11 May: Somerset Day

Today is Somerset Day. Here are some things you may not know about this English county.

1. The county of Somerset has an area of 4,171 sq km and a population of about 508,000.That makes it the seventh-biggest county by area in England but only the 22nd-biggest by population.
2. Within its borders, Somerset has: two cities - Wells, England's smallest city, and Bath; 30 towns including Weston-super-Mare, Taunton (the county town), Yeovil, Bridgwater, Glastonbury, Nailsea, Clevedon and Portishead; more than 400 villages; 11,500 listed buildings, 523 ancient monuments (including the second largest stone circle in Britain after Avebury at Stanton Drew), 192 conservation areas, 41 parks and gardens, 36 English Heritage sites and 19 National Trust sites (I can particularly recommend Tyntesfield). Geographical features include Exmoor, the Mendip and Quantock Hills and the Somerset Levels. The highest point in Somerset is Dunkery Beacon on Exmoor, with an altitude of 519 metres (1,703 feet). The highest town is Chard, at an altitude of 121m (397 ft).
3. There are two theories as to what the name Somerset means. One is that it comes from an old English word for "people living at or dependent on Somerton", Somerton being a market town in the county. The other is that it derives from the words for "settlers by the sea lakes".
4. One thing Somerset is known for is Cider. There are 32 farms in Somerset devoted to the production of cider, and over 400 different types of Apple are grown. Shepton Mallet has the biggest cider plant in Europe. The word "Scrumpy" for a type of cider comes from Scrumpy Jack, a local dialect term meaning a small or withered apple.
5. Famous people from Somerset include Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Acker Bilk, Jenson Button, John Cleese (whose father's name was originally "Cheese"), Jill Dando, Terry Pratchett, Joe Strummer and Adge Cutler of the Wurzels. Another band from Somerset is Portishead, which hails from, not surprisingly, the town of Portishead. More literary figures have lived in the county including Evelyn Waugh, T S Eliot, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Julie Howlin.
6. Taunton in Somerset was the first town in England to be permanently lit by electric street lighting in 1881. The game of skittles, the forerunner of ten pin bowling, originated in Somerset. It is also home to the country's oldest civilian prison (in Shepton Mallet, open from 1610 to 1930) the oldest engineered road (the Sweet Track, named after the peat-cutter who found it, which dates back to between 3807 and 3806BC).
7. Somerset's motto is Sumorsǣte ealle ('All The People of Somerset'). The flag is a Red Dragon on a Yellow background.
8. Apparently it snows more in Somerset than anywhere else in England with 8-15 days of snowfall a year. I say apparently because I live there and we've had no Snow anywhere near my house for at least two years!
9. Legend has it that a Witch once lived in Wookey Hole. She is said to have cursed a man from Glastonbury who jilted a girl from Wookey. Some believe she still haunts relationships in the village today. A more modern legend suggests there is a space-time mystic living in the Quantocks, who taught Doctor Who how to walk through the Time Vortex.
10. The Monmouth rebellion of 1865 was centred around Taunton. After that, no member of the Royal Family paid Somerset a visit for 300 years. Queen Victoria took train journeys through Somerset but would pull the blinds of her carriage down as the train passed through Taunton.

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