Triscombe Stone is thought to date back to the Bronze Age, and marks an ancient meeting place between the 'Drove' Road and the Triscombe Plainsfield track. The word 'Tris' is Celtic for 'meeting'. People and-traders have used the Drove road since Bronze Age times to trade or move livestock, originally to avoid the wet wooded lowlands each side of the hills. Along side the Drove road you will see many cairns and barrows/loose piles of stones or mounds that mark the graves of the early Bronze Age settlers.
Triscombe Stone
Wills Neck to the south is the highest point on the Quantock Hill's at
384m. It offers superb views, and on a clear day you can see the Blackdown Hills and Exmoor to the west, the Mendips to the east, and the Brecon Beacons in South Wales.
Triscombe Stone
Quarrying has long been an industrial activity on the Quantock Hills. Triscombe Quarry, the largest quarry in the Quantocks, stopped extracting stone in 1999.
Since this time it has been settling and regenerating to create a unique habitat for the Quantock Hills. The quarry was extracting Hangman Grit stone, which are among the oldest rocks of the Quantocks. These
hard rocks were formed, under water from 490 million years ago and underlie the wilder northern part of the hills.
To the north-east is Great Wood,
coniferous plantation managed by The
Forestry Commission on land leased from Somerset County Council. It has been managed by the Forestry Commission since 1922 and is a productive conifer
ancient heathland and oak woodlandsites that were cleared as part.of the war effort for World Two. Some areas of broadleaf planting have been undertaken to allow a more varied habitat for wildlife and heathland is being re-instated at particularly sensitive locations.
Triscombe Stone marks the junction of the old drovers road and the coaching road from Watchet to Lyme Regis
|
)
)
)