(In Appreciation as 1 Back Street")
(Grade II listed since 1973)
(Grade II listed since 1973)
Built originally for the school master in the mid-19th century, and it must have remained the headmaster's house until the school closed in 1981. The 1939 directory shows "HJ Cutler, schoolmaster and Reading Room secretary" living here.
It was converted from the school master's house into the "Old School House Tea Rooms and Gift Shop" in 1985. Its condition at that time has been described as "gutted", and it seems that it had been divided into two properties (one for the teacher and the other for the village policeman, a fearful combination for any miscreant children) before the conversion work began. Mr and Mrs Peach, who carried out the conversion, opened the tea room in 1986 before opening the Oak Room tea rooms in Dorchester. The Old School House was then run by Mr and Mrs Dawson, who also opened "Abbotsbury Bears and Friends" in Rodden Row in 1995. The Old School House changed hands in 1997, again in 2002 and in 2005, since when the gift shop has become an extension of the tea room.
The photograph on the right, loaned by Steve Peach, shows how handy the teacher's house was to the school, but also, arrowed on the top left, the one-time Primitive Methodist Chapel that later became an annexe to the school, before being accidentally badly damaged by fire in the 1990s. It also, incidentally, gives a good idea of just how large some of the village gardens are, a relic perhaps of the days when people were expected to much more self-sufficient than they are today.