21 Rodden Row
(Grade II listed in 1956)
(Grade II listed in 1956)
At the time of the 1889 Ordnance Survey map, this was the village Post Office and General Stores, and an Edwardian postcard in Dave Stevens' collection (right) shows the Market Street frontage almost exactly as it remains today, and Mr Gibbons standing by what is still the main entrance.
William and Jane Gibbons appear in the trade directories for 1889 and 1903 as "postmaster/ironmonger", but by 1939 William Wickwar is listed as "statnr & Post Office". Formal house numbering didn't arrive in Abbotsbury until the 1950's, by which time this was considered to be 2 Market Street, while it was listed as "Threeways, 26 Rodden Row".
The two photographs here, from the same collection, but 50 years apart in date, may throw some light on the confusion ~ the two side-by-side doors clearly imply that there were once two separate houses here, one facing on to Market Street and the other in Rodden Row.
The 1953 Historic Monuments Inventory describes the building as "built late 17th century with subsequent repairs", and the Appreciation notes that it was at that time (1973) being rebuilt. By then a new window had been inserted and the second door walled up. After the rebuilding, it was run as an antique shop, became a tearoom, and changed hands in 2004.
The building has never been far from controversy, thanks to its position on a junction that grows harder to negotiate as vehicles grow larger. As early as april 1926, the Parish Council drew the County Council's attention to "the necessity of placing suitable notices in the village as a warning more especially to motorists and cyclists to drive slowly and cautiously upon approaching the dangerous corner at the lower end of Rodden Row, Market Street and Church Street, and opposite the Public Schools." By November of the same year, a "danger notice" had been fixed in Rodden Row, but the 30mph speed limit didn't arrive in Abbotsbury until 1938.
In 1970, the Parish Council even debated the extraordinary proposal that "the County Surveyor be asked if he could purchase the house and shop at the corner of Rodden Row and Market Street, and pull it down to make the corner wider. The property was up for sale and in a bad state of repair." The Appreciation tackled the issue head on in 1973, rejected several alternative solutions,and concluded that "if one adopts the premise that Abbotsbury is very pleasant as it is, and should be altered as little as possible then there does not seem to be any magic solution to the traffic problem. It seems likely that as long as there is traffic, Abbotsbury will have a traffic problem."
That problem arose dramatically in 2004, when a coach driver misjudged the corner and impaled his vehicle on scaffolding erected by thatchers, closing the road for several hours while the scaffolding firm dismantled their work and free the coach and its cargo of pensioners. At least now, by 2007, part of the problem has been tackled by a pair of signs in Rodden Row, warning drivers of long vehicles that the turning left in to Church Street is "unsuitable for long vehicles" and that oncoming vehicles may be encountered in the middle of the road.