Wootton Courtenay

The shop the village saved

The shop in Wootton Courtenay is also the café and the bar. The Villagers' Stores, depending on the day, will sell you a newspaper, a Post Office service, a barista coffee under the name Mr B's, or a drink at Skye's Bar, which the parish council simply calls the village pub. The village owns the whole thing. When closure threatened in 1991, residents formed Wootton Courtenay Villagers' Stores Ltd and bought the freehold; in 2023 the board bought back the business and the Post Office contract as well. Sarah Fox and Mark Burgess run it now.

The shelves are more local than most. Bread and pastries are baked fresh; the ham, bacon and sausages come from Kendle Farm in Dulverton; the cheese is Hawkridge, made in Devon; the cakes and traybakes travel in from Jen's Pantry in Williton. There is Styles ice cream, and honey made in the village itself. Alongside the groceries you will find an off-licence range, newspapers, medicines to collect, and a rack of Exmoor walking information, which tells you what most people are here to do.

Garden tables and enclosed lanes

In summer Mr B's puts seating out in the garden, with croissants, cakes and tiffin.

The village itself is red sandstone, thatch and cobbled paths, threaded along lanes at the foot of wooded hills that run from Tivington Common to Grabbist Hill. Several cottages carry front lateral chimney stacks that point to 17th-century origins. Stone walls and banks press close to the road, so the place feels enclosed rather than open. The conservation appraisal noted that the cottages "lack the 'chocolate box' aesthetic" but possess a "cohesive quality and sense of enclosure." The aspect is south-facing and sheltered, with the high moor visible to the north and east.

Moorland routes and parish woodwork

Walking is the reason most people base themselves here. Dunkery Beacon, Exmoor's highest point, rises nearby; you can reach the summit and back on a mile-and-a-half stony track, or take the rougher triangular circuit of about two and a half miles, climbing some 130 metres. Red deer are a fair possibility on the way up. A longer 7.8-mile circuit, about four hours through woodland and across a plateau, links the village with the youth hostel above Minehead, and both the Macmillan Way and the Coleridge Way pass close by.

All Saints' stands Grade I. Its tower, east wall and east window are 13th-century; the nave was reroofed and a north aisle added in the mid-15th century. The walls are red-sandstone rubble with Hamstone dressings, under an unusual gabled tower, and inside there are ceiled wagon roofs with bosses, medieval floor tiles and an ironbound chest. The screens were carved late in the 19th and early in the 20th century by parishioners taught by Mr Pennington, encouraged by Sir T. D. Acland and the rector Edmund Phipps Stanley; their names are set out by the font. In the churchyard, a fragment of a medieval preaching cross stands on a two-step octagonal plinth.

Old name, modern arrival

The name is plain Old English, wudu and tun, wood and settlement, with "Courtenay" added by the family who took the manor in the 13th century and went on to become Earls of Devon. The Domesday commissioners found 24 households here, a mill worth ten pence, and, among the livestock, 150 sheep and 18 goats; they valued the whole manor at five pounds.

Getting here takes some commitment: narrow single-track lanes off the A39 or A396, about two and a half miles either way, and no regular bus service into the village — a pre-booked Wednesday shopper minibus runs into Minehead, the nearest town at four miles, for registered passengers, so it's worth checking current timetables rather than relying on it. Taunton, thirty miles off, is the nearest mainline station. Minehead has the supermarkets and the West Somerset Railway; Dunster, with its castle and watermill, is a short drive the other way.

The hall facing Dunkery

The village hall, built in 2001, keeps a terrace facing Dunkery Beacon and a patio that looks over the church. On table-tennis nights the club provides the bats and balls, and for anyone under eighteen it is free.