West Somerset

Exmoor National Park, West Somerset, England

West Somerset, district, administrative and historic county of Somerset, southwestern England. It is located on the southern shore of the Bristol Channel. The inland town of Williton is the administrative centre.

West Somerset is a district of contrasts, with extensive moors and wooded valleys, including the Quantock Hills, the Brendon Hills, and Exmoor. On the district’s northern edge—between Minehead, which is West Somerset’s largest settlement, and the small port town of Watchet—lies a narrow coastal strip within which some three-fifths of the district’s population resides. Northeast of the Quantock Hills, in the northeastern portion of the district, the land slopes down to meet the Somerset Levels and Sedgemoor Basin. The western two-thirds of the district, including part of the Brendon Hills and Exmoor, lies within Exmoor National Park, which was described in Richard Doddridge Blackmore’s 19th-century novel Lorna Doone. The park encompasses moorland covered with coarse grass, gorse, and heather—which affords sustenance for the red deer and native Exmoor ponies—as well as pastoral upland farms, narrow wooded river valleys, and, where it meets the ocean, exceptionally rugged headlands.

Minehead, formerly a herring port and an important site for the export of locally produced woollen goods, is now a popular vacation destination and the location of one of Britain’s last coastal holiday camps (family resorts). A nearby town, Dunster, medieval in appearance and layout, has a 16th-century yarn market indicative of its former status as a cloth centre. The quaint village of Porlock is located near the Bristol Channel in the sparsely populated extreme west. Williton is located between the Brendon and Quantock hills in the less-rugged eastern part of West Somerset. Area 281 square miles (727 square km). Pop. (2001) 35,075; (2011) 34,675.