Area Boundaries
Apart from the Bristol Channel and English Channel, as with any informal area, the West Country's boundaries are difficult to define and as a consequence there are a number of different definitions used.
Some groups use the term as roughly synonymous with the South West Region, while others use it more specifically to refer to either the northern part of the region, or more commonly just the southwestern part. The term is also used, for example, to refer to sports matches between such cities as Bristol and Bath or Gloucester and Bath. West Country Carnival events take place in Somerset, Devon, Wiltshire and Dorset.
Westcountry Television is an ITV franchisee covering Devon, Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and areas of Somerset and Dorset. Local news and sport website This is the Westcountry.co.uk, part of the Newsquest group, similarly covers Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.
"West Country Farmhouse Cheddar" is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) that can only be applied to Cheddar cheese made in the traditional way in the four counties of Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.
The DCMS-supported website Icons of England defines the West Country as including Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire, and the former Avon area, but excluding Gloucestershire (defined as part of the "West Midlands") and Dorset (in "South England").
The "West Country" edition of the 2005 BBC TV series Seven Natural Wonders featured "wonders" in Wiltshire, Somerset, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire (Symonds Yat), but not those in Devon or Cornwall which were the subject of a separate programme on the "South West", nor Dorset which was covered in a programme on "The South".
The West Country Clothing District was an area that made woollen cloth, but only part of the region described above. It covered east Somerset and parts of the counties of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire and at some periods extended into Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The clothing district around Tiverton and Exeter in Devon and west Somerset tended to make different kinds of cloth and is best regarded as distinct.
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Famous quotes containing the words area and/or boundaries:
“The area [of toilet training] is one where a child really does possess the power to defy. Strong pressure leads to a powerful struggle. The issue then is not toilet training but who holds the reins—mother or child? And the child has most of the ammunition!”
—Dorothy Corkville Briggs (20th century)
“Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will’s impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)