Axbridge in Somerset. A visit to The Lamb Inn, King John's Hunting Lodge and the Church of St.John the Baptist.

The last few weeks of winter have been particularly cold and bleak, not the sort of weather for venturing out to seek a picturesque view.  So when driving back down the A38 on a very chilly day after an unavoidable trip to Bristol I noticed the sign for Axbridge at Shute Shelve Hill and was reminded of a pleasant summer visit there a few years ago.  My wife and I, with some friends, had a very enjoyable lunch sitting outside at the Lamb Inn, a coaching inn dating from 1480, on a corner of Axbridge’s charming medieval square.

The Lamb Inn, Axbridge in Somerset.  A coaching inn dating from 1480. 

In days of old the town was a convenient and favourite base for royal hunting parties ranging over the Royal Forest of Mendip.  Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon King Edmund, brother of Athelstan, nearly met his death riding over Cheddar Gorge while stag-hunting.

Colin Wintle in his Around Historic Somerset and Avon, (Midas Books, 1978) writes this of Axbridge: “Medieval kings, with their passion for hunting, gave Axbridge considerable status, but of all the Norman and subsequent Plantagenet monarchs who came there for sport King John is most remembered.  There in a central position facing the main square is a building traditionally known as King John’s Hunting Lodge – and the site of a similar retreat once occupied by his Saxon predecessors.  The building is an early Tudor merchant’s house.  Now a National Trust property, it contains a museum of local history and archaeology.  The oldest existing building in Axbridge is its noble fifteenth century church with a fine tower, standing on an eminence overlooking the parish.”

King John's Hunting Lodge in Axbridge.

Nestling between the foothills of the Mendips and the Somerset Levels, Axbridge grew from a fortified Saxon burgh and was an important wool producer in the Middle Ages.  It held markets and fairs, had its own mint, and even its own river port in its early days.  Its narrow streets leading to the square were once a challenge to both horse drawn and motorised vehicles, but today there is far less through traffic now that the A371 effectively bypasses the town and speeds tourists from the A38 directly to ever popular Cheddar and its Gorge. 

Signposts direct you to a handy car park not far from the square so one has plenty of time to have meal, visit King John’s Hunting Lodge with its museum and climb the imposing steps leading to the Church of St. John the Baptist.

The Church of St. John the Baptist in Axbridge, Somerset.