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( Somerset)
Somerset (pronunciation&_160;(help·info); IPA ['s?m??s?t]) is a county in south west England. The county town is Taunton, which is in the south of the county. 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 partly bounded to the north and west by the coast of the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the River Severn. 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, and latterly the county of Avon and its successor Unitary Authorities in the north.[1] Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills such as the 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 Neolithic times, and subsequent settlement in the Roman and Saxon periods. Later, the county played a significant part in the consolidation of power and rise of King Alfred the Great, the English Civil War and the Monmouth Rebellion. The name derives from Old English Sumors?te, which is short for Sumortuns?te, meaning "the people living at or dependent upon Sumortun".[2] The first known use of the name Somersæte was in 845, after the region fell to the Saxons.[3] Sumortun is modern Somerton and may mean "summer settlement", a farmstead occupied during the summer but abandoned in the winter.[4] However, Somerton is not down on the levels—lower ground, where only summer occupation was possible because of flooding—but on a hill where winter occupation would have been feasible. An alternative suggestion is that the name derives from Seo-mere-saetan meaning "settlers by the sea lakes".[5] The people of Somerset are first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's entry for 845 AD, in the inflected form "Sumursætum", but the county is first mentioned in the entry for 1015 using the same name. The archaic county name Somersetshire is first mentioned in the Chronicle's entry for 878. Although "Somersetshire" had been in common use as an alternative name for the county, it went out of fashion in the late 19th century, and is no longer used. This is possibly due to the adoption of "Somerset" as the official name for the county through the establishment of the County Council in 1889. However, as with other counties not ending in "shire", this suffix was superfluous, as there was no need to differentiate between the county and a town within it. The Old English name continues to be used in the motto of the county, Sumorsaete ealle, meaning "all the people of Somerset". Adopted as the motto in 1911, the phrase is taken from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Somerset was a part 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 the Viking invaders.[6][7][8]
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