Somerset

( en, All The People of Somerset)
, locator_map =
, coordinates =
, region = South West England
, established_date = Ancient
, established_by =
, preceded_by =
, origin =
, lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset
, lord_lieutenant_name = Mohammed Saddiq
, high_sheriff_office =High Sheriff of Somerset
, high_sheriff_name = Mrs Mary-Clare Rodwell (2020–21)
, area_total_km2 = 4171
, area_total_rank = 7th
, ethnicity = 98.5% White
, county_council =
, unitary_council =
, government =
, joint_committees =
, admin_hq = Taunton
, area_council_km2 = 3451
, area_council_rank = 10th
, iso_code = GB-SOM
, ons_code = 40
, gss_code =
, nuts_code = UKK23
, districts_map =
, districts_list =
County council area:

, MPs = * Rebecca Pow (C)
* Wera Hobhouse ( LD)
* Liam Fox (C)
* David Warburton (C)
* Marcus Fysh (C)
* Ian Liddell-Grainger (C)
* James Heappey (C)
* Jacob Rees-Mogg (C)
* John Penrose (C)
, police = Avon and Somerset Police
, website =http://www.somerset.gov.uk/

Somerset ( , ; archaically Somersetshire , , ) is a county in South West England which borders Gloucestershire and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east and Devon to the south-west. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel, its coastline facing southeastern Wales. Its traditional border with Gloucestershire is the River Avon. Somerset is currently formed of six council areas, of which two are unitary authorities, until the four second-tier district councils are merged on 1 April 2023, after which the county will comprise three unitary authorities. Its county town is Taunton.

Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills, the Blackdown Hills, Mendip Hills, Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels. There is evidence of human occupation from Paleolithic times, and of subsequent settlement by the Celts, Romans and Anglo-Saxons. The county played a significant part in Alfred the Great's rise to power, and later the English Civil War and the Monmouth Rebellion. The city of Bath is famous for its Georgian architecture and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Toponymy

Somerset's name derives from Old English '' Sumorsǣte'', short for ''Sumortūnsǣte'', meaning "the people living at or dependent on Sumortūn ( Somerton)". The first known use of ''Somersæte'' is in the law code of King Ine who was the Saxon King of Wessex from 688 to 726 CE, making Somerset along with Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset one of the oldest extant units of local government in the world. An alternative suggestion is the name derives from ''Seo-mere-saetan'' meaning "settlers by the sea lakes".

The Old English name is used in the motto of the county, , meaning "all the people of Somerset". Adopted as the motto in 1911, the phrase is taken from the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle''. Somerset was a shire of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and the phrase refers to the wholehearted support the people of Somerset gave to King Alfred in his struggle to save Wessex from Viking invaders.

Somerset settlement names are mostly Anglo-Saxon in origin (for example, Bath, Somerton, Wells and Keynsham), but numerous place names include British Celtic elements, such as the rivers Frome and Avon, and names of hills. For example, an Anglo-Saxon charter of 682 refers to Creechborough Hill as "the hill the British call ''Cructan'' and the Anglo-Saxons call ''Crychbeorh''". Some modern names are wholly Brittonic in origin, like Tarnock, Priddy, and Chard, while others have both Saxon and Brittonic elements, such as Pen Hill.

History

Prehistory

The caves of the Mendip Hills were settled during the Palaeolithic period, and contain extensive archaeological sites such as those at Cheddar Gorge. Bones from Gough's Cave have been dated to 12,000 BCE, and a complete skeleton, known as Cheddar Man, dates from 7150 BCE. Examples of cave art have been found in Aveline's Hole. Some caves continued to be occupied until modern times, including Wookey Hole.

The Somerset Levels—specifically dry points at Glastonbury and Brent Knoll— also have a long history of settlement, and are known to have been settled by Mesolithic hunters. Travel in the area was facilitated by the construction of one of the world's oldest known engineered roadways, the Sweet Track, which dates from 3807 BCE or 3806 BCE.

The exact age of the henge monument at Stanton Drew stone circles is unknown, but it is believed to be Neolithic. There are numerous Iron Age hill forts, some of which, like Cadbury Castle and Ham Hill, were later reoccupied in the Early Middle Ages.

Roman invasion

On the authority of the future emperor Vespasian, as part of the ongoing expansion of the Roman presence in Britain, the Second Legion Augusta invaded Somerset from the south-east in 47 CE. The county remained part of the Roman Empire until around 409 CE, when the Roman occupation of Britain came to an end.
A variety of Roman remains have been found, including Pagans Hill Roman temple in Chew Stoke, Low Ham Roman Villa and the Roman Baths that gave their name to the city of Bath.

