The best things to do in Yeovil are the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton for Concorde and 90-odd naval aircraft, Yeovil Country Park at Ninesprings for a free half-day outdoors, and Ham Hill and Montacute for the countryside that starts about five minutes past the ring road.
Two things most guides won’t tell you. The Octagon Theatre has been shut since 2023 and won’t reopen this decade, so everything theatrical happens at Westlands instead. And Yeovil currently has no town museum open to the public, the collection exists, but you can’t walk into it.
Here’s what’s genuinely worth your time in 2026, with real prices, the parking tariffs that catch people out, and the bits locals actually do.
What Are the Best Things to Do in Yeovil?
If you have one day, do the Fleet Air Arm Museum in the morning and Ninesprings in the afternoon. If you have a weekend, add Ham Hill or Montacute and an evening at Westlands.
| Attraction | Adult price | Time needed | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fleet Air Arm Museum, Yeovilton | £21 online / £24 on the gate | 3–4 hours | Aviation, families, rainy days. |
| Yeovil Country Park (Ninesprings) | Free | Half a day | Walking, dogs, families. |
| Ham Hill Country Park | Free | 2–3 hours | Views, Iron Age history, a pub lunch. |
| Montacute House (National Trust) | £15 | Half a day | Gardens, Elizabethan architecture. |
| Haynes Motor Museum, Sparkford | £24.95 on the day | 3 hours | Cars, teenagers, wet weather. |
| Yeovil Railway Centre | £6.50–£12.50 on event days | 2 hours | Steam, turntables, under-10s. |
| Yeovil Town at Huish Park | From £17 in advance | Half a day | Saturday afternoons. |
Roughly what a day costs for two adults and two children, before food:
Ninesprings, Ham Hill, town ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ £0
Montacute House (family) ███████████░░░░░░░░░ £37.50
Railway Centre, steam day █████████████░░░░░░░ ~£45
Fleet Air Arm Museum (family) ████████████████░░░░ £56
Haynes Motor Museum ████████████████████ ~£70
Add about £4 for a day in a town-centre car park, or nothing at all on a Sunday.
Is the Fleet Air Arm Museum Worth Visiting?
Yes, and it’s the one attraction that justifies the trip on its own. It sits on the edge of RNAS Yeovilton, a working naval air station, so alongside the collection you get real Wildcats and Merlins coming and going over the car park.
Worth knowing before you search for it: the museum now trades as Royal Navy Museums: Naval Aviation. Locally, everyone still calls it the Fleet Air Arm Museum, and the road signs agree with the locals.
The practical details:
- Adult £21 online, £24 on the gate. Child £17 online. Family of two adults and up to three children £56 online, £63 on the day
- Under 3s and carers go free, UK serving personnel go free with a MOD 90 card, and veterans and Defence Discount holders get 30% off at the ticket desk
- Open 10am–4.30pm, Wednesday to Sunday, and every day during Somerset school holidays
- Parking is free — 230 spaces, no booking needed
- Keep your ticket. You can come back on it during opening hours, though you’ll need photo ID
Four halls hold more than 90 aircraft and 30,000 artefacts. The two things people remember are Concorde 002, the first British-built Concorde, which you can walk through, and the Aircraft Carrier Experience, you board a Wessex, “fly” to the deck of HMS Ark Royal and come out onto a recreated flight deck. There’s a café, an indoor picnic area and soft play, which matters if you’re doing this in February.
Allow three to four hours. Most people give it two and end up rushing Hall Four.
Don’t plan a trip around the Air Day
RNAS Yeovilton’s International Air Day used to draw 35,000 people every July. It hasn’t run since 2019, cancelled for Covid in 2020 and 2021, then for commercial reasons, and there’s been no confirmed return since. Plenty of listings sites still show it as an annual fixture. Check directly before you build a weekend around it.
Where Should You Go Outdoors in Yeovil?
Ninesprings first, then Ham Hill. Between them you get woodland, waterfalls, a lake, and one of the biggest Iron Age hillforts in Britain, and neither costs anything.
Yeovil Country Park and Ninesprings
The park is five linked green spaces: Ninesprings, Penn Hill, Wyndham Hill, Summerhouse Hill and Riverside, joined by a level cycleway and footpath that runs from the town centre out to Sherborne Road and Pen Mill station. Ninesprings is the busiest and most accessible section, spring-fed pools, waterfalls, woodland paths and a big play area.
A few local details:
- Ninesprings Café sits beside Goldenstones car park (BA20 1QZ), which is also the best place to park for the park
- There’s a no-dogs zone around the lake to protect the wildlife, and the shared path from Ninesprings to Wyndham Hill gets busy with bikes
- No drones. Yeovil sits under a no-fly zone because of the Leonardo airfield, so the whole park is out of bounds for flying anything
Walk up Summerhouse Hill or Wyndham Hill for the view back over the town. It’s a short climb and the best free thing in Yeovil.
