Shervage Wood

Shervage Wood has is home to a number of traditions, perhaps because it was once perceived as being enchanted. In legend and folklore the wood was the home of a dragon known as The Gurt Vurm of Shervage Wood. The dragon was said to have the girth of at least three mature oak trees, and was the bane of the local villages eating cattle and making a general nuisance of itself.

Eventually a woodcutter from Stogumber was persuaded to gather berries in the wood, not having knowledge of the dragons presence. He sat down on what he took to be a log to eat his bread and cheese, and was surprised when it started to move. He jumped up and chopped the beast in two, one half travelling to Kingston St Mary, and the other crawling to Bilbrook near Minehead, where both ends perished, not being able to rejoin.

The wood also has other legends and may have been always had a reputation of being otherworldly. A pool known as Wayland’s Pool is traditionally where the smith god cooled the horseshoes he made to shoe the horses of the Wild Hunt, Odin‘s nocturnal ride across the skies to search for the souls of the damned.

Horses are said to be wary of this area, perhaps not wishing to join their spectral companions!