Somerset West, Western Cape

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For the district in England, see West Somerset.

Somerset West (Afrikaans Somerset-Wes) is a town in the Western Cape province in the Republic of South Africa. It is situated in the Hottentots Holland area, about 50km to the southeast of Cape Town, the area's capital. It was named after an English governor of the Cape Colony during the 1800s, Lord Charles Henry Somerset, with the suffix 'West' being added to differentiate it from Somerset East, another South African town in the Eastern Cape.

In the 1960s, the AECI factory between Somerset West and Strand was the second largest dynamite factory in the world. Today the town boasts the largest concentration of millionaire residents in the country.

The town also boasts the wine farm of Vergelegen, a beautiful 18th century farmhouse built in the historic Cape Dutch style and which now produces some of South Africa's best wines.

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