Somerset Street

Most of us know Somerset Street as an entry point for the many concerts and events held in Brooklands Park – a handy place to leave the car during WOMAD if you can get there early enough.

Like the adjoining streets of Exeter, Clovelly and Cornwall, this street name references the southwest counties of England. Somerset has been home to human settlement since at least the Stone Age including at Bath whose famous hot springs were shrines for both Britons and Romans.

 The local Celts resisted Saxon invasion in the 6^th century, however Saxon King Alfred was the first to unite the region as the Kingdom of Wessex. Somerset, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset maintained their distinct identities within Wessex in the 7^th century, establishing some of oldest extant local government charters in the world. The old English meaning of Somerset is still the county’s motto: ‘All the people of Somerton’ – an historical reference to backing Alfred in order to save Wessex from the Vikings.

Like Taranaki, Somerset has a temperate climate that is generally wetter than the rest of the country. It also harbours a creative bent with its coastline, caves, levels and moors inspiring many famous literary figures over the centuries including Jane Austen, Jacqueline Wilson and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Back home, Somerset Street falls within the tribal rohe of Te Ātiawa iwi with the area being of historic and cultural significance to Ngāti Te Whiti hapū.

In the 1840s, the land where the current Somerset Street sits, was one of the original settlement blocks allocated to Mr. George Cutfield. George’s brother-in-law, Captain Henry King, owned the adjacent block and the two men farmed together at Brooklands.

Somerset Street was formed a century later in 1941 and developed after the Second World War, along with the adjoining streets, as Brooklands State Housing Subdivision. Today it features a mixture of social and private housing.

Residents of the street enjoy their handy pedestrian access through the bush with shortcuts to the nearby tennis club, Maranui Gully, Brooklands Park and Zoo and Pukekura Park.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.