A guide to Bruton, Somerset: the best hotels, restaurant and galleries

In recent years, the tiny Somerset town of Bruton has become shorthand for an urbane ideal of high culture, seasonal dining and bucolic bliss (all just a few hours by train from London Paddington, via Bath Spa or Castle Cary). Considering the size, its appeal is inordinate. It’s possible to fill a morning ambling the town’s pretty backways, checking out the rococo enclaves of St Mary’s Church, and walking up to the atmospheric Dovecote – but there’s a whole weekend’s worth of rarefied distractions in its restaurants, cafes, concept stores, contemporary galleries and space-age pavilion at Hauser & Wirth, plus the Neo-Palladian splendour of nearby Stourhead. You are also spoilt for choice when it comes to delightful boutique hotels, which are considered some of the best in the UK.

How to spend a weekend in Bruton

The best restaurants in Bruton

Bruton has an excellent provision of good food. Front and centre is Merlin Labron-Johnson’s Green Michelin-starred Osip, which recently relocated to an 18th-century coachhouse with four stylish bedrooms near North Brewham. Here, a rotation of contemporary art sits beneath original wooden beams, while modern seasonal food is served in handcrafted tableware courtesy of local artists Anna Karin and Colette Woods. It’s considered the catalyst for Somerset’s farm-to-table boom, and much of what’s served is grown by Labron-Johnson himself at his two nearby farms. He also runs The Old Pharmacy on Bruton’s high street – a wine bar with southern-European small plates known for its guest chef slots and exciting wine and cider tastings.

Near The Old Pharmacy, At the Chapel is housed in a Grade-II-listed former church dating from the 17th century. The bakery out front sells wood-fired bread, pastries, cakes and biscuits, while the restaurant cooks simple European dishes and the finest sourdough pizzas in Somerset (be sure to order the zucca with butternut squash, gorgonzola and ‘nduja).Matt’s Kitchen is another Burton mainstay with its pared-back interiors and monthly changing set menu helmed by chef-owner Matt Watson. It’s amazing value too: 42.50 GBP a head and BYO.

British chef Sam Lomas (previously at Glebe House in East Devon) has taken over the former Osip site at Number One Bruton with his new farm-to-table concept Briar. The daily changing menu is organised by snacks, small plates and desserts and highlights moon phase and weather forecasts. Expect seasonal delights such as pickled cucumber with wild herbs and chilli or a braised shoulder of lamb with butter beans, tomatoes and late summer herbs.

Another newcomer on Bruton’s food scene in 2024 is Italian restaurant Da Costa at Hauser & Wirth on Dropping Lane. The newest addition to Artfarm’s growing portfolio – which now includes Fife Arms in Scotland – sees locally sourced ingredients crafted into classic Italian pastas such as tagliolini with smoked wild mushrooms.  Visitors should also check out on-site Roth Bar for its dramatic bar made from salvaged materials by Björn and Oddur Roth, the son and grandson of Swiss artist Dieter Roth. The food menu here is one of rustic heft, and heavy on meat. Knock back a slab of farm sirloin with a glass (or three) of its homegrown bacchus.

The best places to stay in Bruton

Nearly all of the town’s best restaurants are attached to delightful places to rest one’s head. At the Chapel’s eight rooms are a lesson in cool minimalism with wood finishes and lofty white walls. Room three, with a freestanding bath and lancet windows affording views of the Dovecote and Bruton’s rooftops, is the best of the lot. Freshly-baked croissants, deposited at your door, complete the stay.

Similarly lovely is Number One Bruton, above Briar. It’s composed of three buildings: a medieval forge, a Georgian townhouse and a trio of cottages, all clustered around a dinky grass courtyard laid out by garden designer Penelope Hobhouse. The pretty interiors take in Arts & Crafts patterning, exposed beams, quarried tiling and curlicue stairs.

