CAN you guess where this week’s Mystery Photograph was taken?

Each week, the Journal invites readers to identify a historic location from days gone by.

The rural village scene seems to have appealed to our Facebook readers this week with quite a few comments to our post with many of them correct.

Matt Ettle said: “Clutton?” with Steve Willcox commenting: “It’s Clutton, picture taken outside the Cross Keys pub on lower Bristol Road looking towards Batch Farm” and later adding: “The Cross Keys was a drinking pub. Occasionally we would as children go in when walking by and have a packet of Smiths crisps.” Oh, remember the days!

Wayne Gibbs commented: “Lower Bristol Road, Clutton” while Susan Shore guessed: “Haydon Colliery” and Dunc Boulton said: “I say Clutton.” Spot on Dunc, and sorry Susan but this old image from the Radstock Museum indeed shows Clutton Colliery and village.

The Clutton Colliery or Burchells Colliery as it was also known, was part of the Somerset coalfield which extended for around 240 square miles with several pits near to Clutton. Originally part of the Earl of Warwick’s estates they were later owned by the Greyfield Colliery Company from the 1830s. By 1901 there were 80 mines within a 20-mile radius of Radstock.

Greyfield Pit was the largest mine in the area but by 1908 it was becoming uneconomic to continue production at the site. Burchells Pit was viewed as an alternative and men transferred in 1912 from Greyfield but the reserves proved “neither significant or economically viable” and mining ceased in August 1921.

This week we have another photograph from Radstock Museum; thank you to them. Let’s see how we get on with this.

If you know where this country image was taken, then drop us a line via email to: [email protected]