http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/travel/an-english-market-town-draws-a-cutting-edge-cast.html 2014-10-02 17:10:08 An English Market Town Draws a Cutting-Edge Cast Bruton, in the South Somerset countryside, has welcomed the arrival of contemporary art, plus restaurants and inns. === A few weeks ago, the Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf, who helped create the just-completed High Line in New York, could be found on the outskirts of Bruton, England — a small market town in the South Somerset countryside, a few hours down from London — unveiling another unlikely commission. Here, on the once-derelict five-acre Durslade Farm, is With more than 32,000 visitors since its July inauguration, the site is bringing new life to an ancient backwater. Compared with London, New York and Zurich, where sister galleries are located — and even with Somerset’s Unesco World Heritage city of Bath or Glastonbury, with its music festival — Bruton (population 2,900) has hardly been more than a speck on the map. “It was a fortunate accident which drew me to this place,” John Steinbeck wrote during a 1959 stay while doing research on King Arthur, believed to have roamed the county. Today, with its roofless 16th-century dovecote overlooking the River Brue Valley and a narrow high street crammed with ham-stone houses, restaurants and bric-a-brac shops, Bruton is a magnet for creatives. British Vogue has called it “the new Notting Hill.” The Somerset conservation architects Benjamin + Beauchamp and the Paris-based architecture firm Laplace have restored the Durslade Farm buildings, some dating from 1760. The threshing barn and piggery have become exhibition spaces, the engine room will be a farm shop, and the farmhouse (three nights from £1,500, about $2,375 at $1.58 to the pound) now has six colorful bedrooms and site-specific installations by the artists Guillermo Kuitca and Pipilotti Rist. Sculptures referencing the rural surroundings (like a giant Louise Bourgeois spider) dot the cloistered courtyard, designed by Mr. Oudolf. He planted 26,000 perennials throughout the larger landscaped meadow, with a pond and walking paths. Local specialists are invited to host workshops on creating herbal tinctures and hand-felting wool. According to Alice Workman, director of Hauser & Wirth Somerset, most collaborators are from the region. “The place and the people here kind of created what we’ve created,” she said. “And, you know, the whole area is thriving.” At the Chapel The Wirths asked the restaurant’s owners to run their new gallery’s restaurant in Durslade Farm’s old cowsheds. Its menu sources vegetables from the garden and livestock from the farm, and the bar doubles as an art installation incorporating agricultural objects from the property. Fridays it stays open late with live local music. Bruton favorites such as Nearby in the village of Mells, former executives from Soho House and its country outpost, Babington House, have taken over the 500-year-old The Talbot Inn’s owners are planning another pub-with-rooms a few miles away in Frome (pronounced froom), whose cobblestoned St. Catherine’s quarter is becoming a shopping draw for all things retro and quirky. Among a fresh crop of boutiques: the three-level There’s a "suitcase sale" atop Catherine Hill on the first Sunday of each month (think of trinkets sold out of a secondhand pram) and a vinyl-only “mobile disco” in an old laundry truck nicknamed Donna Somerset — both part of the new Celebrities are reportedly looking to buy in the area — and property rates are rising. Still, residents seem to be enjoying the spotlight. An octogenarian artist named Juanita Jain recounted the filming of "Chocolat" at Durslade Farm, pre-Hauser & Wirth, when owned by her friend, the late Trevor Gilling. She described him as an unassuming man, much like his hometown. “He never went out into the world,” she said. “And now, the world’s come to him!”