WHAT IS A MUMP?

What is a Mump? 🤔 🤒 😬

Until I moved to the West Country I had only associated the word with an unpleasant childhood illness that made your glands swell up so you looked like a ham(p)ster  🐹

Now I know better! In Somerset dialect, a mump is a rounded hill, a bit like a bump or a tump (or even a hump). Burrow Mump, in the village of Burrowbridge south-east of Bridgwater is only 24m high, but makes a bold statement as it rises out of the Somerset Levels. The eerie ruins of 18th century St Michael’s Church add a dramatic touch. It was built on the site of a much earlier church, and the mump is on St Michael’s Ley, which runs across England from the tip of Cornwall to the Norfolk coast.

It’s also on the Macmillan Way, a long-distance footpath from Dorset to Lincolnshire, promoted to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Relief.