Williton

Williton is a village 1.5 miles south of Watchet and 14 miles north-west of Taunton. Watchet has its own page: Watchet. Williton is a good centre for visiting the Quantock Hills, the Brendons and Exmoor, so one base covers three different landscapes.

The railway is part of the village story. Williton station opened on 31 March 1862 on the West Somerset Railway and closed on 4 January 1971, when British Rail shut it. On 28 August 1976 a new West Somerset Railway reopened the station, and the line runs as a heritage railway between Minehead and Bishops Lydeard. The station has two platforms and is the main passing point on the line, where most trains cross. Its locomotive workshops are the headquarters of the Diesel and Electric Preservation Group.

The coast is close. Doniford Bay has Jurassic fossils, and the largest Ichthyosaurus fossil found there went to a museum in Hanover. Doniford also has an early 19th-century lime kiln beside the beach.

Older sites are listed in the parish too. Battlegore Burial Chamber has three surviving Bronze Age barrows. In Williton itself, the Church of St Peter is a Grade II* listed building, and Orchard Wyndham House is Grade I listed. The 2021 census recorded a population of roughly 2,800.