 The English also made a stand here against the Viking invader Cnut the Great in 1016.Pen Pits quern quarries north of Combe Bottom are a series of bowl shaped pits which were used as stone quarries during the Iron Age, Romano-British and Middle Ages.The parish of Penselwood was part of the Norton Ferris Hundred, and from the early fifteenth century until 1609 and the death of Nicholas Wadham (1531-1609), co-founder of Wadham College, Oxford with his wife Dorothy Wadham, the Manor of Penselwood formed part of the estates of the Wadham family.