Bruton's farmers' market brings a Saturday crowd to the high street

On the third Saturday of the month, Bruton Farmers' Market sets out its local produce, food and gifts for the morning, and by early afternoon it's gone. Judged on its own takings, a monthly farmers' market is a modest thing. Its bigger effect is on the street around it: it brings people to Bruton's high street on a day they would not otherwise have come, and every shop nearby gets them for nothing.

Its neighbours keep different rhythms, with markets in Castle Cary every Tuesday and Frome once a month.

A day in the diary

Most of a high street's trade comes from habit, the people who come every week anyway, or from chance, the people passing through. A market date adds a third kind of visitor: someone who planned the trip, on a day they put in the diary, and who wouldn't otherwise have come at all. The shops get those people without organising a thing. Nobody counts how many come on market Saturdays against ordinary ones, so if you trade on the street, your own till will tell you more than I can.

The stalls aren't the shops' competition. Someone selling bread and a shop selling clothes aren't after the same pound on the same morning, and both of them bring people into the street.

Easy to miss online

The market keeps a low profile. As far as I can tell, its only public page is on Facebook, with no website, no organiser named and no list of stalls anywhere else, so check that page before you plan around a date.

If you have a shop nearby, open properly on market Saturday, look ready for visitors, and give someone a reason to step past the stalls and through your door. Make sure your hours that day show up on Google, too, so anyone checking that morning knows you're open. The rest of the local calendar, from market days to race days, is on our page for Somerset businesses.