
Areas of Outstanding
Natural Beauty |
The
very first AONB to be designated in England was the Quantock
Hills AONB in 1956. The sandstone hills run from the Vale of Taunton
Deane northwards to the Bristol Channel and provide spectacular views
of the surrounding countryside.
The
county of Dorset
lies on Somerset's southern border and 44% of the county - including
much of its coastline - was designated an AONB in 1957. The protected
area stretches from Lyme Regis in the west to Brownsea
Island near Poole in the east and includes such beauty spots as
Lulworth Cove and Chesil Beach.The northern edge of the AONB lies
in Somerset.
The
Cotswolds
stretch over six counties, with their southwestern corner in Somerset.
They became the country's largest AONB on its creation in 1966. The
area is distinctive due to the underlying limestone rock which has
created a unique landscape and habitat for plants and animals.
The
Mendip
Hills were designated an AONB in 1972. Running eastward from the
Bristol Channel they dominate the Somerset
Levels from which they rise. They include such famous places as
Cheddar Gorge and the Wookey Hole Caves.
Cranborne
Chase and the West Wiltshire Downs was designated an AONB in 1981
and spreads across four counties with the majority of its southern
portion lying in Dorset. The mainly chalk landscape includes the wooded
Vale of Wardour which separates Cranborne
Chase in the south from the Wiltshire
Downs in the north. The area was once heavily forested and home
to several royal hunting forests of which remnants still remain.
A
further range of hills which have been designated an AONB in the county
are the Blackdown
Hills. They run along part of the county's western border with
Devon and were designated in 1991.

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Artists
and Architects |
In 1981 the artist and writer Christy
Brown
died at his home in Parbrook near Glastonbury (he had lived there
since 1978). He is buried in Dublin, the city of his birth. Paralysed
from birth with cerebral palsy he could only control his left foot
and this he used to paint and write. His autobiography My
Left Foot was published to critical acclaim in 1954 detailing
his struggle with his paralysis in working-class Dublin. In 1989 it
was made into a film with Daniel Day-Lewis winning an Academy Award
for his genial depiction of the adult Christy (Hugh O'Conor played
the young Christy). Brenda Fricker won an Academy Award for playing
Christy's mother.

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Explorers
and Adventurers |
The
navigator and pirate William Dampier
was born in 1652 near Yeovil. His activities took him from Central
and South America to Africa and Asia and in 1688 he became the first
Englishman to land on the continent of Australia (then called New
Holland). In 1704 he was in command of the ship on which Alexander
Selkirk was a crewmember. Due to Dampier's cruelty Selkirk asked to
be left on one of the Juan Fernández Islands which lie in the
Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile. Selkirk stayed on the uninhabited
island for over four years before being eventually rescued, a story
which is said to have been the basis for Daniel Defoe's "Robinson
Crusoe".
William
Dampier
John
Hanning Speke was buried in the church at Dowlish Wake - near
his family's ancestral home - in 1864. In 1856 he had set out with
Richard Francis Burton to find the source of the Nile and in 1858
they became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika. Burton,
suffering from malaria, had to turn back and it was Speke travelling
on alone who discovered the river's source which he named Lake Victoria.
Speke died when he accidentally shot himself during a partridge shoot
in Wiltshire.
John
Hanning Speke

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Famous
People |
The politician and pioneer of the trade union movement Ernest
Bevin was born in the Exmoor village
of Winsford in 1881. He was instrumental in building up the powerful
National Transport and General Workers' Union, becoming its general
secretary from 1921 until 1940 when he was offered an influential
position in Winston Churchill's coalition government. In 1945 he became
Foreign Secretary under Clement Attlee, using his negotiating skills
to deal with the many difficulties facing post-war Europe. He resigned
in 1951 due to ill health and died shortly afterwards. His ashes are
interred in Westminster
Abbey.
Ernest
Bevin
Famous
people buried at Westminster Abbey

There
never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before
the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented . . . The common
man, I think, is the great protection against war.
(Speech at the House of Commons, 1945)

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Nobel
Prize Winners |
Chemistry |
The
chemist John
Pople was born at Burnham-on-Sea in 1925. In 1998 he shared
the Nobel
Prize for Chemistry with the American Walter Kohn for his
work in quantum chemistry.

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Literature |
The
ashes of the American-born winner of the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1948 T.S.
Eliot, who wrote the poem The
Waste Land, were interred at the church at East Coker
in 1965. His ancestors had left the village in the 17th century
to emigrate to the USA.
T.S.
Eliot
Academy
of American Poets: T.S. Eliot
Poetry Archive

In my beginning is my end.
Four Quartets - East Coker (1940)
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Four
Quartets - Little Gidding (1942)
So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
Four
Quartets - Little Gidding (1942)

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Writers
and Poets |
For
T.S. Eliot see Nobel
Prize Winners
While
living at Nether
Stowey from 1797 to 1799 Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and - together with William
Wordsworth who in 1798 took up residence nearby at Alfoxden House
near Holford - the Lyrical Ballads.
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
Friends of Coleridge
Coleridge Way
"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends that plague thee thus!
Why look'st thou so?" - With my cross-bow
I shot the albatross.
Coleridge - The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is the father of the Man;
Wordsworth - My
heart leaps up (1807)
The
science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark
was born as Arthur Charles Clark in Minehead in 1917. The film 2001:
A Space Odyssey was based on his short story The Sentinel.
In the 1950s he emigrated to the island of Sri Lanka. In 2008 he died
at his home on the island near the capital of Colombo where he is
buried.
Arthur C. Clark
Arthur C. Clark Foundation
The
poet Siegfried
Sassoon was buried in Mells in 1967. He was one of the famous
First
World War poets whose experiences in the trenches of France drove
them to write of the futility of war.
Siegfried
Sassoon
First World War
Poetry Society

"Good-morning;
good morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
The General (1918)
For
Christy Brown see Artists
and Architects

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