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Somerset Leasing

Did You Know?

One of the most famous facts about Somerset is the Cheddar Man. This was the name given to the oldest complete human skeleton found in Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge. Cheddar Man was excavated in 1903 and is now housed in London’s Natural History Museum. He is thought to be around 9000 years old, and his DNA indicates he was a typical member of the European population at the time.

Somerset skittles is a game consisting of nine wooden pins arranged into a diamond formation. A bowling ball is then thrown down an alley, and each turn or ‘hand’ consists of three throws down the alley. If all the pins are knocked down within the first or second throw, then they are reset, resulting in a maximum score of 27 per ‘hand’

The largest collection of Roman coins ever found in a single container was discovered near Frome in Somerset by a metal detectorist in 2010. The collection consisted of 52,503 coins and was named ‘The Frome Hoard’. The collection now sits in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton. The coins were valued at around £320,000 with the metal detectorist, Dave Crisp from Wiltshire, sharing the sum with the landowner.

The West Somerset Railway has been a part of Somerset history since the 1850s. It began as a smaller line between Taunton and Watchet, before being expanded to extend to Minehead in 1874.

These facts about Somerset wouldn’t be complete without mentioning this world famous cheese. Cemented in the history of Somerset since the 12th century is Cheddar cheese!. Cheddar is named after Cheddar Gorge which is home to a number of caves in which the cheese used to be stored. The caves provided the ideal temperature and humidity for maturing cheese.

Adelard of Bath was a 12th-century scholar and English natural philosopher. He is known for translating a host of Arabic and Greek scientific works. More importantly he is known as the first person to introduce the Arabic idea of zero to the UK, along with other mathematical concepts.

Somerset Fascinating Facts Situated within the small village of Stanton Drew is the third largest complex of prehistoric standing stones in England. There are three stone circles adjacent to the village, with the largest (the Great Circle) measuring 113 metres in diameter.

There are at least 30 working cider producers within Somerset. You can visit them, see the work going on, and buy cider within sight of the orchards where it was produced.

Somerset Fascinating Facts - The highest hill in the Mendips, Black Down reaches 325 metres above the nearby Bristol Channel. The view from the top is astounding. As well as being the site for a well-known Second World War operation known as Starfish. During the Second World War, Black Down, Mendips, Somerset was used as a bombing decoy site, part of a national programme to decoy German bombers away from towns and cities by using special effects to simulate Bristol at night.

Vicars' Close, in Wells, Somerset, England, is claimed to be the oldest purely residential street with original buildings surviving intact in Europe. John Julius Norwich called it "that rarest of survivals, a planned street of the mid-14th century"