Talk:Somerton, Somerset/Archive 1

Town or Village?
I'm not sure whether Somerton is a town or a village - as far as I know the magistrate's court building is still standing, but there have been no courts sitting in Somerton for some years - which leads me to believe that the statement in the article is incorrect.

Relatively recently (in the past few years) the Council became Somerton Town Council (as opposed to Parish Council) - I do not know what effect this has on Somerton's 'status'.

The question of the definition of town vs village is one that should be answered by an expert (i.e. a geographer); but for now here's my take on it.

In the past, we defined settlements based on how many out of a standard list of services / functions they posessed. So if it has a pub, general shop, newsagent, blacksmith, sub post office, school etc. it might be a village. This could include the magistrates' court. If it also has a local government office, market, secondary school, main post office, small hospital, wider range of shops including clothing, shoeshop, etc. it might be a town. And so on. Then in 1974 (I think) the UK underwent reform of local government, and I think after that settlements could be defined by the type of council they had: so if it had a parish council, then it was a village, if it had a town council then it was a town. More recently what were parish councils have been allowed to rename themselves as town councils and call their leaders (formerly the chairman of the council) "mayor". This is what has happened in Somerton. So to a purist it is still a village because it has only village functions, but in name it is a town.

Map
Somerton has been shown incorrectly on the map. The red dot on the map is actually in Yeovil, with Somerton being someway to the North. Can someone change this? Anywikiuser (talk) 17:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I've corrected the lat & long which produce the red dot on the map - hope thats right now?&mdash; Rod talk 17:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Seems to be. Thanks. Anywikiuser (talk) 19:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Capital of Wessex
In the lead is says "It was reputedly the capital of the Kingdom of Wessex from 871 to 901 AD, although this is not supported by modern research." This is impossible - Winchester was the capital of Wessex and England in those years. Jaguar (talk) 09:36, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Although the citation link is broken (I will fix it) if you look at this (page 4) it says "A market had been granted in 1255 and Somerton was chosen as the county town in the later 13th century, perhaps due to the erroneous tradition that the town had been the Saxon capital of Wessex."&mdash; Rod talk 09:43, 26 July 2011 (UTC)