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Somerton, Somerset
Somerton ( ) is a town and civil parish in the English county of Somerset. It gave its name to the county and was briefly, around the start of the 14th century, the county town, and around 900 was possibly the capital of Wessex. It has held a weekly market since the Middle Ages, and the main square with its market cross is today popular with visitors. Situated on the River Cary, approximately north-west of Yeovil, Somerton has its own town council serving a population of 4,697 as of 2011. Residents are often referred to locally as Somertonians. The civil parish includes the hamlets of Etsome, Hurcot, Catsgore, and Catcombe. Archaeological remains at Somerton are evidence of a Celtic settlement. The discovery of a high status cemetery in 2019, suggests that these local people adopted a more Roman lifestyle. During the Anglo-Saxon era, Somerton was an important political and commercial centre. After the Norman conquest of England the importance of the town declined, despite bei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Somerset
South Somerset is a local government district in Somerset, England. The South Somerset district covers an area of ranging from the borders with Devon, Wiltshire and Dorset to the edge of the Somerset Levels. It has a population of approximately 158,000. The administrative centre of the district is Yeovil. On 1 April 2023, the district will be abolished and replaced by a new unitary district for the area at present served by Somerset County Council. The new council will be known as Somerset Council. History The district was formed on 1 April 1974, and was originally known as Yeovil, adopting its present name in 1985. It was formed by the merger of the municipal boroughs of Chard, Yeovil, along with Crewkerne and Ilminster urban districts and the Chard Rural District, Langport Rural District, Wincanton Rural District and Yeovil Rural District. The district covers the whole of the Yeovil constituency, and part of Somerton and Frome. The district is governed by the Sout ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of —later slightly widened to —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways. The GWR was called by some "God's Wonderful Railway" and by others the "Great Way Round" but it was famed as the "Holiday ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by the Latin name ''Liber de Wintonia'', meaning "Book of Winchester", where it was originally kept in the royal treasury. The '' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' states that in 1085 the king sent his agents to survey every shire in England, to list his holdings and dues owed to him. Written in Medieval Latin, it was highly abbreviated and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose was to record the annual value of every piece of landed property to its lord, and the resources in land, manpower, and livestock from which the value derived. The name "Domesday Book" came into use in the 12th century. Richard FitzNeal wrote in the ''Dialogus de Scaccario'' ( 1179) that the book ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Somerset County Council
Somerset County Council is the county council of Somerset in the South West of England, an elected local government authority responsible for the most significant local government services in most of the county. On 1 April 2023 the county council will be abolished and replaced by a new unitary authority for the area at present served by the county council. The new council will be known as Somerset Council. Area covered Created by the Local Government Act 1888, with effect from 1889, the County Council administered the whole ceremonial county of Somerset, except for the county borough of Bath. With the creation of the county of Avon in 1974, a large part of the north of the county (now the unitary authorities of North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset) was taken out of Somerset and moved into the new county. However, Avon was disbanded on 1 April 1996 and the two new administratively independent unitary authorities were established. The area now covered by the county c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witan
The Witan () was the king's council in Anglo-Saxon England from before the seventh century until the 11th century. It was composed of the leading magnates, both ecclesiastic and secular, and meetings of the council were sometimes called the Witenagemot. Its primary function was to advise the king on subjects such as promulgation of laws, judicial judgments, approval of charters transferring land, settlement of disputes, election of archbishops and bishops and other matters of major national importance. The witan also had to elect and approve the appointment of a new king. Its membership was composed of the most important noblemen, including ealdormen, thegns, and senior clergy. Terminology The terms and are increasingly avoided by modern historians, although few would go as far as Geoffrey Hindley, who described as an "essentially Victorian" coinage. ''The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England'' prefers 'King's Council', but adds that it was known in Old English as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercia
