(Grade II listed in 1956 and now listed as "Town Farm house and attached rear stables")
(Grade II listed in 1956 and now listed as "Town Farm house and attached rear stables")
Despite the fact that it bears the name "Town Farm", it is described in the Inventory and the 1889 Ordnance Survey map as "Middle Farm". It was formerly two houses, with outbuildings behind. Between the houses is a huge chimney serving both sides ~ when it caught fire some years ago, the firemen said it was the biggest they had ever seen.
The Market Street facade was renewed in the 18th century, but the main house was built in the 17th century. Some windows are blocked up, and there are large wooden lintels on either side of the present ground floor windows, and a large blocked-up opening to the right of the present street door. The old wooden lintels are a curiosity ~ even allowing for a change in street level, they are very low indeed if they once topped old windows.
The present occupant has a theory (which his wife describes as "fantasy") that the large red stones of the frontage are local ironstone and that every six feet along the wall are slots, which he believes were once the base of Saxon crucks. The other stones are white ashlar, possibly from Caen, left over once the best of the Abbey stone was sold off at the Dissolution. If the house was Saxon, and the area was a summer retreat for the Kings of Wessex, could this once have been home to King Alfred ... ?
The barn behind the house, once a slaughterhouse, was built in 1747. At various times, the house has been occupied by different members of families who still live in the village ~ Abbotsbury people move from house to house as their needs change. When it was a working farm, the garden was an orchard, but an aerial photograph taken in 1924 shows the whole area as allotments ~ even six years after World War I, the pressure to produce food locally must have been still alive. Although the present garden trees appear to be very mature, they were planted after World War II by the assistant Head Gardener of the Sub-Tropical Gardens.
Among the mementoes of the farming days at 1 Market Street, found by the present occupants, were the horses' tails cut off (when they were despatched to the knacker's yard) and hung up in their one-time looseboxes, as well as an old Land Girl's jacket and jodhpurs hanging in the attic rafters, and an old crucifix.
At one time, 1 Market Street was the standard point of call for visitors to St Catherine's Chapel, as the key was hung in the back porch, and visitors then followed a footpath through the garden up to Chapel Lane.