More stunning design details await at The Space at Caro, a B&B headed up by the folks from lifestyle boutique Caro on the high street. Located in the wood-panelled outbuilding of an 18th-century cottage, its painterly, light-flooded main room also doubles as a photography studio. Neighbouring Durslade Farmhouse is a hulking six-bedroom rental on the grounds of Hauser & Wirth. Its cosy country house aesthetic melds original features with contemporary flourishes. Stuffed badgers? Vintage Victorian stickers? A video installation of the Somerset countryside projected across the living room by outré Swiss visual artist Pipilotti Rist? Yours for the hiring.

Most bijous of all is The Newt, a sprawling estate and hotel south of Bruton near Castle Cary. It’s the ultimate countryside retreat: acre-upon-acre of ancient woodland, pristine gardens, treetop walkways, an orchard featuring every apple grown in Britain, and a gargantuan ‘reimagining’ of a Roman villa unearthed on the site. It doesn’t come cheap, but it’s quite unlike anything else in the county.

The best art galleries and shops in Bruton

That Bruton is synonymous with totemic modern art is wholly down to the fact that Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset outpost is on its doorstep. The Durslade Farm site is an essential stop, its complex of capacious, reconfigured buildings playing host to a changing programme of major exhibitions: auto-destructive pioneer Gustav Metzger, abstract sculptor Henry Moore, multifaceted artist Louise Bourgeois, and American painter Nicole Eisenman have all recently featured. Of equal billing is the Piet Oudolf-designed meadow and Smiljan Radić’s retro-futurist Radić Pavilion. It also hosts artist residencies, and there are two excellent shops (one for art books, the other for homeware and gardening tools).

In town, Make – occupying a pretty, sand-coloured Georgian townhouse – shows contemporary craft and made objects by new and established artists; while Collette Woods’ gallery at number 82, open on weekends, has displays of the ceramicist’s wonderfully imperfect and functional tableware.

The best farm shops and boutiques in Bruton

Options abound to empty your wallet in Bruton. Independent shops Caro and Hole & Corner are both tremendously tranquil. The former stocks a plethora of Scando-Japanese-style decorative objects and kitchenware, Aēsop toiletries, and rails of workwear-inspired threads. The latter, a retail offshoot of the eponymous independent craft magazine, hawks maker-led homeware, furniture, jewellery and textiles, all of a more rustic, craft bent. Equally charming – and far more anachronistic – is the Michael Lewis Gallery: a trove of antique maps and period prints, all well worth an hour’s rifling.

Rather fill your face than your walls? No problem: the Durslade Farm Shop (up at Hauser & Wirth, again) sells home-reared meat, British cheeses, spirits from Bristol’s Psychopomp & Circumstance distillery, chutneys filled with hedgerow bits collected by in-house forager Kenny, and so on. Stumble east, to Westcombe, and you’ll hit Westcombe Dairy, a regenerative farm and cracking cheesemaker, the fragrant wares of which can be found strewn across the menus of myriad local restaurants (Osip included).

The best walks in Bruton

Bruton’s pastoral setting is one of its strongest selling points: it’s nigh on essential to pull on your boots and get out into the surrounding pastures. Above the town, on a fairly precipitous hill in Jubilee Park, is Bruton Dovecote – a National Trust protected, 16th-century watchtower that makes a perfect pre-dinner stomp. To the east, the Trust also tends to King Alfred’s Tower, a Grade-I-listed folly erected to commemorate the end of the Seven Years War. The first stage of the South Somerset ‘Leland Trail’ – devised by antiquarian John Leland in a 16th-century survey – runs from the tower to Bruton. Its five miles can be easily tracked backwards, via ancient woodland and drove roads.

An hour’s walk southeast is Stourhead. Opened in 1740, the estate’s shining lake and gardens are one of the country’s pre-eminent visions in classical landscaping, designed by banker ‘Henry the Magnificent’ and architect Henry Flitcroft. The entire expanse is stunning – especially as the trees turn in autumn – but the smattering of Romanesque temples, a beguiling grotto, and the Palladian bridge are particularly oneiric.