Coach House, Old Cleeve

The region

Coach House is situated on the edge of the village of Old Cleeve, which is a charming little village.  Blue Anchor is a short distance and a pubs, which provide food and two cafés.  Washford is also not far in other direction  that has 2 pubs that serve food, and has a small sho...p and Post Office, a little further on is Williton, with two small supermarkets, Post Office, butchers, hardware shop, and some pubs, restaurants and take-aways.  In the opposite direction is the charming medieval village of Dunster, just off the A39.  Dunster  Castle is well worth a visit for sight-seeing as well as shopping and has many restaurants, tea rooms and pubs serving food.  Minehead is the main town West Somerset and is approximately 6 miles from  Here you will find the larger supermarkets and petrol stations (Tesco and Morrisons are both situated on the outskirts of the town and have long opening hours), most major high street banks with cash machines, plus a range of other shops throughout the town.

'Cleeve' means cliff or hill; the village was once simply called Cleeve but became known as Old Cleeve to differentiate between nearby site of Cleeve Abbey in Washford, which was a monastery founded in the late 12th century as a house for monks. Today Cleeve Abbey is looked after by English Heritage and is open to the public; it is one of the best-preserved medieval Cistercian monastic sites in Britain. The parish church sited in the village of Old Cleeve also dates from the 12th century and has been awarded Grade I listed status.

The West Somerset Railway is a steam operated heritage railway and runs very near to Old Cleeve, passing over Black Monkey Bridge, which was built around 1860. Old Cleeve was also near the route of the West Somerset Mineral Railway which ran from the ironstone mines in the Brendon Hills to the port of Watchet on the Bristol Channel.

Between Old Cleeve and Watchet is Cleeve Hill a site of Special Scientific Interest as it contains two species of plant which are nationally rare in Great Britain, Nit-grass (Gastridium ventricosum) and Rough Marsh-mallow (Althaea hirsuta).