Wessex
Where is Wessex? Well that is a tricky one! Depends whether you are perhaps King Alfred the Great or the modern Wessex Water Board or anything in between! The boundaries of the region were ever changing over the centuries. Some say it is the area of the very distinctive broad west country dialect that is found from Devon to Hampshire. Also considered the real language of England, it was the speech of the Anglo Saxons that was superseded by the French Norman England of William the Conqueror. It was the region of the Anglo Saxons with Winchester at one time capital of England and Alfred the Great as king. Or the boundaries when Edward the Confessor became King in 1042. Thomas Hardy considered it to be Dorset, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Devon and Somerset. Hardy was most interested in the concept of a Wessex region. In the modern world there is even a political party, The Wessex Regionalist Party, they want the area to be a region. Their version is Berkshire, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire. The Wessex Society include Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Oxfordshire as well. The Wessex Constitutional Convention excludes Herefordshire. And the Wessex Water Board? From Swanage and Weymouth in the south to Minehead in the west, to Wotton Under Edge in the north and Salisbury in the east. A somewhat smaller area. We will go for the dialect, that wonderful brogue, so well known and distinctive - Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset, Wiltshire and because of modern geography we will include the Isle of Wight. They might be annoyed however, as with the south of Hampshire they were a Jutish region!
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