Saxon and Norman invasions

After the Romans left, Britain was invaded by Anglo-Saxon peoples. By 600 CE they had established control over much of what is now England, but Somerset was still in native British hands. The British held back Saxon advance into the south-west for some time longer, but by the early eighth century King Ine of Wessex had pushed the boundaries of the West Saxon kingdom far enough west to include Somerset. The Saxon royal palace in Cheddar was used several times in the 10th century to host the Witenagemot.

The nature of the relations between the Britons and the Saxons in Somerset is not entirely clear. Ine's laws demonstrate that the Britons were considered to be a significant enough population in Wessex to merit provisions; however, the laws also suggest that Britons could not attain the same social standing as the Saxons, and that many were slaves. In light of such policies, many Britons might have chosen to emigrate to places such as Brittany while those who remained would have had incentives to adopt Anglo-Saxon culture.

After the Norman Conquest, the county was divided into 700  fiefs, and large areas were owned by the crown, with fortifications such as Dunster Castle used for control and defence. Somerset came under the political influence of several different nobles during the Middle Ages. During the Wars of the Roses, an important magnate was Humphrey Stafford, earl of Devon whose wider influence stretched from Cornwall to Wiltshire. After 1485, one of the county's most influential figures was Henry VII's chamberlain Giles Daubeney.

The 17th–19th centuries

Somerset contains HM Prison Shepton Mallet, which was England's oldest prison still in use prior to its closure in 2013, having opened in 1610. During the English Civil War, Somerset was largely Parliamentarian, with key engagements being the Sieges of Taunton and the Battle of Langport.

In 1685, the Monmouth Rebellion was played out in Somerset and neighbouring Dorset. The rebels landed at Lyme Regis and travelled north, hoping to capture Bristol and Bath, but they were defeated in the Battle of Sedgemoor at Westonzoyland, the last pitched battle fought in England. Arthur Wellesley took his title, Duke of Wellington from the town of Wellington; he is commemorated on a nearby hill by a large, spotlit obelisk, known as the Wellington Monument.

The Industrial Revolution in the Midlands and Northern England spelled the end for most of Somerset's cottage industries. Farming continued to flourish, and the Bath and West of England Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, Manufactures and Commerce was founded in 1777 to improve farming methods. Despite this, two decades later agriculturist John Billingsley conducted a survey of the county's agriculture in 1795 and found that agricultural methods could still be improved.

Coal mining was an important industry in north Somerset during the 18th and 19th centuries, and by 1800 it was prominent in Radstock.

The Somerset Coalfield reached its peak production by the 1920s. All the pits have now been closed, the last in 1973. Most of the surface buildings have been removed, and apart from a winding wheel outside Radstock Museum, little evidence of their former existence remains. Further west, the Brendon Hills were mined for iron ore in the late 19th century; this was taken by the West Somerset Mineral Railway to Watchet Harbour for shipment to the furnaces at Ebbw Vale.

20th century

Many Somerset soldiers died during the First World War, with the Somerset Light Infantry suffering nearly 5,000 casualties. War memorials were put up in most of the county's towns and villages; only nine, described as the Thankful Villages, had none of their residents killed. During the Second World War the county was a base for troops preparing for the D-Day landings. Some of the hospitals which were built for the casualties of the war remain in use. The Taunton Stop Line was set up to repel a potential German invasion. The remains of its pill boxes can still be seen along the coast, and south through Ilminster and Chard.

A number of decoy towns were constructed in Somerset in World War II to protect Bristol and other towns. They were designed to mimic the nighttime geometry of "blacked out" streets, railway lines, and Bristol Temple Meads railway station, to encourage German bombers away from these targets. One, on the German radio navigation beam flight path to Bristol, was constructed on Beacon Batch. It was laid out by Shepperton Studios, based on aerial photographs of the city's railway marshalling yards. The decoys were fitted with dim red lights, simulating activities such as the stoking of steam locomotives. Burning bales of straw soaked in creosote were used to simulate the effects of incendiary bombs dropped by the first wave of Pathfinder night bombers; meanwhile, incendiary bombs dropped on the correct location were quickly smothered, wherever possible. Drums of oil were also ignited to simulate the effect of a blazing city or town, with the aim of fooling subsequent waves of bombers into dropping their bombs on the wrong location.

The Chew Magna decoy town was hit by half a dozen bombs on 2 December 1940, and over a thousand incendiaries on 3 January 1941. The following night the Uphill decoy town, protecting the airfield at Weston-super-Mare, was bombed; a herd of dairy cows was hit, killing some and severely injuring others.

Geography

Boundaries

The boundaries of Somerset are very similar to how they we