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Banwell is a village and civil parish on the River Banwell in the North Somerset district of Somerset, England. Its population was 3,251 according to the 2021 census.
However, Harry Jelley suggested in the 1990s that Banwell was the home of Saint Patrick's father, who according to Patrick’s autobiographical Confessio 'fuit vico Bannavem Taburniae, villulam enim prope habuit, ubi ego capturam dedi' ('lived at Bannavem Taburniae, because he had a small estate nearby, where I was taken prisoner'). Jelley argued that Bannavem Taburniae is a scribal corruption of *Bannaventa Tabernae, a partly Celtic and partly Latin place-name meaning 'market-place by a hill and with an inn'.Harry Jelley, "The Origins of Saint Patrick," Irish Studies Review 12 (1995): 31-36.Harry Jelley, Saint Patrick’s Somerset Birthplace (Somerton, 1998). In the view of Andrew Breeze, 'despite much that is wrong-headed, his arguments are here compelling', and Breeze accepted the identification. If so, then the Old English name in fact took the first syllable of the Roman-period name, adding wielle as an Old English generic element.
The remains of a Romano-British villa were discovered in 1968. It included a courtyard, wall and bath house close to the River Banwell. Artefacts from the site suggest it fell into disuse in the 4th century. Earthworks from farm buildings, south of Gout House Farm, occupied from the 11th to 14th centuries where archaeological remains suggest the site was first occupied in the Romano-British period. The raised area which was occupied by the Bower House was surrounded by a water-filled ditch, part of which has since been incorporated into a rhyne (a drainage ditch).
The parish was part of the Winterstoke Hundred.
Banwell Abbey was built as a bishop’s residence in the 14th and 15th century on the site of a monastic foundation. It was renovated in 1870 by Hans Price, and is now a Grade II* listed building. Nearby is a small building presented to the village by Miss Elizabeth Fazakerly, who lived at The Abbey in 1887, to house a small Fire apparatus. It served as the fire station until the 1960s and now houses a small museum of memorabilia related to the fire station.
"Beard's Stone" in Cave's Wood dates from 1842. It marks the reburial site of an ancient human skeleton found in a cave near Bishop's Cottage. William Beard, an amateur archaeologist who had found the bones, had them reinterred and marked the site with the stone with a poetic inscription.
Banwell Castle is a Victorian castle built in 1847 by John Dyer Sympson, a solicitor from London. Originally built as his home, it is now a hotel and restaurant and is a Grade II* listed building.
Of the two historical standing in the village, one of them was erected to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
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, library, 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 South 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 is in the town hall in Weston-super-Mare. Between 1 April 1974 and 1 April 1996, it was the Woodspring district of the county of Avon. Before 1974 the parish was part of the Axbridge Rural District.
The village falls in the 'Banwell and Winscombe' electoral ward. This ward starts at its most northerly point in St. Georges visits Banwell and Winscombe before ending at Loxton at its most southerly point. The total population of the ward taken from the 2011 census was 11,036.
The parish is represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom as part of the Wells and Mendip Hills constituency. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election. It was also part of the South West England constituency of the European Parliament, prior to Brexit in January 2020, which elected seven MEPs using the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation.
The village is located between the M5 motorway and the A38, and is used by a significant volume of commuter traffic. This traffic, together with other users of the A371 and A368, often causes the narrow streets of Banwell to become jammed. There has been a campaign to bypass Banwell for many years, but other villages in the area have objected as increasing the traffic capacity on the roads would create problem on their roads. The Greater Bristol Strategic Transport Study in 2006 recommended that a road be built from Junction 21 of the M5 directly to Bristol Airport, bypassing Banwell and all the other local villages, thus alleviating their concerns. However, this would not benefit local traffic passing through Banwell to and from Weston-super-Mare, Wells and Bath, so some traffic problems would still exist.
Banwell Caves is a geological and biological Site of Special Scientific Interest at the western end of Banwell Hill.
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