South West England

The South West holds some of Britain's densest prehistoric landscapes. Stonehenge was raised in stages from around 3000 BC, and nearby Avebury and Silbury Hill belong to the same ritual world; Dartmoor is strewn with Bronze Age hut circles and stone rows. Cornish tin drew traders from the Mediterranean in antiquity. The Romans built the spa of Aquae Sulis at Bath around its hot springs and a legion fortress at Exeter.

After Rome, Cornwall remained a Celtic Brittonic land long after the Saxons of Wessex took Somerset, Dorset and Devon. Alfred the Great sheltered in the Somerset marshes at Athelney in 878 before defeating the Danes, and Glastonbury Abbey became one of England's richest monasteries, wrapped in legends of Arthur. The medieval wool trade enriched the Cotswolds, whose merchants paid for the great churches of their towns.

The sea shaped the modern region. Plymouth sent out Drake and the fleet against the Armada in 1588, and the Mayflower sailed from there in 1620. Bristol grew rich on Atlantic trade, including the slave trade, and in the 18th century Bath became the fashionable spa of Georgian society. Cornwall's tin and copper mines were worked for centuries until the last, South Crofty, closed in 1998. Brunel's railway from Paddington opened the coast to holidaymakers, while the Blitz devastated Plymouth and Bristol. In 2020 Bristol protesters pulled down the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, reopening debate over the city's past.

The region is broadly called the West Country, known for its rolling burr of an accent and a slower pace than the South East, but its counties are distinct. Cornwall treats itself as a Celtic nation: the black-and-white flag of St Piran flies everywhere, St Piran's Day on 5 March is celebrated widely, the revived Cornish language appears on signs and in schools, and in 2014 the Cornish were recognised as a national minority. Padstow's May Day 'Obby 'Oss procession and Helston's Flora Day are among England's oldest surviving folk customs.

Further east, traditions run to the eccentric. Cheese is chased down Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, burning tar barrels are carried through Ottery St Mary on 5 November, and the Somerset carnivals light up towns such as Bridgwater each autumn. Glastonbury is both the home of a huge music festival held at nearby Pilton and a centre of alternative spirituality around its Tor.

Bristol has its own creative streak: the street art of Banksy, the trip-hop sound of Massive Attack and Portishead, and a strong independent, left-leaning culture. Cheltenham hosts the Cheltenham Festival of jump racing each March, and surfing culture defines Newquay and the North Devon coast.

Around 5.8 million people live in the South West, many of them in the north-east of the region. Bristol, with about 470,000 people, is the largest city and the economic centre, followed by Plymouth, with about 265,000, and the Bournemouth and Poole conurbation on the Dorset coast. Swindon, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Exeter and Bath are the other main towns, while Cornwall's largest places are small towns and Truro is its only city.

Bristol and Bath have aerospace, engineering, finance and creative industries, Cheltenham is home to GCHQ, and Plymouth has the Royal Navy's Devonport dockyard. Elsewhere the economy leans on tourism, farming, dairy, fishing at Newlyn and Brixham, and the growing number of people who retire here or work remotely.

Life has a seasonal rhythm in the far west: quiet winters, then a summer when Cornwall's population swells with visitors. The big current issue is housing: second homes and holiday lets have pushed prices far beyond local wages in coastal Cornwall and Devon, and parts of Cornwall remain among the poorer areas of England despite their postcard image.

The South West is dairy country, and clotted cream — thick, scalded cream with a golden crust — is its signature. It is the heart of the cream tea, served with scones and jam: tradition holds that the Cornish spread jam first and the people of Devon put cream first, and the argument is taken half-seriously. The Cornish pasty, a crimped pastry of beef, potato, swede and onion, has protected status, and Mousehole's stargazy pie has pilchard heads poking through the crust.

Cheddar cheese takes its name from the Somerset village, and traditional farmhouse cheddar is still matured in the area, while Gloucestershire makes Single and Double Gloucester and Dorset its Blue Vinny. Bath gives its name to the sugar-topped Bath bun, the Sally Lunn bun and the Bath Oliver biscuit, and Dorset has its own apple cake. The fish markets of Newlyn and Brixham supply crab, mackerel, Cornish sardines and scallops, and Padstow has become a seafood destination.

Somerset is the capital of English cider, from farmhouse scrumpy to Somerset cider brandy, and Plymouth Gin is distilled in the city's old Black Friars building. Cornish ales and a growing number of vineyards, notably in the Camel Valley, round out the drinks.

In Wiltshire, Stonehenge stands on Salisbury Plain within reach of the Avebury circle and Salisbury Cathedral, whose spire is the tallest in England. Bath offers the Roman Baths, the abbey, the Royal Crescent and the Circus, and nearby Bristol has Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge, the SS Great Britain and a lively harbourside. Somerset holds Wells Cathedral, Cheddar Gorge and Glastonbury Tor and Abbey, and Exmoor National Park falls to the sea on the Somerset and North Devon coast.

The Cotswolds, in Gloucestershire, are villages and small towns of golden stone: Chipping Campden, Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, Bibury and Cirencester, with Tewkesbury Abbey and Gloucester Cathedral on the edge of the hills.

Dorset and East Devon form the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where fossils are found on the beaches at Lyme Regis and Charmouth, with Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove and Chesil Beach. Devon has Dartmoor National Park's granite tors and ponies, Exeter Cathedral, Plymouth's Barbican, and the coves of the South Hams.

Cornwall ends the peninsula: St Ives with its beaches, Tate St Ives and Barbara Hepworth's garden studio, St Michael's Mount, Land's End, the cliff-top Minack Theatre, Tintagel's castle ruins, the Eden Project's biomes near St Austell, and the Isles of Scilly offshore.