At a bus stop, I meet two local mums: Chloe Mann, 35, and Sarah Kirwan, 39."It's quiet little village," says Mann, a mother of two who works part-time at a law firm. "It feels like a lovely little enclave of the countryside. We always feel like it's Hobbitshire – a green valley where nothing happens."

But something big may be about to. Since 2008, in partnership with an Australian firm called Eden Energy, a Welsh company named UK Methane has owned Petroleum Exploration and Development Licenses that cover large swathes of countryside south of Bristol, some of which sits on top of the old North Somerset coalfield. In March this year, the firm's director, one Gerwyn Williams, publicly announced that he was interested in test-drilling for gas in Compton Martin, and the nearby village of Ston Easton. 

If successful, this could be followed by the extraction of coalbed methane, a controversial practice related to "fracking", the notorious business of producing gas via hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits. In fact, coalbed methane extraction can itself involve fracking techniques – and in any case, if sufficient gas is discovered, the fracking of local shale could eventually follow.  MORE