COME ON DOWN!
Beauty spot features an attraction rich in history and is the perfect place for a day out
BREAN Down is a big lump of rock sticking out into the Bristol Channel just to the south of Weston-super-Mare - but you probably know that already. Brean and its beach will probably form a footnote, or even a whole chapter, in many readers’ youth, whether it was family trips to the huge sandy beach, or adolescent misdeeds involving alcohol, sausages half-cooked over driftwood and botched attempts to erect a tent. (Or was that just me?)
Right now, though, a more mature outing to Brean Down might be just the thing, offering fresh air, social distancing, bracing breezes and loads of history.
There’s evidence of occupation from the Bronze Age onwards, and there was a temple here in Roman times - a few Roman coins have been found, too. Of the temple we know little, though it would be nice to believe it was dedicated to the ancient Celtic goddess of the Severn, Hafren, whom the Romans called Sabrina.
In later times, it’s possible that there was a Christian hermit living here, possibly on the site of the earlier temple, contemplating the sea in lonely isolation.
It was never much use agriculturally, and you can see why. In most parts of it the topsoil layer is too thin for cultivation, and the steep climb up means you wouldn’t want to keep too much livestock there.
But in medieval times local people made good use of it by building so-called pillow-mounds. These were basically social housing for rabbits; making comfortable homes for them encouraged them to breed like, well, rabbits. They could then be caught, killed, skinned and eaten.
Brean Down is impossible to get up if you have mobility problems. The two routes in from the car park below are a set of steps from near the beach, or a steep pathway further back.
Once you’re up there, beware that there are sheer drops off it at various points, particularly from the higher path on the south side, so dogs should be kept on a lead.
If you can manage it, though, the reward is spectacular views over the Bristol Channel and pathways out to the fort at the end, and it’s the fort where the Big History resides.
It’s probably best to visit now, not because the top of the Down ever gets particularly crowded, but because the narrow roads below can get very busy indeed in summer because of the beach and caravan parks close by. This year, with so few opportunities for foreign travel, the area will be rammed during the school holidays.
The original defences were a socalled ‘Palmerston Fort,’ built in the 1860s during a long-forgotten scare in which it was believed that Napoleon III, Emperor of France, might try to invade us. (In hindsight, this was a serious mis-reading of the man. He was all mouth and no trousers, as your Gran would say.)
The fort was only one component in a chain of coastal defences, and Brean Down covered the Bristol Channel entrance alongside sister forts on Steep Holm and Flat Holm islands as well as at Lavernock on the Welsh side.
A visit to Steep Holm and its fortifications and barracks, preserved and conserved by some wonderful volunteers, is one of the finest adventures the West Country can offer - though we don’t know when trips will resume. Keep an eye on www.steepholm.online for news.
Brean Down fort never got to fire on any French invaders. The only interesting thing to happen here before the world wars was a massive explosion caused in 1900, when a drunk soldier fired his carbine into one of the magazines. It’s been speculated that Gunner Haines was trying to take his own life; we don’t know for sure, though what you could say was that finding yourself posted here might have been a bleak, depressing and tedious experience.
It did, however, earn a footnote in world history a few years before this; some of Guglielmo Marconi’s early wireless experiments took place there.
The fort was abandoned not long after the explosion. Between the wars it became a sort of visitor attraction, with a bus service from Uphill in the summer months and a small café.
Much of what you see there nowadays dates from the Second World War and is explained by signs around the site.
In the midst of another invasion scare, a pair of six-inch naval guns were installed – you can still see the huge emplacements along with machine gun posts and, in case the bad guys came at night, searchlights.
In 1941, with the immediate threat of invasion apparently passed, Brean Down became part of HMS Birnbeck, which in turn was part of the Admiralty’s Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development.
HMS Birnbeck, based at Birnbeck Pier in Weston, carried out experiments in radar, camouflage, anti-submarine warfare and more, including some of the work done on the Dambusters’ ‘bouncing bomb.’
Those who worked for what became known as the ‘Wheezers and Dodgers’ would later recall how much fun they had making things explode, and what little fun they had having to wade out into the mud at low tide to retrieve the devices they had fired, lobbed or dropped into the sea at high tide.
The most distinguished Wheezer and Dodger was the engineer NS Norway, astonished to find himself automatically given the rank of lieutenant-commander when he entered the Navy, and even more astonished to find himself based on land. Norway was already building a career for himself as a novelist, writing under the name Nevil Shute.
If you’d like to find out more about the Wheezers and Dodgers’ work at Birnbeck, Brean and elsewhere, there’s a very readable and amusing book, with an introduction by Shute, downloadable free at tinyurl.com/2vd5swp
In the post-war years, much of the Down was donated to the National Trust, though the fort was not. While locals visited in numbers every weekend, not to mention all the holidaymakers from the caravan parks and the holiday camp nearby, the fabric of the fort started to seriously deteriorate.
Meanwhile, there was talk of turning the fort into a casino, or even, at one point, a hoverport connecting England and Wales!
There is a long and unedifying saga of disputes between the National Trust and the fort’s eventual owners, Sedgemoor District Council, in the 1990s and early noughties while the dilapidation continued. For many years the fort was out-of-bounds to visitors (though many just ignored the signs) but all this has long since been settled. It’s all now owned by the National Trust and pandemic or not, is currently open.
After you’ve negotiated the climb up, walked out to the fort, explored it and come down again, you can reward your efforts at the café below, or stop off for an ice cream at Weston on the way home.
Further details at www.nationaltrust.org.uk/brean-down