(In the Appreciation as "15 and 17 Market Street")
(Grade II listed in 1956 as a pair, but now listed as three houses)
(Grade II listed in 1956 as a pair, but now listed as three houses)
Described as "typical Industrial Revolution cottages", this trio was built in 1841 for estate employees. The photographs show much more of nos 15 and 17 than they do of no 13, which may be an older property than the other two ~ the stone work appears older, the windows are at different levels, and there is a dividing line between no 13 and no 15.
No 13 doubles up as a gallery and workshop as well as a family house, modernised in 1963. The business side showcases jewellery and works in felt, as well as website design and search engine optimisation. The house was once two cottages, the back one a ruin until the 1980s, when it was incorporated into the front part. What is now the gallery was once presumably a stable, and there is evidence of other buildings behind, including the former privy, now a garden shed.
No 15 was one of nine properties sold in 1922 when (according to local legend) the highways authority refused to improve the B3157 through the village on the grounds that the Ilchester Estate owned all the houses fronting the road. (Once the nine were sold, the work duly went ahead.) The house remained in the ownership of the Cribb family until 1970, when it was sold to a Mr Pendrill, and on his death it passed to his wife, who was a teacher in the Abbotsbury school, and remarried to become Mrs Snow. The Snows extended the house in 1986, nearly doubling its size and adding garages off Chapel Lane. The house was once more sold, in 1992, and yet again, to Leon and June Edwardes, in 1994. Throughout all those changes, the original downstairs back window (now well inside the house) was left in place, with etchings of a milkmaid and a cow on one of the window panes.
No 17 is home to a leading figure in the Abbotsbury Cricket Club, founded nearly 150 years ago, which won the 2005 Wisden award for the most beautiful cricket ground in the country.