Chew Valley

The Chew Valley is an affluent area in North Somerset, England, named after the River Chew. It is bounded by higher ground ranging from Dundry Down to the north, the Lulsgate Plateau to the west, the Mendip Hills to the south and the Hinton Blewett, Temple Cloud, Clutton and Marksbury plateau areas to the east. Many of the villages date back to the time of the Domesday Book and there is evidence of human occupation since the Stone Age.

About Chew Valley in brief

The Chew Valley is an affluent area in North Somerset, England, named after the River Chew. It is bounded by higher ground ranging from Dundry Down to the north, the Lulsgate Plateau to the west, the Mendip Hills to the south and the Hinton Blewett, Temple Cloud, Clutton and Marksbury plateau areas to the east. Many of the villages date back to the time of the Domesday Book and there is evidence of human occupation since the Stone Age. There are hundreds of listed buildings with the churches being Grade I listed. Most of the undeveloped area is within the BristolBath Green Belt. The area falls into the domains of councils including Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and Mendip. The main commercial centre is Chew Magna. The river Chew was dammed in the 1950s to create CheW Valley Lake, which provides drinking water for the nearby city of Bristol and surrounding areas. The lake is a prominent landscape feature of the valley, a focus for recreation, and is internationally recognised for its nature conservation interest, because of the bird species, plants and insects. There is no clear origin for the name \”Chew\”, found scarcely anywhere else; however, there have been differing explanations of the etymology, including \”winding water\”, the ‘ew’ being a variant of the French eau, meaning water. Other possible explanations suggest it comes from the Old English word ceo, ‘fish gill’ The word chewer is a western dialect for a narrow passage, and chare is Old English for turning.

The name Chew began in Normandy as Cheux, and came to England with the Norman Conquest during the eleventh century. Part of the area falls within the Mend Pip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The majority of the land is fertile silty clay soils that are a dull dusky red colour because of their high iron content. The predominant rock formation is Dolomitic Conglomerate of the Triassic period, which takes the predominant form from the Carboniferous period. The landscape is largely largely red, largely due to the underlying characteristic of red Siltstone of the dry periods, resulting in the gently rolling valley. The valley’s boundary generally follows the top of scarp slopes except at the southwestern and southeastern boundaries where flat upper areas of the ChewValley grade gently into the Yeo Valley and eastern Mendip Hill respectively. The Upper and Yeo Valleys is a scarp slope of 75 metres to 235 metres. The predominant predominant formation takes the predominately older rock fragments from the older CarboniferOUS period, derived from carboniferous fragments of the Limestone and Conglomate formation. The Chewvalley is an open landscape between the gently sloping landscape of the upper and lower Chew Valleys and the open landscape of the Upper and lower Mendip Valleys. It has two main soil types, both generally well-drained. The clay content means that where unimproved they easily become waterlogged when wet.

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Mendip Hills Somerset Chew Valley Lake Chew Stoke