Midsomer Norton, United Kingdom

The main geological feature in this area of the Mendip Hills south of Hallatrow consists of Supra-Pennant Measures which includes the upper coal measures and outcrops of sandstone. The relics of the industrial past are very evident within the area, including the distinct conical shape of the Old Mills batch overlooking the town.

Midsomer Norton lies on the River Somer which rises to the west of Chilcompton and on the Wellow Brook which rises near the village of Ston Easton. The town therefore occupies two valleys of the Mendip Hills and these merge west of Radstock. The combined river then flows east reaching the River Avon near Midford, thence to Bath and through Bristol into the Bristol Channel at Avonmouth.

On the southern fringes of the town is the 2 hectares (4.9 acres) Silver Street Local Nature Reserve, on the site of the estate of Norton House, an eighteenth century mansion built by the coalmine-owning Savage family but demolished in 1937-8. It contains a broad-leaf woodland around several ponds, a restored nineteenth-century wellhead that supplied water to the house, and a grassland field. The woodland is leased to the Somerset and Dorset Heritage Railway Trust by Bath and North East Somerset Council and the meadow in the stewardship of Somervale School.

Midsomer Norton's railway station was mentioned in Slow Train by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann:

Children's author Roald Dahl sold kerosene in Midsomer Norton and the surrounding area in the 1930s. He described the experience in his autobiographical work Boy: Tales of Childhood (published 1984):

My kerosene motor-tanker had a tap at the back and when I rolled into Shepton Mallet or Midsomer Norton or Peasedown St John or Huish Champflower, the old girls and the young maidens would hear the roar of my motor and would come out of their cottages with jugs and buckets to buy a gallon of kerosene for their lamps and their heaters. It is fun for a young man to do that sort of thing. Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset on a fine summer’s day.

First schools for children up to 11 include Midsomer Norton Primary, St. John's Church of England, Welton Primary, Longvernal Primary, Westfield Primary and Norton Hill Primary. In addition, St Benedict's Catholic Primary School on the edge of Midsomer Norton with a 'Midsomer Norton, Radstock' postal address, is actually part of the neighbouring Somerset Council's education service.

There are two local secondary schools. Norton Hill School has approximately 1,400 students from the age of 11 to 18. In 1999, it became a Technology College and in 2007 changed specialism to become a Maths and Computing College. In 2006, Norton Hill was also awarded a second specialism as a Language College. The school was described by Ofsted in 2007 as outstanding in every respect. The school has received both the Sportsmark Award by Sport England and Artsmark Silver Award. Somervale School which has foundation status, is a specialist Arts College. In 2008, the school was the first in Bath and North East Somerset to win the Eco-Schools Silver Award. The number of pupils on the school roll had fallen to 603. This fall prompted the school to propose a federation with nearby Norton Hill School in March 2009 called the Midsomer Norton Schools Partnership. This is now in place with Alun Williams as the overall head teacher of both schools within the federation.