Exterior of the amenity building at Taunton Deane South in Dec 2023. Quite a tired looking place, which was supposedly "improved" in 2019. It remains rather cramped & squalid, but with plenty of natural lighting inside. Taunton Deane's story began in 1971, where bids opened for operators to purchase the land & build a services here. Ross won the bid in 1974, and were set to open the site as "Cutsey". Ross quickly pulled out of this contract, & Roadchef was set to become the new operator of the site instead. Roadchef renamed the site from Cutsey to Taunton Deane, and temporary facilities opened here (on the Southbound side) in 1976. The permanent amenity building then opened in April 1977. Given the large grounds, but low traffic levels, Roadchef initially decided to only build facilities on the Southbound side of the M5. Northbound traffic would have to park up & use the external footbridge to access the facilities. Facilities were eventually built on the Northbound side in 1989, but the amenity building is much smaller than Southbound. A Days Inn motel was built at Southbound in 1989 as well. A story almost identical to this is Rownhams on the M27, which is also operated by Roadchef & has one larger 70s building and a smaller 80s building, just like Taunton Deane. Taunton Deane Southbound feels very similar to Sandbach, another 70s built Roadchef site. They all have low ceilings & feel claustrophobic inside. As my photo evidences, there are many outdoor takeaway kiosks at Taunton Deane South. This is due to how busy the place gets during the summer holidays. These kiosks, as well as the Costa Drive thru, draw crowds of motorists away from the interior of the amenity building, preventing it from overfilling. Currently, at the front of Taunton Deane South, there is an additional seating area. This was used as a temporary seating area whilst the main one was being renovated in 2019. Roadchef decided to purchase it from their contractor permanently, to be used as an "overflow" seating area, primarily used when the site gets extremely busy during the summer periods. Overall, it looks scruffy and luckily in 2025, Roadchef will be removing this & undertaking significant renovations to the interior here, adding a LEON restaurant. A full refurb would benefit Taunton Deane South as neighbouring Roadchef site Sedgemoor (25 miles North of here) has received significant upgrades & is currently much more attractive to customers than Taunton Deane. Motorway Services on the M5 have always been unique in that they are much busier during holiday (mainly summer) periods than any other time of year. This is why Taunton Deane becomes a very limited motorway services during working periods, as there's no requirement for all the facilities to be open. It's a very "seasonal" site, especially at Northbound. This photo evidences a large i-Media advertising board as well as Roadchef's standard branding (McDonalds & Costa). The photo also shows the green, rural nature of the site, which is surrounded in large sums of Somerset greenery. Taunton Deane South was actually quite busy during my visit, made 3 days before Christmas Day. There are many more road users during the Christmas period, so this large amount of customers was to be expected. Taunton Deane South is thoroughly signposted from the M5 Southbound so customers know exactly when to leave the motorway for it.

Photo taken on 22/12/2023 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Taunton Deane, Roadchef, M5