Luccombe

Streams, Stone and Village Essentials

Two lanes come down through a wooded valley, each following a stream, and meet beside the church at the spot the village calls the Square. Cottages press close on either side, built of local red sandstone under thatch, clay tile and slate, their render limewashed cream or honey. Stoney Street climbs steeply west from here towards Horner Wood, and the gaps between the buildings open onto farmland with the moor rising behind. In 1791 the antiquary John Collinson recorded the houses as forming "a straggling street by the church," which remains a fair account of the plan.

The village has never had a pub, and its shop and school have both closed; the school building is now the village hall, with the old school garden making up the only public patch of green. For food and provisions, residents look to Porlock and Minehead, and so will you.

A Taste of Porlock

Porlock is a nearby place to eat. The Ship Inn, known locally as the Top Ship, was CAMRA Somerset Pub of the Year in 2025 under Royston and Caroline Connor. The kitchen runs from a farmhouse Scotch egg with piccalilli through beer-battered haddock with mushy peas to pork schnitzel in wild-mushroom sauce, pan-fried sea bass with a samphire-and-crayfish sauce, and a katsu vegetable curry for anyone who wants it. There is a large garden with an enclosed play area, and dogs are welcome inside.

For the smaller end of the day, the Whortleberry Tea Room does apple-and-whortleberry cake served warm with clotted cream, and cream teas with local whortleberry jam. Bake Me Crazy handles buttercream and ganache cakes, and the Old Library, run by Elliott and Carrie, cooks seasonal breakfast, lunch and dinner from South West produce.

Woodland Walks and St Mary's

The main reason to base yourself here, though, is the walking. Webber's Post, just west of the village, is the start of an easy one-mile circuit graded for families and off-road buggies, taking in Horner Wood, wood sculptures carved for a 2004 festival, the Acland seat and a hut built for Victoria's Jubilee in 1897. Horner Wood is a temperate rainforest of ancient oaks and a National Nature Reserve; the wider Holnicote Estate carries more than three hundred red deer. Stronger walkers can join the 4.5-mile circular through Luccombe and Horner Farm, or the long climb over Dunkery Beacon.

The church is St Mary the Virgin, Grade I, with an 85-foot red-sandstone tower and gargoyles. The chancel dates from about 1300, the tower and nave from around 1450, the south aisle from 1530. Inside are wagon roofs studded with bosses, a Jacobean pulpit, an octagonal font whose cover is raised on a pulley, and early sixteenth-century English and Flemish glass. Excavated remains beneath the floor point to worship on the site since Domesday times.

Domesday and Mass-Observation

Luccombe appears in the Domesday Book as Locumbe, split between two lords and worth six pounds a year. Much later, in 1944, Mass-Observation researchers descended on the place and recorded its life in exhaustive detail, published as Exmoor Village in 1947. Some residents regarded it as an invasion of privacy.

The Road to Luccombe

Taunton is the nearest railway station; the village itself sits down a signed lane south of the A39 between Minehead and Porlock. The sound in the Square is water in two streams meeting under the churchyard wall.