Place:Somerset, England

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source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Somerset is a county in the south-west of England. The county town is Taunton, situated at 51°00′49″N, 3°06′23″W. The ceremonial county of Somerset borders the counties of Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is also partly bounded to the north and west by the coast of the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the River Severn.

Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills such as the Mendip Hills and Exmoor National Park, downland, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

For the full article see History of Somerset

The Somerset Levels, and specifically the dry points such as Glastonbury and Brent Knoll, have a long history of settlement, and are known to have been settled by Mesolithic hunters. The caves of the Mendip Hills were settled during the Neolithic period and contain extensive archaeological sites such as the caves of Cheddar Gorge. There are numerous Iron Age Hill Forts, some of which were later reused in the Dark Ages, such as Cadbury Castle. Somerset, like Dorset to the south, held the Saxon invasion back for over a century, remaining a frontier between the Saxons and the Romano-British Celts. The first known use of the name Somersæte was in 845 after the region fell to the Saxons. After the Norman Conquest the county was divided into 700 fiefs, and large areas were owned by the crown.

In the English Civil War Somerset was largely Royalist, unlike neighbouring Wiltshire. 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 were defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor.

The traditional northern border of the county is the River Avon, but the administrative boundary has crept southwards, with the creation and expansion of the City of Bristol.

Somerset contains England's oldest prison still in use, in the small town of Shepton Mallet, and the world's oldest known engineered roadway, the Sweet Track.

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