barbara Peck (nee Roadwateror Watchet for many years. I also used to visit my great aunt in Minehead, where her husband, Dr Bain was MOH for years, and had a faithful following of patients who refused to let him retire until well into his 70's. My farther, Sebastian Salaman lived in Quarry House until his first marriage failed in the late 1930's, when I believe he sold it to my Aunt Barbara Peck who is mentioned in the caption

It is hard to believe that the old Treborough Slate quarry is completely filled in. There used to be a tunnel leading from the quarry under the road, which came out beside the stables half way down the driveway to Quarry House. I guess it is still there.

Treborough School Children the days of Mrs Barbara Peck's wedding

Treborough School Children on the day of Mrs Barbara Peck's wedding The school was closed in about 1953

Treborough School Children - Front Row Beatrice Dyer(5th) and and Evelyn Dyer (6th) of Treborough Farm.

Treborough School Children - Front Row Beatrice Dyer(5th) and and Evelyn Dyer (6th) of Treborough Farm. Evelyn married Roy Tom Bishop (9th in the FRONTROW) who lived at Lower Court Farm Treborough until he and Evelyn retired to Minehead in 1969.

Outside Treborough School Room May 31st 1920

Outside Treborough School Room May 31st 1920

Sminhays Farm buildings Treborough

Sminhays Farm buildings Treborough

Treborough Lodge

Treborough Lodge

Treborough looking North West

Treborough looking North West

Treborough - The Old Post Office

Treborough - The Old Post Office

According to the Domesday Survey the parish of Treborough contained two manors, Treborough and Brown, but the precise limits are unknown.

Awaiting photo

Brendon Hill Picnic July 1907

Brown seems to have comprised the western part of the parish and it appears certain that Higher Court Farm, previously Court Farm, was the demesne farm of the manor. Both manors came eventually into the possession of Cleeve Abbey and after its dissolution Brown and Treborough were purchased by John Wyndham in 1542, the estate passing ultimately by marriage to the Trevelyan Family who owned it until 1944.

The farms were small, and, as is normal in the hilly parts of West Somerset, the farm-houses tended to be isolated. It seems highly likely that there were never any open fields but that land was enclosed as it was cleared. A map of Trevelyan Family property in 1780 shows some thirteen separate holdings averaging 64 acres in size and, especially in Brown, their enclosed fields are intermingled to a considerable extent. These holdings in a number of cases bear the names of persons and earlier documents mention inhabitants bearing these names. The Land Tax returns show that between about 1805 and 1825 John Trevelyan himself took over the majority of the farms and during this period made a considerable reorganisation, reducing the number of farms to five and altering the fields by amalgamating smaller ones to make larger. There was also some new enclosure. The result of these changes appears on the Tithe Map of 1842.
 

Three areas of the parish had by 1780 ceased to be Trevelyan Family property and could well have been sold off considerably earlier. These are: 

  • Hazery, a compact farm of some 170 acres in the south­west part of the parish which became part of the Lethbridge Luxborough estate;
  • West Fields, on the western boundary, a farm of 74 acres without a farm-house, which seems to have gone along with New Street Farm in Luxborough;
  • Blackwell, a farm of 50 acres lying along the centre of the northern boundary of the parish between Sideway Wood and Langridge Wood. This farm was part of the glebe of Dunster parish. 

Apart from agricultural resources, income and employment in the parish werehistorically supplemented by limeburning and quarrying. Treborough Slate Quarries formed the largest of these undertakings and was the most extensive of the three major Somerset slate quarries operating in the 19th century, the others being located at Oakhampton near Wiveliscombe, and Tracebridge west of Wellington. The raw material derives from the Ilfracombe Beds being a blue slate for roofing and slabs for cisterns, dairy benches, floors, hearthstones and headstones. With processing the slate resembled marble and was suitable for mantlepieces.

The Old Quarry, covering three acres prior to recent infilling with refuse, is situated south of the Roadwater - Treborough road. It was probably from this quarry that in 1246 Sir Hugh Luttrell purchased 2,000 slates for 20d. plus 3s. 4d. carriage, for Dunster Castle. Through the ownership of the Trevelyan Family family working continued into post-medieval times and by 1858, under Welsh management, a 100 yard tunnel had been excavated under the road to provide a connection with spoil heaps and newly erected buildings on the north side . In 1863 New Quarry was opened and a narrow gauge tramway laid down to link the various parts of the site. A brief closure in the early 1890s was followed by a productive phase until the First World War, when the quarry began a period of steady decline eventually closing shortly before 1939. Fortunately, the industry attracted the attention of Somerset photographers Robert Gillo and H.H. Hole, and some prints from original glass negatives have been published.

Limeburning, for agricultural and building purposes, was made possible by the presence of Roadwater Limestone in the parish. One particular narrow, lenticular-shaped outcrop, running east-west for three-quarters of a mile alongside the Roadwater-Treborough road, accounts for no less than four kilns. It seems probable that all the Treborough kilns were built and were functioning between ca 1780 and ca 1914.

Treborough, as other villages in the area, was well away from the Brendon ridgeway, which posed a threat from marauding armies and other undesirables. Only a few minor roads, mostly never fit for wheeled traffic, penetrated the parish, and their present designation as bridleways, and ‘roads used as public paths’, probably merely perpetuates their original status. Felon’s Way in the south west corner, and the road serving the slate quarry and the edge of the hamlet in the east, are the only modern through roads extending inside the parish boundary for more than a few feet. The 19th century Luxborough - Roadwater road in the north, and the ancient ridgeway to the south, both closely follow the parish boundary.

The population of Treborough declined slightly from 1801 to 1831 and then rose to a peak of 195 at the 1871 census, this being nearly double the population of 105 in 1831. The increase coincided with the expansion of Treborough Slate Quarries and also of the iron mimes just to the south of the Ridgeway. Thereafter industrial activity both at the quarries and at the mines declined and by 1891 the population was slightly below that of 1801. During the present century this downward trend in population continued, from 120 in 1901 to 44 in 1961 with only a trivial rise subsequently.

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