Shapwick School

There was presumably a building on the senior school site in Shapwick prior to the current manor because the dovecot dates from c.1400, whereas the beams in the kitchen suggest nothing earlier than 1500. There was also a mediaeval tithe barn opposite the stables, used to collect the ecclesiastical rent in kind from the surrounding villages.

A dovecot was the prerogative of the lord of manor, in this case the Almoner of Glastonbury Abbey. The whole village belonged to Glastonbury and the Abbot had a courthouse in what is now the hotel. After Henry VIII close the Abbey and confiscated the land the village was sold off as two unequal manors. The school and the land associated with it was eventually bought by William Bull of Wells, a wealthy linen merchant, as a wedding gift for his son in 1619. (The Bull memorials are in the chancel of Shapwick church).

The original c.1600 house consisted of the front wing plus a possibly separate kitchen that may predate the rest. The front was what’s called a cross-passage house, i.e. the front door (dating from c.1600) led straight through to the courtyard at the back. (The current library is a Victorian addition, so the original house was very narrow). The current local of the Heads’ office and visitors’ toilets would have been the ‘service end’ of the house, used for storing wet and dry foods. A map from 1764 shows that end of the house no longer existed so the rooms currently standing are a re-build, but the two access doors are still visible – one is now a recess in the porch and the other is the archway into the area by the Heads’ office.

On the left of the cross passage there would have been a door into the Hall of the house, the principal room. Under the whiteboard in the dining room are signs of where the door might have been. The wall with the fireplace is very thick, indicating an outer wall. The fireplace must have been very large at one time. The other dining room was the original family ‘solar’ (private room) much altered by the Victorians but with a fireplace dating from c.1720.

The kitchen may have been separate, quite common in those days because of the fire risk. Facing the hatch is an Elizabethan cupboard.

By the 18th century the owners had already enlarged the house. It was no longer acceptable to have all the rooms opening off each other and a back staircase was put in. There is an inventory of 1692 giving the contents of all the rooms upstairs and down, also the very fine Tuscan-style stables and tithe barn.

The next clue comes with the map of 1764. It shows all the land associated with the two landowners and has a little picture of the Manor with the stables and barn. By this time the Bull family had become the Bull Strangways and the Strangways lion is shown on the fire hoods of the fireplace in the library and the staff room.

By the next map of 1839 the tithe barn had gone and that area had become a garden rather than a farmyard. By the first Ordnance Survey map c.1885 it is obvious that the Victorian owners had enlarged the house with the addition of the library, a bay window on the dining room, a veranda and various rooms at the back including a laundry room where you can still see the old copper. There was also a kitchen garden, now the tennis court, complete with several greenhouses heated by a boiler house just past the Biology lab.

By the Second World War the family consisted of an elderly spinster, Miss Vialls Strangways, and she sold the manor to the grandfather of the current Lord Vestey, who also bought the Hotel (i.e. the other manor in Shapwick) and thus for a time the village was back under one lord of the manor for the first time since the 1530s.

The manor subsequently became a B&B for a short time, then a Millfield boarding house and after than an international school, owned by the Atkinsons, before becoming the senior department of Edington School. The estate is still owned by Lord Vestey, but the associated farms have been sold off in recent years.