Charterhouse-upon-Mendip
Important center of lead/silver mining; pigs bearing imperial titles from Claudius to Marcus and Verus (A.D. 49-169) are known; production continued to the end of the 4th c. Neronian and Vespasianic pigs sometimes bear the stamped names of lessees or a company; some give the Roman place-name VEB (. . .). There is little to see at Charterhouse, where most obvious traces of mining are of the 19th c. Faint irregularities in fields on either side of a lane leading to a small earthen amphitheater (at National Grid Reference ST.499/565) are resolved, from the air, into the outline of the streets and small insulae of a straggling township. Many finds from this area are in Bristol City Museum (brooches, gems).
BIBLIOGRAPHYF. Haverfield, VCH Somerset I (1906, repr. 1969) MI; D. Elkington in J. Campbell et al., The Mendip Hills in Prehistoric and Roman Times (1970) I. Mining: G. C. Boon in Apulum 8 (1970) I; E. K. Tratman et al., Proc. Univ. Bristol Spelaeolog. Soc. 13.3 (1974) PI.
G. C. BOON