Archaeological and documentary evidence shows that the site has been occupied from at least the early
Iron Age. There is good evidence of
Roman and
Saxon villages in the area, the Saxon settlements resulting in several entries in the
Domesday Book of 1086. The medieval settlement of Eckweek was excavated in 1989, and now lies under the Peasedown Bypass and Underknoll Road. The present village of Peasedown St John is relatively modern. 'A place known by the name of The Red Post' was how the scattering of buildings was referred to in 1768, taking its name from the local Public House. The hamlet of Carlingcott on the north-west edge of Peasedown is known to have existed before 1800 but the main modern development in the area began in the 19th century when the
Somerset Coalfield was greatly expanded as the
Industrial Revolution increased demand for coal across England. By the early 1840s there was still no discernible village, except a few cottages around the Red Post and a small number of buildings along what would become the Bath Road, near a field named "Pease Down" (now Highfield Road). The
1841 census lists about fifteen households with around eighty people living at "Peas Down", mostly coal miners, with some agricultural labourers, two carpenters, a seamstress, and a stonemason. The sinking of the Braysdown colliery in 1845 meant that accommodation had to be built for the enlarged workforce to work the new pit and expansion of the village was now inevitable. With the closure of the coal mines in the period up to the 1970s, and the growing popularity of out-of-town living, Peasedown rapidly became a commuter village for the cities of Bath and Bristol. This increased with two further phases of construction, the first in the 1950s and 1960s and the second in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Both involved the construction of what were intended as affordable family housing, the first phase being mainly in the southeast of the village and consisting mostly of
terraced or
semi-detached properties. ==Governance==