Shepton Mallet Open Gardens
Private gardens open around the home town of the Victorian Snowdrop King to raise funds for the project that plants thousands of bulbs on the town's verges and roundabouts each year.
A scrappy but increasingly lively Somerset market town with a centuries-old Friday market, a clutch of independent businesses fighting back against out-of-town retail, real heritage bones in its listed buildings and conservation area, and enough going on at weekends to justify a deliberate visit rather than a passing stop.
Cottages, B&Bs and hotels near Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
Some stay links are affiliate links. More
Add the free Villagly badge to your own website. It shows visitors you are listed with us and links them straight back to this page.
Get the free badge →Event details come from organisers and can change. Please check with the organiser before you travel.
"Over 160 years old and still the only one-day agricultural show in the South West with free pedestrian entry, bringing livestock, cheese tasting, craft stalls, Somerset cider and horticultural classes to one showground."
Mid-Somerset Show
"A week of music, dance and song for adults of all abilities at England's national centre for folk arts, tucked into a manor in the Quantock Hills."
Halsway Folk Summer School
"A traditional illuminated village carnival parade winding through the ancient coastal settlement of Porlock on the edge of Exmoor."
Porlock Carnival
"Somerset in September: a town that has been judging cheese since 1876, Cheddar at its finest, Caerphilly from the Welsh end of things, and a show ring that still takes its goats as seriously as anything."
Frome Cheese Show
"A long-running Somerset village carnival bringing illuminated floats and community procession to the streets of South Petherton each autumn."
South Petherton Carnival
"One of Somerset's most distinctive named carnivals, the Axbridge Blackberry Carnival celebrates the season with a procession through this handsome medieval market town."
Axbridge Blackberry Carnival
"Traction engines, vintage vehicles and working machinery gather off the A436 near Bourton-on-the-Water for a two-day show in the Cotswold limestone uplands, the kind of event that draws real working-machinery enthusiasts rather than festival-goers and is better for it."
North Cotswold Steam and Vintage Show
"Parishioners join hands to embrace their church among the famous 99 yews of this Cotswold wool village."
Painswick Clypping Ceremony
"The farm shop team lay out apples gathered from local orchards for sampling against the backdrop of one of England's grandest landscape gardens."
Apple Day at Stourhead
"Townsfolk hoist barrels soaked in tar and set alight onto their shoulders and run them flaming through packed Devon streets on bonfire night, a roaring, slightly terrifying inheritance passed down through local families."
Ottery St Mary Tar Barrels
Villagly Award · Fieriest Night in the UK ✦ Weird and Wonderful"Set in a hidden Cotswold valley, this 18th-century rococo garden opens each January for its annual snowdrop season, showcasing over five million blooms across fifteen named varieties including the locally discovered Galanthus 'Atkinsii'."
Snowdrops Spectacle at Painswick Rococo Garden
"Six million snowdrops in over 40 varieties carpet the Victorian Fernery, Lime Avenue, and Lady's Walk of this National Trust estate, with volunteer-led early morning walks before the gates open to the public."
Kingston Lacy Snowdrop Season