Samuel Mundy (standing by the door in the c.1900 photograph ~ left) and Joseph Stoodley both appear in the 1881 census for Rodden Row, as well as both featuring as "coopers" in the 1871 and 1875 trade directories. In the 1889 and 1903 directories Samuel Mundy appears as "wheelwrights/reading room", and by 1939 John Mundy is listed as a wheelwright. John Mundy worked here as a wheelwrights, cooper, blacksmith and undertaker until around 1942: the wheelwright side of the business might have had to end in 1935, when the Parish Council ordered the removal of the ramp that had been used to bring carts into the building, as it "extended a full 6 feet into the roadway". The ramp, clearly visible in the Edwardian postcard (right), however, stayed in position for several more years.
The 1953 Historic Monuments Inventory claims that "the building has had the openings renewed and the front plastered". It does appear to have a rendered front in some old photos, and the Appreciation notes that it had recently been repointed with cement mortar.
Wheelwrights was among the buildings leased by the Estate for commercial use as part of the development plan that followed the appreciation ~ in this instance, the couple who took the building over were Greg Shepherd, a glass engraver, and his wife Lesley, who was a glass enameller. In a tape made in 2001, Greg Shepherd described how he and Lesley took over the workshop in 1981 in a state of dereliction, with earth floor and green algae on the walls. On the next five years, they virtually rebuilt both the cottage and the adjoining workshop. The timber vice formed from a tree growing out of the workshop wall may have gone, and the plaited-straw-and-plaster ceilings have been replaced with plasterboard, but the medieval cob and timber wall is still there behind the modern plasterboard as you enter today's tearoom. "we spent the last of our youth working on that cottage" remembers Greg.
There is a memento of the Shepherd era here, in the shop window fronting the street, depicting Sam Mundy from the photograph above; and the little cart that Greg etched is called "Josie Rose" to celebrate the birth of their first child in 1986. Other, smaller, windows in the tearoom recall the wheelwright's tools and an 18th century commercial glass cutter that Greg Shepherd restored.
In 1988, the Shepherds emigrated to Australia ~ returning to Abbotsbury after a winter holiday in Spain, "it was the strangest thing, as if we had never set foot there: the Estate is so old that all of us just pass through it. Perhaps we had done our time: if we had left a mark on the cottage, it would only be a very small part, for all the generations that had lived there." But they describe their time in Abbotsbury as a privilege ~ "we were watching the end of an era; the modernisation had not yet started" ~ and even 20 years later, the Shepherds remember the kindness of the village and add that their heart and soul still stay in the village. Their taped message ended "You're in a home loved by two people who never ever dreamt of leaving."
It was to be 17 years before they returned to Abbotsbury, spending two days here in the summer of 2005 to meet old friends and show their elder daughter the house where she had been born. Looking round the cottage, Greg said of their decision to leave in 1988 ~ "when we came back from Spain, we just felt that the house didn't recognise us."
When the Shepherds left, the stock was taken over by Mervyn Bown, a signwriter, who later moved up the road to no. 10, which eventually became the "Bear Shop". Wheelwrights then became a baker's shop and café, and in 1996, Sue and Nigel Melville turned it into a tearoom and tea garden (selected as a "hidden treasure" by the American magazine British Heritage, and a showplace for textile art ~ in 2007, the front half of the tearoom was turned back into a shop selling stylish contemporary gifts.
(Grade II listed in 1956)
The building is known today as "Wheelwrights" in recognition of its history. When the author of the Appreciation was baffled by the appearance of a "garage door" at such a high level, he was nearer the truth than he guessed: the door did, in fact, lead to a sort of garage. Though described as 18th century, what appears to be "1616" is carved on one of the chimney stacks.
One of the apprentice wheelwrights here in the 1880s was Harry Vine Norman, who was funded by Lord Ilchester to train as a missionary in China, where he was martyred in front of his burned-out church during the Boxer Rising of 1900. Several of his family, as well as members of the old wheelwright's family still live in Dorset, and have visited Wheelwrights with stories of the old days. During the war, the Mundy family housed evacuees from the Bassett area of Southampton, and the house was later occupied by the Roper family, including Graham and Colin who went on to become, respectively, the landlord of the Swan Inn, and the village butcher, taking over from his father on the latter's retirement.
The Shepherds' business was described by Anthony Howard in"Country Ways Companion" in 1988, where he writes that their order book included 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Greg Shepherd speaks of selling their work to Margaret Thatcher and several members of the Royal Family, as well as to Harrods and to Garrards the jewellers.
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