Steep Holm ( and later ) is an English island lying in the Bristol Channel. The island covers at high tide, expanding to at mean low water. At its highest point it is above mean sea level.
Administratively it forms part of the unitary authority of North Somerset within the ceremonial county of Somerset. Between 1 April 1974 and 1 April 1996 it was administered as part of Avon. Nearby is Flat Holm island, part of Wales.
The Carboniferous Limestone island rises to about and serves as a wind and wave break, sheltering the upper reaches of the Bristol Channel. The island is now uninhabited, with the exception of the wardens. It is protected as a nature reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) with a large bird population and plants including wild peonies. There was a signal station or watchtower on the island in Roman times, but there may have been human habitation as early as the Iron Age. In the 6th century it was home to St Gildas and to a small Augustinian priory in the 12th and 13th centuries. An inn was built in 1832 and used for holidays in the 19th century. A bird sanctuary was established in 1931 and since 1951 has been leased to charitable trusts. It is now owned by the Kenneth Allsop Memorial Trust.
In the 1860s the island was fortified with ten 7-inch rifled muzzle loaders as one of the Palmerston Forts for the coastal defence of the Bristol Channel until it was abandoned in 1898. The infrastructure was reused in World War I and II when MarkVII6-inch breech-loading guns and searchlights were installed. To enable the movement of materials, soldiers from the Indian Army Service Corps initially used mules and then installed a cable-operated winched switchback railway.
Geology and ecology
The island is formed of Carboniferous Limestone and is often described as geologically a continuation of the Mendip Hills at Brean Down; however, the dip is at a different angle to that on Brean Down. On Steep Holm the dip is about 30 degrees to the north whereas at Brean Down it is 30 degrees to the south. There are some folds and fractures with dip angles up to 75 degrees created during the final phases of the Variscan orogeny near the end of the Carboniferous Period, 300 million years ago.
The island rises to about from the surrounding sea and covers at high tide, whereas at low tide it expands to due to the tidal range of , second only to the Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada. There are many caves on the island, and pot holes up to deep in the surrounding sea bed that are believed to be the remnants of collapsed cave systems. The caves on the islands cliffs are at two different levels: the caves in the current inter-tidal zone which are below the water table and are producing stalactites, and many others high up on the cliffs that were on the water line many thousands of years ago.
Steep Holm is protected as a nature reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), notification having taken place in 1952. There is a large bird population, particularly European herring gulls (Larus argentatus) and lesser black-backed gulls (Larus fuscus). There has also been a small population of muntjac deer. The plateau at the top of the island has a layer of soil between and deep. It has a red colour from veins of iron in the rock and has arrived as sand particles less than in diameter. The island is the only site in the UK on which wild peonies (Paeonia mascula) grow, although these have been damaged by the fungus botrytis. The wild peony was introduced to the island of Steep Holm, possibly by monks, or brought from the Mediterranean by the Romans. Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) is also common along with golden samphire, buck's-horn plantain (Plantago coronopus) and wild leeks (Allium ampeloprasum). The only reptiles on the island are slowworms (Anguis fragilis).
History
Prehistoric to Roman
The earliest sign of human activity on the island are prehistoric vertebrae of red deer discovered in Five Johns' Cave during an exploration in 1975. Worked flints from the Mesolithic and scrapers from the Neolithic were uncovered as part of the Priory excavations carried out between 1977 and 1992.
Roman remains, possibly a signal station or watchtower, have been identified on the island by an electrical resistance survey. Accurate exploration and interpretation of the site is difficult as it was reused by builders in both the Victorian era and during World War II. A carved stone head found on the island in 1991 is likely to be a Celtic head from the Romano-British era, but may be from the Iron Age. In addition to shards of cooking pots from the Roman era, some luxury items have been identified including Arretine ware, La Tène style brooches, and an amphora dating from between 90 and 140 AD which was made in southern Spain. There have also been shards of Castor ware. Fragments of pottery roofing and box flue tiles have been identified signifying the presence of a heating system and possibly a bath house. Roman coins from the reigns of Claudius Gothicus (268–270) and Tetricus I (271–273) have also been found.
Religious foundations
According to legend, first recorded by John Leland in the 16th century, Saint Gildas, the author of De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, lived on Steep Holm during the 6th century. He arrived on the island after visiting his friend Saint Cadoc, who lived on Flat Holm as a hermit. Gildas supposedly left the island, after pirates from Orkney carried off his servant and furniture, to become Abbot of Glastonbury. Other semi-legendary saints are also associated with the island; in John Rous's Historia Regum Angliae (c. 1480), Rous claims that Saint Dubricius, the saint said to have crowned Arthur, retired to an hermitage on the island of 'Stepeholm' in the River Severn. The Vikings took refuge on Steep Holm during the summer of 914 and then carried out raids on the coast of Somerset at Watchet and Porlock, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
At the end of the 12th century, there was a small priory of Canons Regular of St Michael on the island. The only priory building fully excavated measured long and wide, with the cloisters and other structures still to be identified. The date of the original foundation of the priory is unclear; however, in the early 13th century the patron was William I de Cantilupe. His family were also patrons of Studley Priory in Warwickshire. His granddaughter married Lord Robert de Tregoz who acquired the freehold of the whole island; however, endowments for the upkeep of the priory were declining, which led to it being abandoned between 1260 and 1265, the monks returning to Studley Priory. A Blue Lias memorial stone from the abbey, which has a Cross of Lorraine, was found in 1867 during the fortification of the island. It was incorporated into an armoury leading to the naming of the "tombstone battery".
