The South Somerset Circle, an introduction

After a series of posts about Wincanton and Bruton, there was a genuine sense of momentum about where South Somerset was heading. The question was what to do with it.

The towns kept being discussed one at a time, and usually against each other. Wincanton against Bruton. Bruton against Castle Cary. Bruton against London, which is a fight nobody needs to pick. Meanwhile the villages around them, and Castle Cary itself, barely came up at all.

That felt like the wrong unit of measurement.

The idea

A collaborative community across those towns and the villages between them, working together rather than separately. Call it the South Somerset Circle, which now exists as a group of its own. (Declared interest: I own and run the group.)

The argument is not sentimental. A visitor does not think in parish boundaries. They think in a day out: somewhere to arrive, somewhere to eat, something to see, somewhere to stop on the way home. No single small town in the area has all four to the standard a visitor now expects. Three of them together comfortably do.

The same applies to the unglamorous things. A photographer worth hiring, a decent trail map, an event with enough draw to be worth the drive. Each is expensive for one town and reasonable across three. That is what a local business community does when it works.

How it would work

Through initiatives that finish, through the people locally who others actually listen to, and by getting the larger employers in the area working alongside the small businesses and the people who live here.

I have had conversations with people who see this very differently, and who would rather their town stayed exactly as it is. I would ask them to look at what happens to towns that take that view for twenty years. They do not stay the same. They just get fewer reasons to visit.

First published in April 2018. Edited since: the plan download and the newsletter form that closed the original have been removed, along with a misspelling of Castle Cary. Links to related pieces, including the Castle Cary pieces written in 2026, and the declared interest in the group, which is still running, were added in September 2026; for how we work with businesses in the area now, see marketing for businesses in Somerset.