Beacon Batch and Black Down on the Mendip Hills in Somerset. Their link with the Bristol Blitz of 1940/41.

Beacon Batch on Black Down is, at 1068 feet, the highest point in the Mendip Hills. 

The most convenient place from which to approach Black Down is the car park adjacent to Burrington Ham on the B3134.  Cross the road, with care, and make your way left, then take the track to your right which goes past Ellick House and leads on to a gate which gives access to the northern slopes of Black Down.

I usually follow the diagonal path up towards Beacon Batch and the trig point.  This route is easier going but takes time: I find I am forever stopping to enjoy the magnificent view - carrying binoculars is recommended!

Black Down is crossed by a number of footpaths so an OS map is handy if you prefer walking and exploring rather than taking in the spectacular scenery.

Black Down viewed from Burrington Ham.

The link to the Bristol Blitz of 1940/41.

The first heavy raid on Bristol occurred on the night of 23rd/24th November 1940.  Subsequently, over the next six months, the city was frequently targeted by the Germans.

As part of Bristol's air defence system Black Down was chosen as a "Starfish" site: an area laid out with suitably lit fires and lighting to simulate a city under night bombing attack.  It was hoped that such sites would decoy Luftwaffe bomber crews away from their real target.  Those hopes were realised at the end of 1940 when the first bombs fell on Black Down and in the following January the site attracted over 1,000 incendiaries. The nearby Starfish sites at Chew Magna and Downside also proved successful.

My late mother described the site on Black Down in action as: " looking very pretty, just like twinkling fairy lights".  Twelve years old in 1940, she spent most of the next decade staying with relatives at Lye Hole and Redhill, just north of the Mendips, and with a fine view of Black Down.  She and my grandparents had the roof of their home in South Bristol badly damaged by a "near miss" early on in the Bristol Blitz.  It was fortunate that my grandmother came from a farming family with a spacious farmhouse in Lye Hole where safe refuge was at hand.


The view north from Black Down. Blagdon Lake is in the foreground with the village of Butcombe just beyond.  Bristol can be seen to the top left, most of the city is hidden by Dundry Hill.   

Saved by the Russians?

Between August 1940 and June 1941 Bristol was the fifth most heavily bombed city in Britain.  In late spring of 1941 the heaviest raids were over as the Luftwaffe's bomber groups began moving east in preparation for the German invasion of Russia.  From the autumn of 1941 the Germans faced determined and steadily mounting Russian resistance.  Under increasing pressure the Luftwaffe was never again able to gather enough bombers to mount air assaults on England of the same scale as 1940/41.