The baths are fed by a natural hot-water spring which pours out approximately 1 136 500 litres of water per day at a temperature of 46.5 °C. The site was inhabited in the Mesolithic age, well before the Celtic tribe, the Dobunni, who regarded the spring as sacred. The Romans then arrived and created the Baths, later covered by mud. The spa came back to life in the 18C under Queen Anne (1702).

The museum illustrates the daily life of a 19C Somerset farm: the masterpiece is the 14C barn from the abbey, with its fine masonry and splendid roof.

The sandstone castle overlooks the town from a tor where Saxon fortifications once stood. It was built by the Norman baron, William de Mohun but, by 1374, the Mohun line was dying out and the castle was sold to Lady Elizabeth Luttrell. When George Fownes Luttrell inherited the property in 1867, he commissioned the architect, Anthony Salvin, to transform the castle and give it the appearance of a fortified Jacobean manor house.

Overshadowed by its prestigious neighbour, this magnificent Perpendicular Gothic parish church stands at the other end of the city. The elegant, 37 m tower has buttresses which support the bell tower. The inside features a typical Somerset 16C coffered ceiling, restored in 1963, a superb Jacobean pulpit dating from 1636 and two much mutilated altarpieces, commissioned in 1470.