Apart from the urban sprawl of Shepton Mallet, the area is dominantly rural with only a
scatter of small hamlets. The area is mostly underlain by Jurassic sediments, with the Blue
Lias occupying over 50 per cent of the ground. Carboniferous rocks occur in some of the
deeper valleys in the northern part of the area, with the Mercia Mudstone and Penarth
groups cropping out mainly in the south-west. Higher parts of the Lias Group, together
with the Inferior Oolite and Fuller’s Earth crop out in the east of the area.
The highest ground is about 246 m O.D. in the north-east; the lowest ground is about
70 m O.D. in the south-west. The principal drainage is westwards via the River Sheppey in
the north, and unnamed streams in the south-west.
Outside Shepton Mallet, agriculture is the main industry of the region with a
predominance of dairy farming on the heavier soils, and arable farming on the lighter soils
developed on the Inferior Oolite. There is very little woodland in the area. In the past,
quarrying of limestone (Carboniferous, Blue Lias and Inferior Oolite) was an important
industry, but extraction is now limited to the Inferior Oolite in the Doulting area.
The Shepton Mallet area of this report comprises 1: 10 000 Sheet ST64SW. Figures in
square brackets are National Grid references and fall within 100-km square ST. The grid
letters precede the grid numbers
