Bruton (/ˈbruːtən/ BROO-tən) is a small market town,[2][3] and civil parish in Somerset, England, on the River Brue and the A359 between Frome and Yeovil.

The 242.8 mm of rain that fell on 28 June 1917 left a river watermark on a pub wall 20 feet above the mean.

[7] The Church of St Mary, Bruton was founded by Ine of Wessex in the 7th century,[8] Bruton was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Briuuetone, meaning "Vigorously flowing river" from the Old English tor and Celtic briw meaning vigour.

[9] The river has been the site of several watermills and in 2003 the South Somerset Hydropower Group installed their first hydroelectric turbine at Gants Mill at nearby Pitcombe.

[10][11] Bruton Abbey, a medieval Augustinian priory from which a wall remains in the Plox close to Bow Bridge, was sold after the dissolution of the monasteries to the courtier Sir Maurice Berkeley (died 1581), whose Bruton branch of the Berkeley family converted it into a mansion, which was demolished in the late 18th century.

A rare copy of an inspeximus of Magna Carta was found in Bruton in the 1950s and claimed by King's School.

[citation needed] Much of the town's history appears in the Bruton Museum's Dovecote Building in the High Street.

[23] In 2010, an anonymous donor agreed to pay the rent on the building, removing earlier doubts about its viability.

The route is the most direct between London (Paddington) and the West Country (ending at Penzance), but is slower for geographical reasons.

The stretch between Westbury and Castle Cary is also part of the Heart of Wessex line, served by Great Western Railway services between Bristol Temple Meads and Weymouth.

It is among the best places in England to display the stratigraphic distinction of fossil ammonites in the Subcontractus and Morrisi zones.

[29] The nearby Godminster Lane Quarry and Railway Cutting is another geological Site of Special Scientific Interest, for study of the Inferior Oolite limestones, of the Middle Jurassic age, laid down in a warm shallow sea some 175 million years ago.