Last visit: May 2026

The Swan at Rowberrow (just along the lane from Shipham) is one of those pubs that only makes sense once you understand the village around it — a place shaped not by coal, as people often assume, but by calamine, the zinc ore that once fed England’s early brass industry.

Without that mineral, Rowberrow would have been a quiet agricultural hamlet. With it, the village became part of a national supply chain long before anyone used that phrase.

The pub began life as three calamine miners’ cottages, later knocked through to form a cider house for the men who worked the shallow seams beneath the Mendip slopes. That origin still shows in the layout today: a run of small, self‑contained rooms rather than a single bar, a cottage feel rather than the larger rooms of a typical a coaching inn.

Calamine mattered because, until the 18th century, England couldn’t make brass without it. Brass was essential for the woollen economy — especially for the combs used to straighten out the wool — and the only way to produce it was to heat copper with powdered calamine in the old cementation process.

No calamine, no brass. And without brass, England remained dependent on German imports of it.

That’s why Elizabeth I granted a royal charter in 1568 to the Society of the Mineral and Battery Works, giving it the right to search for calamine and produce brass at home.

Suddenly, the Mendips — Shipham, Rowberrow, Axbridge — became strategically important. Their zinc ores lay close to the surface, workable by small, scattered diggings rather than deep pits. There were many mines in the Shipham area.

By the early 18th century, Bristol brass founder William Champion had taken things further, patenting a method for reducing calamine to produce metallic zinc — “spelter” — on a large scale. His Warmley works, just over the horizon, became one of the most advanced industrial sites in Europe. Much of his ore came from the Mendips.

The miners who lived in those three cottages at Rowberrow were part of that story: zinc men, not coalmen, helping fuel England’s industrial ambitions one barrow‑load at a time.

Rowberrow’s deeper history runs alongside this industrial moment.

Christian worship on the site of St Michael & All Angels Church goes back to around AD 700, and a Saxon carved stone — probably from a cross — on display in the church was uncovered during the Victorian rebuilding of 1865.

The manor belonged to St Augustine’s Abbey, Bristol, and the first recorded rector appears in 1266. The Old Rectory, still the largest building in the village, stands opposite the church as a reminder of the old social order: the rector’s world is out of sight of the cottages!

Life here was hard.

Hannah More, visiting in the late 18th century, described the people of Rowberrow and Shipham as “brutal in their natures and ferocious in their manners” — a harsh judgement, but one that reflects the poverty and danger of mining communities.

Two surviving artefacts bring that world sharply into focus: a silver wine flagon donated in 1752 by Thomas Hawkins, “Groovier”, and the gravestone of Thomas Ven, killed in a mining collapse in 1812.

And yet Rowberrow has always had a quieter, more contemplative side. The wooded combes of Rowberrow Warren, the heather of Black Down, the Iron Age ramparts of Dolebury Warren — all sit within a short walk of the pub.

It was here, on the edge of this landscape, that Terry Pratchett lived from 1970 to 1993, raising his daughter and writing the books that made his name.

Today, The Swan has evolved into a food‑led countryside inn, its Butcombe stewardship bringing a strong menu, a thoughtful drinks list and a warm, unfussy atmosphere. The beer is excellent but the building’s shape means it’s not a pub for large drinking groups. Instead, it’s a place for walkers, families, small gatherings and people who want a quiet corner after a day on the Mendips. The terrace in front of the pub is lovely, and the extra seating across the road, beside the large car park, gives it a relaxed, open‑air feel on fine days.

For me, The Swan is part of the lived reality of keeping the Mendip paths open. Many of the routes I help maintain lead naturally towards it and, if you fancy extending the walk, it also sits on the route I created for The Crown in Churchill. It’s not a showpiece pub — it’s a true pub of its place, shaped by the land, the labour and the long memory of a village that once supplied the brassworks of Bristol and now offers a quiet pint to anyone who wanders in from the hills.

And that’s exactly why it belongs on Pubs Worth The Walk.