Somerset (archaically, Somersetshire) is a county in South West England. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel. Its traditional border with Gloucestershire is the River Avon. There is evidence of human occupation from Paleolithic times.
About Somerset in brief
Somerset (archaically, Somersetshire) is a county in South West England. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel. Its traditional border with Gloucestershire is the River Avon. 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. 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, making Somerset along with Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset one of the oldest extant units of local government in the world. A variety of Roman remains have been found, including Pagans Roman temple in Chew Stoke, Low Ham Roman Villa, and the Roman Baths that gave their name to Bath. By 600 AD, the Romans had established control over much of what is now England, but Somerset was still in native hands. The name Somerset is not entirely clear of the relations between the Britons and the Saxons in Somerset in the 10th century.
The Saxon royal palace in Cheddar was used several times in the 1070s to host the Witenagemote family. Somerset was part of the Roman Empire until around AD 409, when the Roman occupation of Britain came to an end. 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. There are numerous Iron Age hill forts, some of which, like Cadbury Castle and Ham Hill, were later reoccupied in the Early Middle Ages. The Somerset Levels 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 world’s oldest known engineered roadways, the Sweet Track, which dates from 3807 BC or 3806 BC. The exact age of the henge monument at Stanton Drew stone circles is unknown, but it is believed to be Neolithic. The Second Legion Augusta invaded Somerset from the south-east in AD 47. On the authority of the future emperor Vespasian, as part of ongoing expansion of theRoman presence in Britain, the Second LegionAugustus invaded Somerset from the south east inAD 47 and reached Somerset from the south west in AD 49. Somerset’s name derives from Seo-mere-saetan meaning \”settlers by the sea lakes\”. The phrase refers to the wholehearted support the people of Somerset.
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This page is based on the article Somerset published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
