Taunton
Taunton is the county town of Somerset, England.
It is a market town and has a minster church. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, owned by the Bishops of Winchester, which was rebuilt as Taunton Castle by the Normans in the 12th century. Parts of the inner ward house were turned into the Museum of Somerset and Somerset Military Museum. For the Second Cornish uprising of 1497, Perkin Warbeck brought an army of 6,000; most surrendered to Henry VII on 4 October 1497. On 20 June 1685, the Duke of Monmouth crowned himself King of England in Taunton in the failed Monmouth Rebellion. Judge Jeffreys led the Bloody Assizes in the Castle's Great Hall.
Getting around Taunton the local way
- Get inWithin the West Country itself are two seaports offering international ferry services: Plymouth receives ferries from Roscoff and St Malo in France, and Santander in Spain, while Poole receives ferries from Cherbourg and St Malo in France, plus Santander and the Channel Islands.
From Wikivoyage: West Country, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-06.
Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: mattbuck (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.