Castle Cary's Market House, and why the town kept it

Castle Cary's Market House is the most prominent building in the town: Grade II* listed, built in 1855 and renovated in 2014. The town could have sold it, and a building on that spot could have become flats, one shop's lease, or whatever a developer judged would pay.

Instead it holds the offices of Castle Cary Town Council and the town's museum, and the Tuesday market sets up around it. It was the right call. But a town that decides its centre is for more than the highest rent has to keep paying for that decision, and it's worth being straight about what it costs.

What it costs to keep

A building given over to the town earns no rent and still needs looking after. The town council's answer to a freedom of information request sets out how it copes. It's obliged by law to maintain the Market House, and pays for that out of a yearly maintenance budget, money it has set aside for the purpose, and a dowry kept for the building. Its next plans, a lift and a renovated first floor, are to be paid for through grants and fundraising, and the council says that if they can't be, the project shouldn't go ahead. When it replied, £19,000 had been raised through fundraising, coffee mornings and donations, and it didn't expect the work to be finished before 2028.

There may be a cost to trade as well, because a civic centrepiece doesn't bring in the shop rents a commercial building might. Plenty of market towns weigh up the same balance, and it's part of the bigger question of what a town's business scene looks like when it's working.

What the town gets

Against that, look at what the town has: a shared building at its heart, rather than a shopping centre owned by a fund somewhere, or a car park where the landmark used to be; somewhere to house its museum and tell its own story; and something nobody can sell out from under it. For a town whose whole appeal is feeling different from a retail park an hour away, that's worth a great deal.

Epsom reached the same idea, that a town centre should belong to the people who use it, by a different road: its businesses vote for and pay into a partnership that looks after their high street.

I've been inside since the restoration, and the old building's features have been preserved beautifully. I used to wander around that part of town as a child, and the outside of the building still takes me back. It has kept its charm.

If you run a business in the town, our page for Somerset businesses covers the local calendar around the Market House, from the Tuesday market to festival weekends.