la, Merciorum regnum , conventional_long_name=Kingdom of Mercia , common_name=Mercia , status=Kingdom , status_text=Independent kingdom (527–879)Client state of Wessex () , life_span=527–918 , era=Heptarchy , event_start= , date_start= , year_start=527 , event_end= , date_end= , year_end=918 , event1= , date_event1= , event2= , date_event2= , event3= , date_event3= , event4= , date_event4= , p1=Sub-Roman Britain , flag_p1=Vexilloid of the Roman Empire.svg , border_p1=no , p2=Hwicce , flag_p2= , p3=Kingdom of Lindsey , flag_p3= , p4=Kingdom of Northumbria , flag_p4= , s1=Kingdom of England , flag_s1=Flag of Wessex.svg , border_s1=no , s2= , flag_s2= , image_flag= , image_map=Mercian Supremacy x 4 alt.png , image_map_caption=The Kingdom of Mercia (thick line) and the kingdom's extent during the Mercian Supremacy (green shading) , national_motto= , national_anthem= , common_languages=Old English *Mercian dialect British Latin , currency=Sceat Penny , religion=PaganismChristia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Æthelbald Of Mercia
Æthelbald (also spelled Ethelbald or Aethelbald; died 757) was the King of Mercia, in what is now the English Midlands from 716 until he was killed in 757. Æthelbald was the son of Alweo and thus a grandson of King Eowa. Æthelbald came to the throne after the death of his cousin, King Ceolred, who had driven him into exile. During his long reign, Mercia became the dominant kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, and recovered the position of pre-eminence it had enjoyed during the strong reigns of Mercian kings Penda and Wulfhere between about 628 and 675. When Æthelbald came to the throne, both Wessex and Kent were ruled by stronger kings, but within fifteen years the contemporary chronicler Bede describes Æthelbald as ruling all England south of the river Humber. The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' does not list Æthelbald as a bretwalda, or "Ruler of Britain", though this may be due to the West Saxon origin of the ''Chronicle''. St. Boniface wrote to Æthelbald in about 745, reproving ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Æthelheard Of Wessex
Æthelheard (meaning roughly "Noble Stern"), also spelled Ethelheard, Edelard or Æþelheard, was King of Wessex from 726 to 740. There is an unreliable record of Æthelheard having been the brother-in-law of his predecessor, Ine, but his ancestry is unknown, perhaps making him the first King of Wessex not to be descended from Cynric by blood. Some sources identify him as the brother of Queen Æthelburg of Wessex, the wife of his predecessor, King Ine. His own successor Cuthred is identified in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as 'his relative'. When Ine abdicated and went to Rome in 726, he left behind no obvious heir, and according to Bede simply left his kingdom "to younger men". In the wake of his departure, the West Saxon throne was disputed between Æthelheard and a rival claimant, Oswald. Oswald may have had the better claim, as the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' calls him a descendant of the early king Ceawlin, but it was Æthelheard who prevailed. It is possible that his success was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the ''Chronicle'' was still being actively updated in 1154. Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of equal historical value and none of them is the original version. The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfred's reign, while the most recent was written at Peterborough Abbey after a fire at that monastery in 1116. Almost all of the material in the ''Chronicle'' is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest are dated at 60 BC (the annals' date for Caesar's invasions of Britain), and historical material follows up t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grave Goods
Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body. They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a type of votive deposit. Most grave goods recovered by archaeologists consist of inorganic objects such as pottery and stone and metal tools but organic objects that have since decayed were also placed in ancient tombs. The grave goods were to be useful to the deceased in the afterlife; therefore their favorite foods or everyday objects were left with them. Often times social status played a role in what was left and how often it was left. Funerary art is a broad term but generally means artworks made specifically to decorate a burial place, such as miniature models of possessions including slaves or servants for "use" in the afterlife. Although, in ancient Egypt they would sometimes bury the real servants with the deceased. Where grave go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Monocled Mutineer
''The Monocled Mutineer'' is a 1986 BBC television drama series starring Paul McGann about the Étaples mutiny in 1917 during the First World War. The four-part serial, which was the first historical screenplay written by Alan Bleasdale, dramatised the life of British Army deserter Percy Toplis. It was adapted from the 1978 book of the same name by William Allison and John Fairley. After ten million people watched the first episode, British right-wing media vilified the series as an example of left-wing bias at the BBC. The series was produced and broadcast at a time the Peacock Committee was deciding the future of the BBC (there was renewed pressure for the public broadcaster to use advertising). At the same time, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Norman Tebbit, was monitoring the BBC for evidence of "left-wing bias". Legal action was brought against the BBC over the ''Panorama'' programme "Maggie's Militant Tendency", which caused 100 Conservative MPs to sign a motion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—most recently part of the Eastern Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
