Minehead

Redevelopment of the Parade started c1870. Lime trees were planted in the 1880s to start the Avenue. The buildings to the left of photograph 31223 had just been built, replacing houses with walled gar- dens. The building in the centre of the row, at the end of Bancks Street, was all that remained of the older buildings. Then a bank, it is now an estate agents. The building protruding at the end of the row, in Wellington Square, is now a bank. Capron’s, the building on the far left, became a well-known garage. It was Minehead’s first garage, established in 1908. Two other garages were established before the First World War but a petrol shortage during the First World War meant horse drawn carriages and bicycles remained popular until the 1920s.
An extract from from"Minehead Town and City Memories".

Today, all that remains of the Plume of Feathers is the stableyard, now used as garages, which can be seen from Tythings Court. In the early 1900s the road was widened and the market house and several buildings in the same row were built to the designs of W J Tamlyn. The new market house was built in a ‘neo-Baroque’ style. It is dated 1902 on the façade in front of the clock tower. Most buildings in the Parade and Avenue are built of local Triassic sandstone. This reddish stone is soft compared with most local stones and can be most easily cut. Much came from Staunton quarry at Alcombe. However, it weathers easily and has become honeycombed in some of the older buildings in town. Harder red Devonian sandstones make up the hills around Minehead. This is difficult to cut and forms rough ‘rubble’ building stone, often used in outbuildings and garden walls. Some has been used in houses; along North Road and the Quay, large beach cobbles of the same stone have been split and used for building.
An extract from from"Minehead Town and City Memories".

Jurassic ‘blue lias’ limestone. This has been used in some of the older buildings around North Hill, including the tower of St Michael’s church. Some red Triassic mudstone from the Vale of Porlock was used during the 1930s building boom, but proved too porous. In places it was so soft it was worked for brick clay. The town had two brickworks, the one on the Warren operating from 1750 to 1919 and one on the Porlock road operating from 1897 to 1947. They produced more than enough bricks and tiles to supply the boom in building in Minehead with the expansion of the tourist industry and there was considerable export. The economic upheavals of the two world wars subsequently put them out of business. Bratton Water once continued as an open run from what is now the Parade end of the Avenue across what is now Blenheim Gardens to the sea. A track running beside the stream was one of Minehead’s original medieval streets. Originally called La Lane, it became known as Water Lane. There was a pleasant walk by the stream but it was liable to flooding and so was enclosed in a culvert in the 1870s, only to continue to flood the new streets above.
An extract from from"Minehead Town and City Memories".

This became the main park for Minehead in 1924 following private donations towards a scheme for the conversion of 6 acres of meadows. It was laid out as ‘winter gardens’ with flower beds, where deck chairs could be hired. There was a bandstand which was converted into a café; later came a putting green. Another bandstand survived, providing concerts and dancing (old time and folk) in the 1950s and 60s; it still provides a weekly concert in summer. Alongside the gardens runs Blenheim Road, Minehead’s first toll road, built in the 1760s to connect Lower Town to Quay Street. In this street, Arthur C Clarke, writer of science fact and fiction, was born.
An extract from from"Minehead Town and City Memories".

A promenade walk had been established along the street in the 1880s, when some of the gardens were removed. Now, the level of the road was raised to prevent flooding of the cottages on the far side. Hence, they are now partly below road level, with a retaining wall in place to buffer them from the floods which still arise from time to time. Most of the doorways are still equipped with slots in which to insert boards when there are flood warnings.
An extract from from"Minehead Town and City Memories".