Somerset's Place in History Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cheddar Man

Cheddar Man was found in Gough's Cave, one of several limestone caverns in Cheddar Gorge. DNA recovered from a tooth was successfully sequenced, and several people now living in the village of Cheddar were found to be extremely close matches. This has changed ideas about the way successive waves of invasion (Celts, Romans, Angles, etc) affected - or did not affect - the basic British gene pool.

Wookey Hole, another limestone cave in the Mendips, contains a stalagmite which is said to resemble a witch, and this has given rise to a legend that the cave is haunted.

Cheddar cheese is famous, and much imitated, across the world. Stilton is another well-known British cheese from Leicestershire, while Stinking Bishop is a Gloucestershire cheese notorious for its "agricultural pong."

Answer: Stanton Drew

The Stanton Drew Henge, a few miles south of Bristol, is 113 metres in diameter, has 27 stones still standing out of the original 30, and is second in size only to Avebury, in neighbouring Wiltshire. Recent geophysical surveys have revealed 9 concentric rings of post-holes (over 400 in all) inside the circle. This has prompted a major rethink about Stanton Drew's prehistoric importance.

The Sweet Track is a 5,000 year old wooden causeway found in the Somerset Levels. It is claimed to be the oldest road in the world.

Priddy is a village in the Mendip Hills where there is an alignment of ditch-and-bank enclosures roughly contemporary with Stonehenge.

Near to Priddy is Maesbury, one of the UK's best-preserved Iron Age hill-forts.

Answer: Lead

Some historians claim that access to the lead mines of Somerset was a principal motivation for the Roman invasion of Britain. The mines also produced silver - giving a double inducement. Lead was extensively used for plumbing, coffins and for making pewter, an alloy of lead and tin. The main mining area, at Charterhouse, was important enough to have its own amphitheatre, which can still be seen.

The Romans exploited tin mines in Cornwall, and gold mines in Wales, but while coal-mining was to become a very important industry in Somerset, it was not until centuries after the Romans had left.

Answer: Alfred the Great

The low-lying Levels were (and sometimes still are) flooded in winter, hence the supposed origin of Somerset's name: "the land of the Summer People." The Isle of Athelney, now a hill but then a remote island among the marshes, became a refuge for Alfred while he was preparing to take on the invading Vikings and ultimately defeat them in battle at nearby Ethandune in 878 AD.

Ethlred the Unready (the word meant "badly advised" rather than "unprepared") was an 11th century Anglo-Saxon King. His son, Edward the Confessor, was the last-but-one Anglo-Saxon king of England, succeeded briefly by Harold Godwinson who lost the Battle of Hastings to William the Conqueror. Hereward the Wake led guerrilla-type resistance to the Normans using the marshy Fens in East Anglia as his hideout.

Answer: Arthur

Glastonbury and the surrounding area are rich in Arthurian associations, many of which are now believed to be spurious. Founded in the 8th century, the Abbey was for centuries a major pilgrimage destination and derived a huge income from this. In the late 12th century, however, the monks suffered a double disaster: the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket in 1170 made Canterbury into a rival (and, for Continental European pilgrims, far more convenient) destination; and in 1184 a huge fire destroyed the Abbey and many of the holy relics the pilgrims came to see.

When in 1191 the monks claimed to have discovered the graves of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, the lucrative pilgrimage trade was conveniently restored. The nearby Tor was claimed to be the mythical Isle of Avalon, and the hill fort at Cadbury to be Camelot, and so an Arthurian "industry" began.

Glastonbury is still the focus of a flourishing New Age community promoting a wide range of spiritual and mystical beliefs.

Answer: Wells

Wells, with a population of little over 10,000, is the smallest city in England, but it has one of the most magnificent cathedrals, dating back in part to the 10th Century. Both Bath and Wells (as their names suggest) were founded around natural springs, which have since ancient times been regarded as holy. In Bath's case the springs are hot: this inspired the Romans to build an extensive bath complex, much of which survives, and in later years turned Bath into Britain's leading spa and a centre for "polite society" as presided over by Beau Nash and recorded by Jane Austen.

Somerton is the old county town of Somerset; Yeovil used to be a glovemaking centre but has become a centre for the aerospace industry; Bristol, one of the UK's most important cities, is contiguous with Somerset but has been a separate city and a county in its own right since the 14th century.

Answer: The Monmouth Rebellion

The 17th Century saw troubled times in England. The "Great Rebellion" (otherwise known as the English Civil War) pitted King Charles I and his "Cavaliers" against the "Roundheads" of Cromwell and Parliament. There were many battles, but Sedgemoor was not one of them.

The "Glorious Revolution" brought William and Mary to the throne, but under strict parliamentary control, and with almost no bloodshed. James, Duke of Monmouth was Charles II's illegitimate son and a Protestant. In 1685 he attempted to overthrow his uncle James II, a Catholic, gathering wide support in the Protestant West Country, nowhere more so than in Somerset.

However his disorganized rebel army was shattered at Sedgemoor by a vastly superior government force, and Monmouth himself, like his grandfather Charles I, was beheaded.

The Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys followed, in which hundreds of Monmouth's supporters were hunted down and hanged or transported. The Jacobite Rebellions of 1715 and 1745 came later ... although still featuring that volatile combination of the Stuart dynasty and religious intolerance.

Answer: Little Jack Horner

Thomas "Jack" Horner was Steward to the Abbot of Glastonbury in 1539. In an effort to stave off dissolution, the Abbot reportedly sent Horner to King Henry VIII with what amounted to a bribe: a bundle of title deeds to properties owned by the Abbey, Mells Manor among them. Before the days of wrapping paper, presents were often baked into a pie. Whether Horner stole the deeds to Mells or did a deal with Henry to buy them is disputed. Either way, the Horner family (of whom the current descendant in residence is the Earl of Oxford and Asquith) is still there.

"Jack and Jill" also has a Somerset connection: the village of Kilmersdon (where there is a well on top of a hill) claims it was "the place" and holds an annual Jack and Jill Festival.

Answer: No servicemen from the villages were killed in World War I

In nine Somerset villages, all of the servicemen who went off to the war returned alive. No other county can boast more than four such villages. The county regiment, the Somerset Light Infantry, lost over 5,000 men.

The 1918/19 flu pandemic killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide, and 250,000 in Britain. Up to 20% of those who caught the disease died of it.

Answer: Pilton

Somerset farmer Michael Eavis staged the first "Pilton Pop Festival" (as it was known at the time) in 1970. It has grown over its 40 year history to the point where 150,000 people now attend, making Pilton for one week in the year the biggest city in Somerset, albeit tented! All 150,000 tickets for 2011 sold out within 4 hours.

Four performers have headlined three times at Glastonbury: Coldplay, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, and The Cure.