Hotels in Street

Street is a company village that grew into a town. Quaker brothers Cyrus and James Clark started making sheepskin slippers here in the nineteenth century, and Clarks shoes shaped almost everything that followed: the sober Victorian terraces, the schools, the temperance streak that kept pubs scarce for generations. Today the old factory buildings house Clarks Village, Britain's first purpose-built outlet shopping centre, which draws coachloads of bargain hunters and is the main reason many people come at all.

Street is practical rather than pretty, and on a busy Saturday the outlet traffic dominates. Its real strength is position. The flat, watery Somerset Levels begin almost at the edge of town, where the Neolithic Sweet Track timber walkway once crossed the marshes. Stay near the High Street, which puts you within walking distance of the outlets and gives you a quick, easy run to Glastonbury without paying its prices.