Our Historic Built Environment

Martock is an ancient settlement known for its beautiful buildings. We have 163 structures listed by Historic England as of national importance. (Ilminster has 154, Crewkerne 167). Of these, about 150 are buildings and the rest are structures like walls, memorials and molestones. We have many other buildings that are important and attractive but are not nationally listed.

In the Neighbourhood Plan we want enhance and strengthen our reputation for beautiful buildings. We want to make sure that both new buildings and alterations to existing ones look good and fit in. This is not easy to do and we need to take note of the many attempts elsewhere to wrestle with this problem. This page tries to provide information and examples on how we might do this.

The Conservation areas
Our old street scene is preserved by Conservation Areas in Martock and Coat. The Martock Conservation Area includes the houses along the main road from Higher Street, Bower Hinton in the south as far as the Precinct. It also extends along to the end of East Street.
The Conservation Area does not stop development but ensures that building changes, or felling trees, can only happen if the street scene is preserved. For more, including a map, go to the Conservation Areas page.

Locally listed buildings
The Sparrows Works building pictured has been the first view of Martock for people coming from the south for some 150 years. It is an important part of our history. It is a fine industrial building dating from the end of the nineteenth century.

We could put it on a list of locally important buildings. These are buildings that are not significant nationally, and so are not on the Historic England list, but which are important to us in the village. We need help compiling such a list. More information on the conservation area page.

A 'Sense of Place'; the Village Design Statement
What do we like about Martock? What is it that makes Martock, Martock? Easy questions difficult to answer. But we need answers if we are to ensure that new buildings 'fit in' and, we hope enhance old Martock.

To answer these questions we need to study how the village has changed over the seven centuries since our oldest surviving building–the Treasurer’s House–was created. We need to study how architectural styles have changed and what it is about them that we enjoy; what it is that creates the Martock ’sense of place’.

This will allow us to provide some guidance fro modern architects and developers on how best to design buildings that will blend well in the different parts of the village buts, at the same time, are good twenty-first century buildings. And, of course, we need to define clearly what architectsts and developers should not do.

To do this, we are creating a document called a Village Design Statement to support the Neighbourhood Plan policies. More about this can be found here.