Somerset Levels
The largest area of lowland wet grassland in Britain. Willow weavers, peat cutters, and the stewards who keep this landscape from reverting to marsh.
3Subjects identified
3Traditions mapped
1000+Years of human management
The largest area of lowland wet grassland in Britain. Willow weavers, peat cutters, and the stewards who keep this landscape from reverting to marsh.
The Somerset Levels are a vast expanse of low-lying wetland between the Mendip and Quantock hills. Without constant management - drainage, pumping, ditch-clearing - the Levels would revert to the marshland they were before medieval monks began draining them. The landscape is maintained by a network of stewards whose work is invisible to most visitors but essential to the Levels' continued existence as productive land.
The Archive documents the Levels' willow weavers as Makers whose craft depends on this specific landscape. The withies (willow rods) grown on the Levels are considered the finest in England, and the weavers who work them maintain a tradition that connects directly to the wetland ecology. The peat cutters, the rhyne (ditch) clearers, and the flood wardens are documented as Stewards - people whose daily maintenance keeps the landscape habitable.
The Somerset Levels were built on willow. The weavers who still work the withies are maintaining a craft and a landscape simultaneously.