The Parish of Stawell Heritage Society was set up in 2022 to collect, archive and share artefacts and memories relating to the villages of Stawell and Sutton Mallet.
We also investigate wider existing records, regionally and nationally, which help to tell the story of our villages and their people.
We hope to share our findings here as well as through events in the villages.
Of course we also hope to have fun and enjoy working together as a group whilst doing all this and, yes, we did choose our name so we can call ourselves POSH!!
Stawell is a village and civil parish 4.5 miles (7 km) north-east of Bridgwater, and 2 miles (3 km) north-west of Moorlinch, in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, England. The civil parish includes the village of Sutton Mallet. The villages lie on the south side of the Polden Hills where a Roman road runs towards Glastonbury
The Church of St Francis, Stawell dates from the 13th century and is a Grade 2 listed building. Sutton Mallet Church dates from 1829 but sits on the site of an earlier church. It is also listed Grade 2.
The raised stone “Coffin Walk” alongside part of Ford Lane next to the church is thought to be one of only three Coffin Walks left in the country. It is believed to have originally stretched from the old Roman Road above the village, partly following a still existing Public Footpath.
If you have an interest in local history and would like to get involved then please get in touch at POSHeritage@gmail.com. We meet monthly to talk about our researches and to plan new investigations
If you have any materials such as old photographs, documents, artifacts you are willing to share then we would love to hear from you.
We would be very willing to retain items for our archives for the future but we are also happy to carefully photograph, scan or record them so they are available for future research and then return them to you.
If you have any memories of life in the area then we would love to meet with you and record your stories. Several people have already done this and these accounts tell the ‘real’ story of life here. These memories don’t need to be of times long past – history began just yesterday and it is important for us to record these before they are lost from memory.
Follow the links below to explore what we have found out about our parish so far. Please keep coming back as it is early days for our research so far and this collection will continue to grow as we learn more about Stawell and Sutton Mallet through history. Enjoy!