Shapwick: history
Until around 4,500 BC, the sea covered Shapwick Heath.
When it gradually began to retreat, reedbeds, followed by a mixture of sedge and fen woodlands, colonised the drying marshes. Then, as the old vegetation died and decayed, thick seams of peat were formed.
The importance of peat
The Romans were the first to harvest peat to burn as fuel. Between April and September, when the ground was at its driest, men would cut the peat by hand, while women and children would stack the turfs to dry, before loading them on to carts or flat-bottomed boats.
The peat was cut this way for hundreds of years until the 1940s, when coal became more popular. In the 1960s, peat was removed by huge machines for horticultural use, but this stopped in the 1990s.
Today, these former peat pits have been transformed into a landscape of open lakes, reedbeds, fens and wet woodland, and have become a hugely important area for nature conservation.
Stone-age Shapwick
Around 6,000 years ago, Neolithic man settled on the higher, dry ground around the heath, and built wooden trackways to cross the wetlands.
Large parts of the Neolithic ‘Sweet Track’, the oldest man-made routeway in Britain, still exist on the reserve, preserved beneath the wet peat. This remarkable timber track was built around 3,806 BC to cross 2km (1.2 miles) of reed swamp that separated Meare Island from the Polden Hills.
Many amazing Neolithic artefacts have since been found on the heath, including pots of hazelnuts, a child’s toy tomahawk, and an extraordinary polished jadeite axe from the Alps. Many are now on display at the Somerset Museum at Taunton Castle Museum, although the castle is currently being refurbished and re-opens in 2011.
There is more about the Sweet Track here http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=504
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