Peasedown St John (commonly referred to as Peasedown) is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, standing on a hilltop roughly south-southwest of the city of Bath, and north-east of the town of Radstock at the foot of the Mendip Hills. Peasedown used to be a coal mining village, and after the last of the mines shut in the 1970s it became a dormitory village for Bath, Trowbridge and to a lesser extent Bristol. Its size was increased by substantial housing developments in the 1960s, 1970s and late 1990s, making it one of the largest villages in Somerset. History Archaeological and documentary evidence shows that the site has been occupied from at least the early Iron Age. There is good evidence of Roman and Saxon villages in the area, the Saxon settlements resulting in several entries in the Domesday Book of 1086. The medieval settlement of Eckweek was excavated in 1989, and now lies under the Peasedown Bypass and Underknoll Road. The present village of Peasedown St John is relatively modern. 'A place known by the name of The Red Post' was how the scattering of buildings was referred to in 1768, taking its name from the local Public House. The hamlet of Carlingcott on the north-west edge of Peasedown is known to have existed before 1800 but the main modern development in the area began in the 19th century when the Somerset Coalfield was greatly expanded as the Industrial Revolution increased demand for coal across England. By the early 1840s there was still no discernible village, except a few cottages around the Red Post and a small number of buildings along what would become the Bath Road, near a field named "Pease Down" (now Highfield Road). The 1841 census lists about fifteen households with around eighty people living at "Peas Down", mostly coal miners, with some agricultural labourers, two carpenters, a seamstress, and a stonemason. The sinking of the Braysdown colliery in 1845 meant that accommodation had to be built for the enlarged workforce to work the new pit and expansion of the village was now inevitable. By the second half of the 20th century there were at least six collieries within of Peasedown, including Braysdown, Camerton, Dunkerton, Writhlington and Shoscombe. The rapid growth of non-conformist religion across the North-Somerset Coalfield in the later 1800s and early 1900s was evident in Peasedown St John. There was a Primitive