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Brinsea
Congresbury is a village and civil parish on the northwestern slopes of the Mendip Hills in North Somerset, England, which in 2011 had a population of 3,497. It lies on the A370 between Junction 21 of the M5 and Bristol Airport, south of Bristol city centre, and east of Weston-super-Mare. The Congresbury Yeo river flows through the village. The parish includes the hamlet of Brinsea. The nearest railway station is Yatton, with trains provided by Great Western Railway, but Congresbury once had its own railway station on the Cheddar Valley Line from Yatton to Wells. It was also the starting point for the Wrington Vale Light Railway, which went to nearby Wrington and Blagdon. History Congresbury is named after St Congar, who is said to have performed three miracles in the area. The second part of the name is thought to come from ''burh'' meaning fortified place. The remains of an Iron Age hill fort at Cadbury Hill have been discovered, as well as a Roman villa, tem ...
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North Somerset
North Somerset is a unitary authorities of England, unitary district in Somerset, South West England. Whilst its area covers part of the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Somerset, it is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county. Its administrative headquarters is in the town hall in Weston-super-Mare. North Somerset, which was renamed from the Woodspring district in 1996, borders the city and county of Bristol and the local government areas of Bath and North East Somerset, Mendip District, Mendip and Sedgemoor. The area comprises the parliamentary constituencies of Weston-super-Mare (UK Parliament constituency), Weston-super-Mare and North Somerset (UK Parliament constituency), North Somerset. History Between 1 April 1974 and 31 March 1996, this area was the Woodspring Districts of England, district of the county of Avon (named after Woodspring Priory, an isolated medieval church near the coast just north east of Weston-super-Mare). The dist ...
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Wrington Vale Light Railway
The Wrington Vale Light Railway was a railway from Congresbury on the Cheddar Valley line to Blagdon, and serving villages in the Yeo Valley, North Somerset, England. Construction of the line started in 1897 and it opened in 1901. Never more than a purely local line, it closed to passengers in 1931, and completely in 1963. History Construction The first attempt to build a railway line in this part of North Somerset took place in 1882, when an Act was obtained (on 18 August) incorporating the Radstock, Wrington & Congresbury Junction Railway, which was to run from Farrington Gurney on the Bristol and North Somerset Railway to Congresbury through Wrington. However sufficient capital could not be raised, and the company was dissolved in 1886. The Light Railways Act of 1896 was passed with the intention of enabling low-cost local railways to be built, and a line from Blagdon to Congresbury was promoted. At this time the Bristol Waterworks Company were building a reservoir at ...
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Hundred Of Winterstoke
The Hundred of Winterstoke is one of the 40 historical Hundreds in the ceremonial county of Somerset, England, dating from before the Norman conquest during the Anglo-Saxon era although exact dates are unknown. Each hundred had a 'fyrd', which acted as the local defence force and a court which was responsible for the maintenance of the frankpledge system. They also formed a unit for the collection of taxes. The role of the hundred court was described in the Dooms (laws) of King Edgar. The name of the hundred was normally that of its meeting-place. It consisted of the ancient parishes of: Axbridge, Badgworth, Banwell, Blagdon, Bleadon, Cheddar, Christon, Churchill, Compton Bishop, Congresbury, East Harptree, Hutton, Kenn, Kewstoke, Locking, Loxton, Puxton, Rodney Stoke, Rowberrow, Shipham, Uphill, Weston-super-Mare, Wick St Lawrence, Winscombe, Worle, Yatton. It also included the extra parochial area of Charterhouse-on-Mendip, covering in total approximately . The ...
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Taunton
Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the Bishops of Winchester. Parts of the inner ward house were turned into the Museum of Somerset and Somerset Military Museum. For the Second Cornish uprising of 1497, Perkin Warbeck brought an army of 6,000; most surrendered to Henry VII on 4 October 1497. On 20 June 1685 the Duke of Monmouth crowned himself King of England here in a rebellion, defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor. Judge Jeffreys led the Bloody Assizes in the Castle's Great Hall. The Grand Western Canal reached Taunton in 1839 and the Bristol and Exeter Railway in 1842. Today it hosts Musgrove Park Hospital, Somerset County Cricket Club, is the base of 40 Commando, Royal Marines, and is home to the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office on Admiralty Way. The popular Taunton flow ...
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Museum Of Somerset
The Museum of Somerset is located in the 12th-century great hall of Taunton Castle, in Taunton in the county of Somerset, England. The museum is run by South West Heritage Trust, an independent charity, and includes objects initially collected by the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society who own the castle. Until 2008 the museum was known as the Somerset County Museum. Heritage Lottery Fund support was obtained to improve the museum, and the new museum reopened at the end of September 2011. Exhibits include the Frome Hoard, the Low Ham Roman Mosaic, the bronze-age South Cadbury shield and a range of other objects relating to the history of the county. History In 1874 the castle was bought by the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society and between 1899 and 1900 the Great Hall was repaired and refitted as their chief museum space. In 1908-9 the Adam Library was created to house the society's growing collection of books. The society now leases it to ...
