[5] The first surgeon was Horace Swete, author of the Handy Book of Cottage Hospitals,[6] to which Florence Nightingale also referred in 1869.

It maintains and repairs parish facilities,[8] under the unitary authority of North Somerset, created in 1996 separately from today's non-metropolitan county and based at Weston-super-Mare.

[11] The parish is represented in Parliament by the North Somerset constituency, which elects one member by the first past the post system, currently Sadik Al-Hassan of the Labour Party.

Either side of the door stone are busts of John Locke and Hannah More from the early 19th century.

The tall four-stage tower has set-back buttresses crowned by crocketed pinnacles at the top stage, which displays moulded string courses and a trefoil-pierced triangular parapet with gargoyles and corner pinnacles.

[20] A local institution is the Butcombe microbrewery, set up in nearby Butcombe in 1978 by Simon Whitmore, managing director of Courage Western, made redundant in a restructuring, and his wife Maureen.

In 2003 the business was sold to Guy Newell and Paul Horsley and moved to a purpose-built brewery completed in March 2005 on an estate at Wrington.

The club badge is a gold rampant dragon (wyvern), matching the emblem on the unofficial Flag of Somerset.

The club's limited overs team finished as runners-up in the league's Butcombe Brewery KO Cup.