Beast
The Shervage Worm
Never sit on a log in Shervage Wood.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Church with carved dragon bench end
- Legend from
- Quantock folk tale
- Best time
- Late summer, bilberry time
- Tone
- Light-hearted
He sat on a fallen log to eat his bread and cheese. The log began to move.
Crowcombe church has carved bench ends dated 1534, and one shows two men fighting a two-headed dragon. The tale linked to it says a huge worm, thicker round the middle than an oak, lived in Shervage Wood on the Quantocks and ate sheep, ponies and at last people. Nobody dared pick bilberries there. An old woman asked a woodcutter from Stogumber to pick some. He sat down on what he took for a log to eat his lunch, and the log moved. He swung his axe, and the worm's halves ran off in opposite directions.