The Town has a long history which can be seen through a number of early churches which remain, but really started to grow and become a transport hub with the development of the Somerset coalfield.

For many years the coalmines provided employment for local men until they ceased operations in the 1960s, around the same time that the town's two railway stations also closed.

Midsomer Norton provides shopping and service industries for the surrounding areas and supports several music venues and bands.

Midsomer Norton is home to a leisure centre, several sports clubs and provides youth opportunities such as Scouts and Guides.

[4] Eilert Ekwall wrote that the village "is said to be so called in allusion to the festival held at midsummer on the day of St. John, the patron saint.

As Simon Winchester notes in his book The Map that Changed the World, "...the roads on this part of Somerset were atrocious, thick with mud and as rough as the surface of the moon".

Around 1866 an obelisk Crimean War monument with two marble plaques, was built at the site of St Chad's well, by the mother of Frederick Stukeley Savage for the benefit of the poor.

[15] Midsomer Norton Town Hall was commissioned by a local brewer, Thomas Harris Smith, designed in the Italianate style and completed in 1860.

The relics of the industrial past are very evident within the area, including the distinct conical shape of the Old Mills batch overlooking the town.

On the southern fringes of the town is the 2 hectares (4.9 acres) Silver Street Local Nature Reserve, on the site of the estate of Norton House, an eighteenth century mansion built by the coalmine-owning Savage family but demolished in 1937-8.

[18] It contains a broad-leaf woodland around several ponds, a restored nineteenth-century wellhead that supplied water to the house, and a grassland field.

The annual mean temperature is about 10 °C (50 °F) with seasonal and diurnal variations, but the modifying effect of the sea, restricts the range to less than that in most other parts of the United Kingdom.

Sometimes several times a year, the Somer rose up during prolonged rainfall and flooded shops, particularly where the high street is at its lowest point in the middle between Martin's newsagent and the former Palladium cinema.

The infrastructure comprises a sluice gate situated at the top of the high street near Somervale School through which the water is carried under the town via a pre-cast concrete culvert several metres in diameter to an outlet further downstream at Rackvernal.

Since it began operation, no flooding has occurred to the high street and an Environment Agency report confirms that the relief scheme remains in good condition and continues to serve to its 100-year standard.

In 2008 a new monitoring station was installed at nearby Welton through which data on water pressure and flood levels can be collected via metal tubes placed in the river linked to a telemetry box.

[28] Despite modernisation in the early 1960s, this final pit lapsed into unprofitability due to local geological difficulties and manpower shortages.

The company, known locally as ‘Welton Bag’ planned to move to larger premises at Westbury in Wiltshire, but promised to transfer all 400 jobs to the new site.

He described the experience in his autobiographical work Boy: Tales of Childhood (published 1984): My kerosene motor-tanker had a tap at the back and when I rolled into Shepton Mallet or Midsomer Norton or Peasedown St John or Huish Champflower, the old girls and the young maidens would hear the roar of my motor and would come out of their cottages with jugs and buckets to buy a gallon of kerosene for their lamps and their heaters.

He later described his visits there: "I suppose that in fact I never spent longer than two months there in any year, but the place captivated my imagination as my true home never did.

[47] In 2016 the town's first LGBT Pride celebration event was held at The Wunderbar, which had previously been host to comedians Matt Lucas and Ed Byrne.

[50] Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the alternative live music and DJ scene in Midsomer Norton flourished with the help of venues such as The Stones Cross and The Wunderbar, which promoted unsigned bands for over 25 years.

On the first Friday of every month the Paradis Palm Court Trio perform free classical concerts in the Town Hall.

Choir concerts (male voices in particular) command a local following and the Lions club is a promoter of such attractions usually held in the Methodist or Parish churches.

[51][52] Anthony Horowitz, the original writer of Midsomer Murders, borrowed part of the name of the town when he adapted Caroline Graham's Chief Inspector Barnaby series for television in 1997.

[55] Another old building is the Catholic Church of the Holy Ghost, which is a 15th-century tithe barn converted by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

[56] For many years, the local Catholic community were served by Benedictine monks from the now defunct Downside Abbey, formerly under the Diocese of Clifton.

[61] In 1746, John Wesley's travelling preachers, based in Bristol, were invited in the mid-1700s to support the local society, the man himself first coming in 1767.

In the 1990s, the present church building and adjoining hall were totally refurbished and linked, the facilities being well used by the local community.

The Baptist Church have their building in Welton but hold their Sunday morning service at Paulton Rovers Football Club now in order to accommodate their congregation.