BRUTON, a small town of 1788 inhabitants, 7 m.  S.E. from Shepton Mallet, with a station on the G.W.R.  Frome and Weymouth line.  It is also served by bus from Cole Station (S. & D.), 1-1/2 m. away.  It is a quaint little place, lying at the bottom of a deep valley watered by the Brue, to the proximity of which it owes its name.  Bruton makes no show of business; its activities are chiefly educational.  The antiquarian will, however, find here much to interest him, for there is a fine church, and the town has many ecclesiastical associations.  It was at one time the site of a Benedictine Priory, which was subsequently converted into an abbey of Austin Canons in 1525.  Of this foundation nothing now remains but a three-storeyed pigeon-house (which stands out conspicuously on the summit of a little knoll behind the town) and the abbey court-house in High Street (see below).  The abbey itself stood on the site of the present rectory, which is said to incorporate one of its walls.  At the Reformation the monastery went down in the wreck of the religious houses, and Sir M. Berkley, who as the king’s standard-bearer was not without friends at Court, came in for the spoil.  The church is a handsome Perp. building, with a noble W. tower of the Shepton type, decorated with triple windows and a rich parapet.  A second small tower rises above the N. porch (a very unusual feature).  The interior is remarkable for the painful incongruity of the chancel—­a pseudo-classical structure, built in 1743, to replace the dismantled monastic choir.  It contains in a recess on N. recumbent effigies of Sir M. Berkley and wives (1559-85), and on the opposite wall a tablet to W. Godolphin (1636).  The nave is extremely handsome, and is covered with a fine roof.  Note (1) niches between clerestory windows (cp.  St Mary’s, Taunton), (2) stepped recess in N. aisle (cp.  Chewton), (3) indications, on N. and S. walls, of stairway to rood-loft, which, unless the building was once shorter, must have stood in an unusually forward position, (4) piscina in S. aisle, (5) fragment of mediaeval cope in N.E. corner of nave, (6) chained copies of Jewel (1609) and Erasmus (1548), (7) Jacobean screen under tower.  At the W. gateway is an ancient tomb, said to be that of Abbot Gilbert, whose initials, W.G. are cut on one of the battlements of the N. wall.  Near the school is a quaint pack-horse bridge ("Bruton Bow”) spanning the river (cp.  Allerford).  In High Street (S. side) will be noticed the old Abbey Court-house (now a private residence), bearing on its wall the “canting” device of Prior Henton (1448).  On the same side of the street is Sexey’s Hospital, an asylum for a few old men and women, founded in 1638 by Hugh Sexey, a Bruton stable-boy, who in the “spacious days” of Good Queen Bess rose to be auditor in the royal household.  It consists of a quadrangle, the S. side of which is formed by a combined hall and chapel of Elizabethan architecture, finely panelled with black oak.  The surplus revenues of Sexey’s estate support a local Trade School.  Bruton also possesses a well-equipped Grammar School, of Edward IV.’s foundation, which replaced an earlier school established here in 1520 by Richard Fitz-James, Bishop of London (1506-22).