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from Community Action magazine
Blagdon young and old make new connections
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from Community Action magazine
Location: North Somerset
Celebrating History in Blagdon - An extract from an article about the Blagdon LHI project published in the quarterly magazine of Community Action, which supports rural communities in former Avon (issue 19, Winter 2003)
Blagdon has been described as “a lovely place - but one of those villages on the Mendips that rarely gets mentioned in guide books about Somerset”. Yet is has a surprising and remarkable history.
You can still see signs of a decoy city built just above Blagdon, on the Mendip top plateau at Blackdown, during the 1939-45 war. Piles of peat in straight lines are laid out like a theatre set in the pattern of Bristol streets. From the control bunker, secret technicians switched lights on and off to create a realistic impression of life in the city, and confuse German bombers.
Further back, in 1903-04, Bristol Waterworks flooded the valley to create a reservoir providing clean water for Bristol. Some of the men who worked on the dam settled in the area, and some of their children have lived in Blagdon all their lives.
Blagdon’s Local History Society has been revealing and sharing stories like these with the benefit of funding and advice from the Countryside Agency’s Local Heritage Initiative scheme, which encourages communities to explore, explain and celebrate heritage, and gain new skills by participating in a project.
As well as recording oral history interviews with longtime residents, organising talks by visiting expert speakers, and showing collections of black and white photographs in slide shows, the Blagdon LHI project plans to share its findings via a book, a website and deposits in the local record office.
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