Burrow Mump: A Norman Motte and Ruined Church in England
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English, Norman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page9 sections
History
Burrow Mump is a natural hill and historic archaeological site in England, United Kingdom, overlooking Southlake Moor near Burrowbridge in Somerset. Its position beside the junction of the River Tone, the old course of the River Cary, and the River Parrett gave it strategic importance. The hill has been associated with activity from the Roman period onward, a probable Norman motte, a medieval church, and several episodes of military occupation.
Names and early activity
The hill has also been called St Michael’s Borough and Tutteyate. Both “burrow” and “mump” can mean a hill. Another interpretation gives the name the sense of “refuge fort on the hill,” combining terms associated with a refuge or fortified place and a hill.
Small quantities of Roman material have been found around the site, including a pottery fragment and coins. The location beside several river channels may indicate that it was used for trade, although the evidence does not establish this interpretation with certainty.
Burrow Mump was traditionally called King Alfred’s Fort, but there is no evidence that Alfred the Great used it as a fort or had a direct connection with the hill. Alfred was the ninth-century king of Wessex who resisted Viking armies and established or strengthened defended settlements and religious institutions. The association with him rests instead on the site’s connection with nearby Athelney Abbey, a Benedictine monastery founded by Alfred. A causeway linked the abbey and Burrow Mump.
The motte and medieval occupation
The earliest fortification was probably a Norman motte, a raised earthen mound intended to carry a defended residence or other defensive structure. It may have been formed during the Anarchy, the English civil war fought from 1135 to 1153 over the succession to the throne. Another possibility is that the hill served in the late ninth century as a natural outer defensive position for the fortified royal island of Athelney.
Excavations uncovered square medieval pits, including one that may have been a well, together with post holes belonging to possible structures. These findings may relate to an adulterine castle, meaning a castle built without royal authorization, particularly during a period of civil conflict. A twelfth-century masonry building on the summit may also have formed part of this possible castle.
A church dedicated to St Michael and belonging to Athelney Abbey stood on the hill by at least the middle of the fifteenth century. The earliest surviving written reference to the site dates from about 1480, when William Worcester, an English chronicler and topographical writer, called it Myghell-borough.
Civil-war and later church history
During the English Civil War, a conflict between supporters of the monarchy and Parliament, the church sheltered royalist troops in 1642 and again in 1645. In 1685, a detachment of the king’s army occupied the building during the Monmouth Rebellion, an unsuccessful uprising against James II.
The church was rebuilt in 1793, but the planned work was not completed because the necessary funds could not be raised. Contributions came from William Pitt the Younger, the British statesman and prime minister, and Admiral Hood, a senior British naval officer. A new church for the local community was later built at the foot of the hill in Burrowbridge in 1838, leaving the summit building as a ruin.
Preservation and interpretation
Repairs to the northwestern corner of the ruin took place in the middle of the twentieth century. In 1946, Major Alexander Gould Barrett gave the 3.573-hectare hill and ruined church to the National Trust as a war memorial. The memorial commemorates 11,281 Somerset men who died in the First and Second World Wars. The National Trust, a charitable organization that manages historic buildings, archaeological sites, and landscapes, later faced a nuisance action after soil from Burrow Mump slipped onto neighboring farmland.
Burrow Mump became a scheduled monument in 1949, a designation protecting archaeological and historic sites under national heritage law. The ruined church received Grade II listed status in 1963, recognizing its special architectural or historic interest.
The hill has also been linked with the proposed “St Michael’s Ley,” an alleged straight-line alignment between historic and archaeological sites associated with the writer John Michell. Ley lines are not accepted as a scientific explanation. In this case, the alignment is treated as coincidental because churches on hills were often dedicated to St Michael, and the proposed line does not account for the curvature of the Earth.
Remains
Hill, motte, and approach
Burrow Mump rises 24 metres above the surrounding low-lying Somerset Levels and stands beside Southlake Moor, a wetland extending across 196.1 hectares. The hill consists of Triassic sandstone capped by Keuper marl from the Mercia Mudstone Group. Its summit plateau is approximately 45 metres long and 25 metres wide. Together with the steeply cut upper slope, this plateau formed the motte.
A terraced track winds around the hill and reaches the summit. The slopes were also shaped into agricultural terraces, probably because flooding regularly affected the surrounding land during the medieval period. These earthworks form the principal physical setting for the summit ruins and the excavated evidence of earlier occupation.
St Michael’s Church
The summit is occupied by the ruins of the incompletely rebuilt St Michael’s Church. The 1793 design included a western tower, a nave divided into three bays with two columns on each side, and a porch on the south side. The building was made from squared and coursed lias, with red brick and Hamstone used for its dressings. Because the rebuilding campaign was unfinished, the surviving church remains an incomplete structure rather than a fully reconstructed building.
Archaeological evidence
Excavations on the summit revealed square pits, possible medieval post-hole structures, and the remains of a masonry building dating to the twelfth century. One of the pits may have been a well. The finds and structural traces provide physical evidence for activity before and alongside the later church, including the possibility of a fortified medieval occupation associated with the motte.
