Portal:Somerset/Did you know/15

From Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives:
 * ... that during World War II, Shepton Mallet (pictured), the oldest operating prison in Britain, was used as the protective storage of important government documents including the Magna Carta and Domesday Book?
 * ... that the Shapwick Hoard, found by metal detecting cousins in 1998, contained the largest number of silver denarii ever found in Great Britain and was equivalent to ten years' pay for a Roman legionary?
 * ... that the village of Sharpham in Somerset, is the birthplace of Elizabethan poet Sir Edward Dyer, writer Henry Fielding and cleric William Gould?
 * ... that Simonsbath House was the only house in the Royal Forest of Exmoor for 150 years?
 * ... that the only working, full sized, Caisson lock ever built, was on the Somerset Coal Canal at Combe Hay, Somerset in England between 1795 and 1805?