(Grade II listed in 1956 as a pair with no. 17)
(Grade II listed in 1956 as a pair with no. 17)
For many years, this was the Estate Manager's house ~ the 1871 and 1875 trade directories and the 1881 census all record Mark Hopson ("Land Agent"), his wife, four children and a general servant living here. His appointment as Land Agent may have been the high point of a 25-year career with the Estate ~ he is listed in the Swannery's records as having worked for the Estate from 1858 to 1879, and he was presented with a marble clock from "the Tenantry of the Earl of Ilchester's Dorchester and Symondsbury Estate" in 1886.
Mark Hopson (right, in later life) was born in Newbury, Berks in 1840, and had arrived in Abbotsbury by 1869, when he married Elizabeth Westmacott, an Abbotsbury girl born in 1849. By 1886, though, the family, now up to seven children, emigrated to New Zealand: sadly, the youngest child died just before the family reached their destination.
In the 1891 and 1901 censuses, the "Clerk of Works (Estate)" was James Hutchings, presumably a bachelor in 1891, as his is the only name entered for the house for that year. By the time of the 1901 census, however, he was married happily enough to have five children.James Hutchings had taken over from Mark Hopson by 1889, and was still in post fifty years later, as his name appears in the trade directory for 1939. By the 1950's, the clerk of works was still one Tim Hutchings, occupying the office on the left of the door, while Peter Limm used the one on the right.
The house became the "Awen Gallery" when Courtney Davis used it as his studio and gallery for Celtic art before moving to Salway Ash. It then became, until 2004, a gallery for Richard Wilson's Chapel Yard Pottery before reverting to being a private house once more.