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Church Of St Andrew, Congresbury
The Anglican Church of St Andrew in Congresbury, Somerset, England dates from the 13th century and has been designated as a Grade I listed building. Congresbury is named after St Congar, who is said to have performed three miracles in the area. The second part of the name is thought to come from ''burh'' meaning fortified place. The archaeologist Mick Aston identified an Anglo-Saxon sculpture of St Congar which is believed to have come from St Andrews Church, and which is now in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton. The present church was consecrated by Bishop Jocelin of Wells on 11 July 1215. The church was remodelled in the 15th century, in a Perpendicular style; further restorations followed in 1825, 1856 and 1950–2. The nave includes pillars with decorated stone corbels supporting the wooden roof timbers and carved bosses. The organ, which was rebuilt in 1967 is in the chancel. The Merle chapel was formerly known as the Chapel of St Congar. The font is Norman. The tower ...
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Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened within Britain, and the identity was not merely imported. Anglo-Saxon identity arose from interaction between incoming groups from several Germanic peoples, Germanic tribes, both amongst themselves, and with Celtic Britons, indigenous Britons. Many of the natives, over time, adopted Anglo-Saxon culture and language and were assimilated. The Anglo-Saxons established the concept, and the Kingdom of England, Kingdom, of England, and though the modern English language owes somewhat less than 26% of its words to their language, this includes the vast majority of words used in everyday speech. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, th ...
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Mick Aston
Michael Antony Aston (1 July 1946 – 24 June 2013) was an English archaeologist who specialised in Early Medieval landscape archaeology. Over the course of his career, he lectured at both the University of Bristol and University of Oxford and published fifteen books on archaeological subjects. A keen populariser of the discipline, Aston was widely known for appearing as the resident academic on the Channel 4 television series ''Time Team'' from 1994 to 2011. Born in Oldbury, Worcestershire, to a working-class family, Aston developed an early interest in archaeology, studying it as a subsidiary to geography at the University of Birmingham. In 1970, he began his career working for the Oxford City and County Museum and there began his work in public outreach by running extramural classes in archaeology and presenting a series on the subject for Radio Oxford. In 1974, he was appointed the first County Archaeologist for Somerset, there developing an interest in aerial archaeology ...
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Roman Villa
A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas near Rome: the ''villa urbana'', a country seat that could easily be reached from Rome (or another city) for a night or two; and the ''villa rustica'', the farmhouse estate permanently occupied by the servants who generally had charge of the estate. The Roman Empire contained many kinds of villas, not all of them lavishly appointed with mosaic floors and frescoes. In the provinces, any country house with some decorative features in the Roman style may be called a "villa" by modern scholars. Some were pleasure houses, like Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, that were sited in the cool hills within easy reach of Rome or, like the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, on picturesque sites overlooking the Bay of Naples. Some villas were more like the co ...
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Cadbury Hill
Cadbury Hill is a small hill, mostly in the civil parish of Congresbury, overlooking the village of Yatton in North Somerset. On its summit stands an Iron Age hill fort, which is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Background Hill forts developed in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, roughly the start of the 1st millennium BC. The reason for their emergence in Britain, and their purpose, has been a subject of debate. It has been argued that they could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture. The dominant view since the 1960s has been that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in Britain. Deposits of iron ore were located in different places to the tin and copper ore necessary to make bronze, and as a result trading patterns shifted and the old elites lost their economic and social s ...
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Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly applied to Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East, but also, by analogy, to other parts of the Old World. The duration of the Iron Age varies depending on the region under consideration. It is defined by archaeological convention. The "Iron Age" begins locally when the production of iron or steel has advanced to the point where iron tools and weapons replace their bronze equivalents in common use. In the Ancient Near East, this transition took place in the wake of the Bronze Age collapse, in the 12th century BC. The technology soon spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin region and to South Asia (Iron Age in India) between the 12th and 11th century BC. Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe is somewhat dela ...
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Congar Of Congresbury
Saint Congar (also Cumgar or Cungar; cy, Cyngar; Latin: Concarius) ( – 27 November 520), was a Welsh abbot and supposed bishop in Somerset, then in the British kingdom of Somerset, now in England. Congar grew up in Pembrokeshire and travelled across the Bristol Channel to found a monastery on Cadbury Hill at Congresbury in Somerset. He gave his name to this village and to the parish church at Badgworth. This supposedly became the centre of a bishopric which preceded the Diocese of Bath and Wells. Legend has it that his staff took root when he thrust it into the ground and the resulting yew tree can be seen to this day. He later returned to Wales, but died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The parish of Congresbury claimed to have enshrined Congar's body during the Middle Ages, and mentioned it in several pilgrim guides. There appear to have been no rival claimants for his relics. Congresbury itself is first mentioned in Asser's ''Life of Alfred'' as a derelict Celtic monastery, ...
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