Meare Pool

Meare Pool (also known as Ferlingmere, Ferran Mere or Meare fish pool) was a lake in the Somerset Levels in South West England. Lake villages existed there in prehistoric times. During medieval times it was an important fishery, but following extensive drainage works it had disappeared from maps in the eighteenth century.

Meare Pool was formed by water ponding-up behind the raised peat bogs between the Wedmore and the Polden Hills, and core samples have shown that it is filled with at least 2 metres (6.6 ft) of detritus mud, especially in the Subatlantic climatic period (1st millennium BC).

Meare Pool was located on low-lying levels just north of Meare. Its precise boundaries varied according to season, and, over the longer term, as efforts were made to drain the area. Early 16th century surveys variously describe it as being up to a mile and a half wide and having a circumference of between 2.5 and 5 miles. The south end was bordered by the high ground that the village of Meare is built upon. The pond would have extended no further west than the current Westhay to Wedmore road, where a shelf of rock formed a natural boundary. To the north lies the Godney ridge. The eastern extent is harder to determine, and it may have gone as far as the site of the Glastonbury Lake Village.

In prehistoric times there were two Meare Lake Villages situated within the lake, occupied at different times between 300 BCE and 100 CE, similar to the nearby Glastonbury Lake Village. The Meare villages were discovered in 1895 but excavation did not start until 1908. More recent studies have shown that the villages were formed by laying dried clay over the Sphagnum Moss of the bog. The pool at that time was at least 2 miles (3.2 km) long by 1 mile (1.6 km) wide.

In the Domesday book of 1086 the village of Meare is recorded as supporting "10 fishermen and 3 fisheries paying 20 pence". At the time of the Dissolution in 1540, Meare Pool was said to contain a great abundance of pike, tench, roach and eels. In 1638 it was owned by William Freake, who described it as "lately a fish pool".

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