Cheddar, Somerset Cheddar, Somerset Cheddar is a large village and civil parish in the Sedgemoor district of the English county of Somerset. It is situated on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills, north-west of Wells. The civil parish includes the hamlets of Nyland and Bradley Cross. The village, which has its own parish council, has a population of 5,755 and the parish has an acreage of as of 1961. Cheddar Gorge, on the northern edge of the village, is the largest gorge in the United Kingdom and includes several show caves, including Gough's Cave. The gorge has been a centre of
Wookey Hole Caves as an inlier at the centre. Wookey Hole is a solutional cave mainly formed in the limestone by chemical weathering whereby naturally acidic groundwater dissolves the carbonate rocks, but it is unique in that the first part of the cave is formed in Triassic Dolomitic Conglomerate, a well-cemented fossil limestone scree representing the infill of a Triassic valley. The cave was formed under phreatic conditions i.e. below the local water table, but lowering base levels to which the subterranean drainage was flowing resulted in some passages being abandoned by the river, and there is evidence of a number of abandoned