(Unlisted in 1973, but now Grade II listed as 4 estate cottages built 'en bloc')
(Unlisted in 1973, but now Grade II listed as 4 estate cottages built 'en bloc')
The Appreciation points out that only around the square are gable ends turned towards the street, here on these cottages, on the one-time school and on the Ilchester Arms. Abbotsbury houses usually butt right on to the pavement: very few of them have front gardens and those that do always date from the 19th century.
On the wall in front of no.22 is the letter "P", denoting that this was once the village's police house, before the policeman was moved to Linton Cottage on the outskirts of the village.
This was where the 1954 Garland Day procession was halted by the village bobby. Every year, on 13th May, the children of the village have, for centuries, carried garlands of flowers around the village before taking them down to the beach, where the garlands would be loaded on to the fishing boats and cast adrift at sea to ensure a good harvest. In the days when Abbotsbury had a school next door to these houses, Garland Day was a holiday; and it was celebrated on May 13th because that would have been May Day if the calendar had not been changed in the 18th century, losing 11 days in the process and provoking public riots. (Alternative theories on Garland Days here and elsewhere link them to Royalist sympathies and a connection with Oak Apple Day.)
Anyway, in 1954, the local policeman decided that the pennies collected by the children constituted begging, and he impounded the garlands ~ and the children carrying them. The furious mothers complained to the Parish Council, and the Honourable John Fox Strangways took the matter up. The children were released, the policeman was reprimanded, and the Chief Constable even apologised. Since then, nobody has dared meddle with Garland Day: the problem now is to keep the custom alive.