The name is believed to come from the Carthusian order of Chartreuse in France, which was established in Witham (near Frome) in 1181 and formed a cell at Charterhouse in 1283 with a grant to mine lead ore.[2][3][4]
There is evidence, in the form of burials in local caves, of human occupation since the late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age.[5]
A 2024 study of bones from a mass grave found in caves at Charthouse Warren in the 1970s suggests that 37 pepole were massacred in a violent cannabalistic event occuring between 2200-2000 BC.[6]
The lead and silvermines at Charterhouse were first operated on a large scale by the Romans, from at least AD 49.[7] At first the lead/silver industries were tightly controlled by the Roman military, but within a short time the extraction of these metals was contracted out to civilian companies, probably because the silver content of the local ore was not particularly high.[8] There was also some kind of 'fortlet' here in the 1st century, and an amphitheatre.[9] The Roman landscape has been designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.[10]
Charter-House-on-Mendip was an extra-parochial ville,[12] from 1858 Charterhouse was a civil parish in its own right, on 1 April 1933 the parish was abolished and merged with Blagdon and Cheddar.[13]
There is further evidence of mine workings in the medieval and Victorian periods,[14][15] some of which survives within the Blackmoor Nature Reserve owned by Somerset County Council. There is also evidence of a rectangular medieval enclosure.[16]