Ham Hill and Montacute
Six miles west, Ham Hill is Somerset’s largest country park and Britain’s most extensive Iron Age hillfort, roughly three miles of ramparts enclosing 210 acres, on a ridge of the honey-coloured hamstone that half of south Somerset is built from.
Entry and parking are free, there’s a new visitor centre, and the Prince of Wales pub sits on the hill itself. On a clear day you can see the Mendips, the Quantocks, the Blackdowns and Exmoor from the war memorial.
Montacute House, a mile or so on, is the Elizabethan showpiece, completed in 1601, built of the same ham stone, and used as a location in Wolf Hall. Adult entry is £15 (£16.50 with Gift Aid), children £7.50, a family £37.50, free for National Trust members, and parking is free.
One honest caveat for 2026: the upper floors are closed for the Saving the Staircases project, which means the Long Gallery, the longest of its kind in England, isn’t open.
Ticket prices have been reduced to reflect that. The garden, parkland and the walk up St Michael’s Hill to the Prospect Tower are unaffected, and they’re the better half of the visit anyway.
What Can You Do in Yeovil When It Rains?
The Fleet Air Arm Museum is the obvious answer, four heated hangars will fill an afternoon. After that, Yeovil’s indoor options are decent but they’re mostly outside the town centre.
- Haynes Motor Museum at Sparkford, eight miles north-east, over 400 vehicles across ten themed halls, plus soft play, pedal cars and a bus cinema. £24.95 adult on the day, £21 concessions, £14.20 for children 4–15, under 4s free, with 10% off if you book online by midnight the day before. Your ticket automatically becomes an annual pass, so a second visit costs nothing
- Westlands Entertainment Venue, theatre, comedy, tribute acts and the town’s pantomime
- Yeovil Art Space in the Quedam, a free contemporary gallery run as a charity, open Wednesday to Friday 12–4 and Saturday 11–4
- Goldenstones, the pool right next to Ninesprings, useful if the weather turns halfway through a walk
- Quedam Shopping Centre, plus the cinema and bowling at Yeo Leisure Park
The Octagon Theatre, and why it’s shut
Yeovil’s main theatre closed at the end of April 2023 for survey work ahead of a redevelopment, and then the scheme collapsed when Somerset Council declared a financial emergency. A scaled-back £15 million project is now going ahead, backed by £10 million from DCMS with contributions from Yeovil Town Council, and planning permission has been granted. Construction is expected to run through 2027 and 2028.
Until then, everything the Octagon used to programme, including the Christmas panto, happens at Westlands on Westbourne Close. If you’ve booked a show in Yeovil, check the address twice.
The museum situation, honestly
The Museum of South Somerset in Hendford closed in 2011 and its collection moved to a store at Lufton. That store closed to general public access on 31 March 2026 following a health and safety review, and a working party is now looking at options for a new museum or heritage centre for the town.
So there is a superb local collection, gloving, creameries, railways, helicopters, and currently no building where you can go and see it. Occasional pop-up exhibitions are the exception, usually around Heritage Open Days in September.
What Free Things Are There to Do in Yeovil?
More than the town gets credit for. A full day here can cost nothing but parking, and on a Sunday not even that.
- Yeovil Country Park: all five sections, all free, all walkable from the centre
- Ham Hill Country Park: free entry and free parking
- Yeovil Art Space: free gallery in the Quedam
- St John’s Church: the Grade I listed 14th-century church in the middle of town, known as the Lantern of the West for its glass
- The Triangle: the town centre’s events space, with an amphitheatre, big screen and water feature, and a regular programme through the summer
- Yeovil Railway Centre shop: open Sunday mornings 10am to noon even when no trains are running, and volunteers happy to talk turntables
- Ninesprings to Pen Mill on foot: the traffic-free path that most visitors never find
What’s On in Yeovil in 2026?
Westlands carries the entertainment calendar while the Octagon is closed, and Huish Park carries the Saturdays.
- Westlands, autumn 2026, Phil Wang on 1 October, Tim Peake on 8 October, New Dawn Fades on 16 October, Professor Dame Sue Black on 24 October, Flo & Joan on 31 October and Judi Love on 14 November, with Aladdin as the Christmas pantomime
- Yeovil Town play National League football at Huish Park, capacity 9,565. Adult tickets from about £17 in advance, rising £2 on the day, £5 for under-16s and £3 for accompanied under-14s, with on-site parking at £3
- Heritage Open Days, 14–18 September, Montacute House is free to enter during the festival, which is the cheapest way to see it all year
- John Haynes Classic Motor Show at Haynes Motor Museum, Sunday 6 September
- Yeovil Railway Centre runs train days through to late October, then Santa Specials in December
- Christmas lights switch-on in the town centre in late November, followed by the panto season at Westlands
- Yeovil Half Marathon and 10K return on Sunday 4 April 2027, with a closed-road town centre start and a route through the country park and out to Montacute
Getting Around Yeovil and Where to Park
Yeovil is a driving town. The centre is compact and walkable, but the two railway stations are both outside it, and the good stuff, Yeovilton, Ham Hill, Montacute, Sparkford, needs a car or a bus.
