The village of Burrington

Burrington is a small village and civil parish in Somerset, England. It is situated in the Unitary authority of North Somerset, 5 miles (8.0 km) north east of Axbridge and about 10 miles (16 km) east of Weston-super-Mare. The parish includes the hamlet of Bourne and has a population of 477.

Burrington is believed to mean 'The villa and an enclosure' from the Old English bur, end and tun.

In the 15th century the village was called Beryngton and was involved in lead mining.

It is very close to Burrington Combe where there is evidence of occupation of the site during the Bronze Age and Roman periods.

The parish council has responsibility for local issues, including setting an annual precept (local rate) to cover the council’s operating costs and producing annual accounts for public scrutiny. The parish council evaluates local planning applications and works with the local police, district council officers, and neighbourhood watch groups on matters of crime, security, and traffic. The parish council's role also includes initiating projects for the maintenance and repair of parish facilities, such as the village hall or community centre, playing fields and playgrounds, as well as consulting with the district council on the maintenance, repair, and improvement of highways, drainage, footpaths, public transport, and street cleaning. Conservation matters (including trees and listed buildings) and environmental issues are also of interest to the council.

The parish falls within the unitary authority of North Somerset which was created in 1996, as established by the Local Government Act 1992. It provides a single tier of local government with responsibility for almost all local government functions within its area including local planning and building control, local roads, council housing, environmental health, markets and fairs, refuse collection, recycling, cemeteries, crematoria, leisure services, parks, and tourism. It is also responsible for education, social services, libraries, main roads, public transport, trading standards, waste disposal and strategic planning, although fire, police and ambulance services are provided jointly with other authorities through the Avon Fire and Rescue Service, Avon and Somerset Constabulary and the Great Western Ambulance Service.

North Somerset's area covers part of the ceremonial county of Somerset but it is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county. Its administrative headquarters are in the town hall in Weston-super-Mare. Between April 1 1974 and April 1 1996, it was the Woodspring district of the county of Avon.[5] Before 1974 that the parish was part of the Axbridge Rural District.[6]

The parish is represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom as part of the Weston-super-Mare county constituency. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election. It is also part of the South West England constituency of the European Parliament which elects seven MEPs using the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation.

The Church of the Holy Trinity in Burrington, Somerset, England is from the 15th century and was restored in 1884. It is a Grade I listed building.

The tower is square with diagonal buttresses but joins somewhat uncomfortably with the nave. It dates from the early 14th century.It contains a bell dating from 1713 and made by Edward Bilbie of the Bilbie family.

The rest of the church is all late Perpendicular. There are a few remnants of pre-Reformation stained glass but the great majority of the windows are Victorian. Of these the most notable are: the window in the south wall of the south aisle by Warrington; the window from the east in the south aisle by Charles Eamer Kempe; the west window of the south aisle by Warde and Hughes; and the west window of the north aisle by Heaton, Butler and Bayne. One window includes the arms of the Capels of Langford Court. The pews were installed in 1913 in memory of William Wills, 1st Baron Winterstoke. In 2000 a gold leaf weathervane was erected at the top of the tower.

Burrington Combe (grid reference ST478583) is a carboniferous limestone gorge near the village of Burrington, on the north side of the Mendip Hills, in North Somerset, England. "Combe" or "coombe" is a word of Celtic origin found in several forms on all of the British Isles, denoting a steep-sided valley or hollow.

There is a legend that Augustus Montague Toplady was inspired to write the hymn Rock of Ages while sheltering under a rock in the combe during a thunderstorm in the late 18th century. The rock was subsequently named after the hymn. It is now generally accepted that the attribution of this location to the writing of Rock of Ages only arose well after Toplady's death (The 1850s is suggested by Percy Dearmer in Songs of Praise Discussed, 1933) and has no proven factual basis.

The then Vicar at Westbury-on-Trym H. J. Wilkins published a 16 page booklet in 1938 titled "An enquiry concerning Toplady and his Hymn "rock of Ages" and its connection with Burrington Combe Somerset" that found that in relation to the hymn "All available evidence goes to show that it was published in 1776, soon after it was written." Toplady had left the neighborhood of Burrington Combe in 1764.

In George Lawton's 1983 publication Within the Rock of Ages the author finds the claim that Rock of Ages was written at Burrington Combe to be only a legend, although he does state that "It is extremely doubtful whether at this distance of time, the legend that it was written in a cleft there can be proved or disproved." In George Ella's 2000 study A Debtor to Mercy Alone any links between the hymn and Burrington Combe are again said to be no more than legendary, with readers being referred to Lawton's 1983 study.

The combe contains the entrances to many of the caves of the Mendip Hills, including Aveline's Hole, Sidcot Swallet and Goatchurch Cavern. Recently a through trip has been dug from Rod's Pot to Bath Swallet, which are both on the hills above the majority of Burrington caves. Archaeological discoveries of early cemeteries demonstrate human occupation of the combe and its caves from the Bronze Age with some evidence of occupation during the Upper Palaeolithic period.

In recognition of its biological and geological interest, an area of 139.1 hectares (343.7 acres) within and around the combe was notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1952, because of the calcareous grasslands and bat populations and as a fluvial karst feature which partly intersects a buried and filled gorge of Triassic age.