Manorial ownership
The island seems to have been held, in association with the local manors of Uphill and Christon, by the Bek family, who granted it to Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln. Although the mechanism is unclear, it next passed to the Berkeley family with Maurice de Berkeley, the second Baron Berkeley, holding it in 1315. The site was used again by warreners in the 14th and 15th centuries. They lived in one of the ruined priory buildings which was rebuilt.
By 1453 the overlordship of the island was held by James Butler, 5th Earl of Ormond, and in 1460 the advowson was exercised by Margaret Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury. Margaret Talbot (née de Beauchamp) was a distant cousin of James Butler as both were descended from different sons of Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick. In other words, James Butler (via his mother Joan Butler, Countess of Ormond (née Beauchamp) and his grandfather William Beauchamp, 1st Baron Bergavenny, whilst Margaret Talbot was daughter of Elizabeth de Beauchamp (née Berkeley) and the granddaughter of Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick. In short, James Butler's and Margaret Talbot's de Beauchamp grandparents were brothers. Of note is that Margaret Talbot was the daughter of Elizabeth Berkeley, Countess of Warwick (and her husband Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick) from which discord in the Berkeley family was to emerge (see below). Furthermore, Elizabeth Berkeley was the only daughter of Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley, showing that ownership still resided to some extent in the Berkeley family since Maurice de Berkeley took over the island in 1315 – Margaret Talbot was the great, great, great-granddaughter of Maurice de Berkeley.
However, in the years following, the ownership of a variety of estates, including Norton Beauchamp, to which Steep Holm was attached, was disputed. At the heart of this was the dispute from how the Barony was passed on from Thomas Berkeley, the 5th Baron. These disputes had on one side James Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley, also known as 'James the Just' (not to be confused with the other 1st Baron Berkeley Thomas de Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley who pre-dated him by 150 years). Yet it was to James whom the Barony transferred to under a new creation by writ since his uncle, the aforementioned Thomas de Berkeley (5th Baron) had no male heirs even though he had named his only daughter (Elizabeth Berkeley) as his heir. This was to be the start of a longstanding legal dispute.
On one side of the dispute originating through the line of James, the new 1st Baron, continued through his son (Sir) William de Berkeley, 1st Marquess of Berkeley in 1463, who was the first male issue from his 3rd marriage to Lady Isabel de Mowbray. This was after two previous marriages that yielded no children. On the opposing side of dispute were the descendants of the aforementioned Elizabeth Berkeley (James' the 1st Baron's, 1st cousin) and in particular through her daughter Margaret (de Beauchamp) that shows some curious tangled sub-plots.
One such sub-plot lies with John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury who took Margaret de Beauchamp as his 2nd wife. His first marriage, to a Maud Neville (the daughter of his stepfather Thomas Neville, a Baron Furnivall) and which produced Lady Joan Talbot, amongst 6 children is however notable. The same John Talbot seemingly kidnapped and imprisoned until their death in 1452, the 3rd wife of James Berkeley (the 1st Baron) and mother of the aforementioned 2nd Baron Berkeley (Sir William de Berkeley). Yet, this James Berkeley, took a 4th wife, Lady Joan Talbot (i.e. the daughter of John Talbot who kidnapped his 3rd wife!).
A further sub-plot, or extension of the previous one, centres again around John Talbot but this time as a result of his marriage to Margaret de Beauchamp. Their eldest son, John Talbot, 1st Baron of Lisle and 1st Viscount Lisle, was the father of Thomas Talbot, 2nd Baron of Lisle and 2nd Viscount Lisle. This Thomas Talbot sought to exert his claim on the lands of Baron Berkeley on the death of his grandmother Margaret de Beauchamp (daughter of the disenfranchised Elizabeth Berkeley), who in the interim had continued to press her claim to Baron Berkeley lands against James Berkeley the 1st Baron. It brought him into direct opposition with Sir William de Berkeley (2nd Baron and son of James Berkeley and came to a full head at the Battle of Nibley Green (1470), following what is described as Thomas Talbot's impetuous challenge to Sir William, which had concluded by the end of the following day with the death of Thomas Talbot and the subsequent sacking of his Manor at Wotton-under-Edge.