Council car parks charge 8am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday, including bank holidays. Outside those hours, and all day Sunday, they’re free. The machines take coins only, so use PayByPhone if you don’t carry change.
| Car park | 2 hours | All day |
|---|---|---|
| Goldenstones (for Ninesprings) | £1.80 | £3.70 (Sat £3.20) |
| Goldcroft | — | £3.70 (Sat £3.20) |
| Stars Lane West | £2.00 | around £4.90 |
| Petters Way (central) | £2.00 | £14.90 |
That last row is the one to notice. Petters Way is fine for a couple of hours and expensive for a day, the all-day rate is nearly four times Goldcroft’s. If you’re staying past lunchtime, park at Goldenstones or Goldcroft and walk in.
By rail, Yeovil has two stations and neither is in the centre:
- Yeovil Pen Mill, about a mile east, on the Heart of Wessex line between Bristol Temple Meads and Weymouth
- Yeovil Junction, two miles south at Stoford, on the West of England main line, direct to London Waterloo in about 2 hours 20 minutes, roughly hourly, and west to Exeter
Yeovil Railway Centre is next door to the Junction, which makes for a neat combination, though buses between the Junction and the town don’t run on Sundays, which is exactly when the centre opens.
Yeovil as a base for the wider area
This is the town’s real argument. Sit here and a lot of Dorset and Somerset is inside an hour.
| Destination | Approx. distance | Drive time |
|---|---|---|
| Montacute House | 5 miles | ~12 min |
| Ham Hill Country Park | 6 miles | ~15 min |
| Sherborne | 6 miles | ~15 min |
| Fleet Air Arm Museum, Yeovilton | 7 miles | ~15 min |
| Haynes Motor Museum, Sparkford | 8 miles | ~15 min |
| Cadbury Castle | 12 miles | ~20 min |
| Glastonbury | 25 miles | ~40 min |
| Taunton | 26 miles | ~40 min |
| Lyme Regis and the Jurassic Coast | 28 miles | ~50 min |
Distances are approximate and assume clear roads. Sherborne, just over the Dorset border, is the one visitors overlook, an abbey, two castles and a high street that Yeovil’s own regeneration is still working towards.
Planning a Weekend in Yeovil
Two days covers it. The Fleet Air Arm Museum and Ninesprings on day one, Ham Hill and Montacute on day two, with Haynes or Westlands held back in case the weather turns.
Book ahead around home fixtures at Huish Park, the half marathon weekend in early April, and any week when a large project mobilises nearby, Yeovil has fewer beds than a town of its size suggests, and the Leonardo site and its supply chain take a steady share of them.
That’s the side of Somerset we know well. We run serviced apartments in Yeovil with parking, full kitchens and self check-in, plus places in Taunton, Bridgwater and Highbridge across Somerset, useful if you’re travelling as a family or a group and would rather have a front door and a washing machine than a hotel corridor.
Longer work stays go through our business and extended stay rates, with bills included and company invoicing. If you’re not sure what suits, tell us your dates and we’ll say straight whether we can cover it.
Heading further west afterwards? Our guide to things to do in Taunton covers Hestercombe, the Quantocks and the Somerset Space Walk.
FAQs
What is Yeovil best known for?
Helicopters. Aircraft have been built on the Westland site since 1915 and Leonardo employs around 3,300 people there today. Yeovil is also the home of Screwfix, founded in the town in 1979, and of Yeovil Town’s FA Cup giant-killing history.
How much is the Fleet Air Arm Museum?
£21 for an adult booked online and £24 on the gate, £17 for a child, and £56 online for a family of two adults and up to three children. Under 3s and carers go free, and parking is free.
Is there anything free to do in Yeovil?
Plenty. Yeovil Country Park, Ham Hill, Yeovil Art Space, St John’s Church and the Triangle are all free, and town-centre parking costs nothing on Sundays or after 6pm.
Is the Octagon Theatre open?
No. It closed in April 2023 and a £15 million redevelopment is due to run through 2027 and 2028. Shows are staged at Westlands Entertainment Venue in the meantime, including the Christmas pantomime.
Is there a museum in Yeovil town centre?
Not at the moment. The Museum of South Somerset closed in 2011, and the stored collection at Lufton closed to public access in March 2026 while a new heritage venue is considered.
Is parking free in Yeovil?
Not during the day. Council car parks charge 8am to 6pm Monday to Saturday, including bank holidays, and are free outside those hours and all day Sunday. All-day rates range from £3.70 to £14.90 depending on the car park.
How far is Yeovil from London by train?
About 2 hours 20 minutes from Yeovil Junction to London Waterloo, with roughly hourly direct services on the West of England main line.
What’s there to do near Yeovil with children?
The Fleet Air Arm Museum, Haynes Motor Museum, Ninesprings’ play areas and Yeovil Railway Centre’s train days all work well, and Ham Hill is free with space to run.
