Beast
The Norton Dragon
Born of the battlefield, killed by a Fitzwarine.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Carved medieval rood screen
- Legend from
- Local legend; screen c.1509
- Tone
- Dark history
Out of a pile of slain Britons, the old story goes, a dragon crawled.
The rood screen in All Saints Church, Norton Fitzwarren, carved around 1509, includes a dragon swallowing a man. Local legend explains it. After a Roman general slaughtered the Britons at Norton Camp, the hillfort above the village, their unburied bodies lay rotting, and from the corruption a dragon grew. It made its lair in the old fort, ate children and ruined the crops. In the end a knight, Fulk Fitzwarine, killed it, piercing its heart and cutting off its head. The village takes the second half of its name from his family.