Compton Bishop is a small village and civil parish, at the western end of the Mendip Hills in the English county of Somerset.

[5] In the 14th century a French ship sailed up the river and by 1388 Thomas Tanner from Wells used Rackley to export cloth and corn to Portugal, and received iron and salt in exchange.

Later slate was imported through this route and it may have still be possible to trade through Rackley until the act of 1915 authorising the drainage of the Axe and installation of the flood gate at Bleadon.

[6] Also within the parish is the small village of Cross, where Wavering Down House was, for the last 20 years of his life, the home of the British comedian Frankie Howerd.

[7] The house is now a tourist attraction, and in the summer hosts concerts and opens regularly as a museum of Howerd's collection of memorabilia to raise fund for charities.

[9] It is also part of the Wells and Mendip Hills county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.