The pub dog at The Lion Inn is called Boris. He belongs to a low, home-cooking village pub that rotates its evenings through curry, kebab, pizza and pie nights, and recent reviewers mention the homemade kebab, the roast beef, the cheesecake and the brownie. One of them left a line the management liked enough to repeat: "All local pubs should be like this one!" It is dog-friendly, and it is the village's pub, which concentrates matters.
The other place that holds the village together is the Post Office and Store, which doubles as the spot where you find out what is going on. It carries Produced in Exmoor goods — local bread, honey, jam, pork, eggs, pickles, sausage rolls, soap and crafts — takes orders for Glenmore Bakery cakes, keeps walks and maps by the counter, and runs a used-book and puzzle exchange.
Timberscombe sits on the River Avill, in a wooded Exmoor valley that gave it its name, and it is built in ironstone and red-sandstone rubble. It is 2.5 miles from Dunster and 5.5 from Minehead. The A396 threads through on the Minehead–Dulverton road, and the AtWest 198 bus connects the village with Minehead and Dunster in one direction and Wheddon Cross, Exford, Winsford and Dulverton in the other, Monday to Saturday, excluding public and bank holidays — worth checking before you go — with a Thursday-only 678 alongside it.
At the top of the village stands St Petrock's, Grade I and mostly 15th century, with a west tower dated 1708. The church has a late-15th-century wooden rood screen, five bays and fan-vaulted, with the stair and door of its loft still in place. Inside there is a Perpendicular octagonal font, a Jacobean pulpit and eight bells; in the churchyard a yew reckoned at over 440 years old. A Tudor south doorway, uncovered in 1955, gave up a wall painting of King David playing a harp. The National Churches Trust calls it "a tranquil and sacred space with lots of heart."
For a walk, the Timberscombe Heritage Trail is a 1.5-mile circular hour through the village's history — expect gates, stiles and mud — put together by volunteers led by Paul Sheldon. A footpath climbs to the Timberscombe hill fort, a wooded enclosure about 25 minutes up from the church's north porch, and a spur reaches Cowbridge Mill in ten minutes, though along the A396, so mind the traffic. South of the village, in a hidden valley, lies Clicket, a settlement whose mill had closed by 1900; two lime kilns are all that still stand.
Domesday counted fifteen households here, thirty sheep and ten goats, and valued the whole place at £2 5s.
For families, the John Arlott Playing Field sits centrally beside Bemberry Bank, with play equipment, benches and a picnic table; there are no public toilets in the village. Dunster Castle and its working watermill are 2.5 miles off, and Dunkery Beacon, Exmoor's highest point, is a gentle stony climb nearby.
Between 1948 and 1960 the Methodist minister at 8 Willow Bank was J. P. Martin, who served as vice-chairman of the cricket club and wrote the Uncle books — six of them, illustrated by Quentin Blake, about a millionaire elephant.