|
This is all I can say about the Cotlake Cottages -- almost all that can be gleaned from on-line sources:
For their location, go to the Somerset Archives site (http://www1.somerset.gov.uk/archives/), click on the "Maps and postcards" link, then on "Maps". You will be offered both the 1st and the 2nd editions of 6-inch-to-1-mile Ordnance Survey maps. The 1st is from the 1880s and so fits the date of interest but the 2nd edition is a bit clearer, so go for both of them. Click on the "Gazeeter" link for each edition. Scan down the page for "Wilton" (not Williton, nor Wiltown). When the map appears, scan to the extreme bottom left corner. The very top of Cotlake Hill is just off the map (you can click the "South" link to see the next sheet) but the hill is labelled. Look to the foot of the field that slopes northwards from the crest of the Hill and the two cottages are marked and labelled, each surrounded by the hedgerows of its "close". Also note the double hedgerows either side of a path that leads over the crest of the Hill and most of the way to the cottages. (That is clearer on the 2nd Edition map but you can see it on the 1st.)
For a modern view, try Google Maps and search for "Cutliffe Farm" (it is identified as Sherford, Taunton but the Farm's name should be enough). Zoom in and switch to satellite view. There is some green ground immediately south of the farm buildings, then next south is a large, four-sided field with a knot of trees in the southern corner. Those trees are on the very crest of Cotlake Hill. Follow the hedgerow on the west side of that field back to the north. Another hedge branches off to the west but follow a bit further and you will see a gateway set in a kink in the hedge. The reason for the kink is that that is where the closes around the Cottages used to be. The southwestern corner of the closes lay against the north side of that gateway. Sadly, Google's satellite view doesn't seem to show any trace of the Cottages. (I would have expected a crop mark, from the stonier soil but it has all be ploughed away.) There is an odd mark in the field very near where the western cottage used to be but that is a pair of poles supporting a high-voltage power line. Maybe it lies right over the old cottage site but I can't confirm that.
For a different view, try http://www.bing.com/maps/. That doesn't recognize "Cutliffe" but if you search for "Sherford, Taunton, Somerset", it will get you to about the right place. (They have placed "Sherford" half a mile away from the hamlet of that name but, if you compare the Bing version with the others, you will find the Cottage site. With the Bing version, you can click on "Bird's Eye" and then zoom in and you get a true oblique view from the satellite, not a skewed map as other sites will provide. In fact, it offers four oblique views (from north, south, east and west), so you can get a view of the Cottage site in context with the crest of the Hill and the houses of Kibbear on the southern slope.
The old lane running between double hedges shows in the satellite views as an extra-thick hedge but it is possible to trace the line of it. In 1960, it was still about as long as in the 1880s but the farmer cut it back around 1970 and it has been shortened more since, so it barely extends onto the Cutliffe side of Cotlake.
I only know of one image of the Cottages when they still existed. A Google search for "Cotlake Hill 1899" should bring up an archaeological report called Early humans in the Vale of Taunton - Somerset County Council . Figure 9.2 in that report is a black+white copy of a painting made at the crest of Cotlake Hill in 1899. The eastern of the two cottages is just visible. A Google images search for "Cotlake Hill" should lead you to a set of photos on the "flickr" site. Or you can try http://www.flickr.com/photos/andywebgallery/sets/72157618692509643/detail/ . One of those was taken from only a few yards away from where the painter sat in 1899. (The tower of St.Mary Magdalen is distinctive in that one.) Another shows a few people on the footpath, nearing the crest of the hill, with the two power poles behind them marking where the Cottages were.
The only records I know of that mention the Cottages are the censuses and I could only find them in the 1911 one. The heads of households were then Henry Sully, 61, and Thomas Dykes, 32. The census puts the Cottages with Kibbear, on the other side of the Hill -- Kibbear falling in Pitminster Parish.
My own knowledge of the place started in 1960, when my parents move to Sherford. I was only 5, so forgive me if my memories are less than perfect. We walked our dogs up Cotlake Hill more afternoons than we didn't, so I used to know the path well. When we first arrived, the hedges around the Cottage close (by then just one hedge around the pair of them, I think) were still there. It was a very odd piece of ground, closed off from ready access and hence useless to agriculture. Inside there were, in memory, three stony piles (but maybe there were only two). I think my father (an architect with interest in historic buildings) explained to me that they were the remains of cob-walled cottages. (My grandfather's place was cob and still stands, now going on 600 years old. So long as you keep the wet out, it will last for ever. But cob is basically just mud and stones packed together, maybe with straw as a binder. Let the roof fail and the rain will wash the mud from between the stones, which fall in a heap.)
When we moved in, Cutliffe Farm was occupied and operated by a bailiff. Only a year or two later, the land was sold to a developer and a new farmer took over the operation of the place. He set about modernizing, including grubbing out old hedgerows. I don't know when the Cottage close and the remnants of its buildings were eliminated but I'd guess before 1965. Half-a-century of ploughing has down the rest.
|
|
PART 2 of above posting:
The associated feature is the sunken lane between its dual hedges. As children, we knew that as a "gully" and it was barely passable. (I did walk it sometimes but the usual path ran in the adjacent fields, beside the western hedge.) Even then, I figured out that it had once been a lane, like all of the lanes bordered by hedgerows that were then roads fit for cars. (In case you are unfamiliar with the English West Country: the "hedges" are not just plant growth. They are built up ridges of earth, stones and plant roots, topped with vegetation.) But our "gully" looked a lot narrower than the lanes that now carry cars. Other than the maps, the only pre-modern account of it that I can find is a paper by James Bridge davidson in the 1882 "proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society". The paper's title was: "Notes on part of the county boundary between Somerset and Devon". There are at least three copies of that available on-line, including one that is nicely readable scans. Davidson described the lane in his day as "a narrow foot or bridle-path between hedges" and it is easy to see how it could have gone from that to what I first saw 78 years later. Davidson also suggested that it marked the Saxon boundary between Wilton and Pitminster parishes but that seems a bit of a stretch.
I have two guesses at what that lane was for. One comes from the Cotlake Cottages being officially part of Kibbear, rather than Sherford. If the land ownership once linked the Cottage closes to Pitminster Parish, whereas the fields around them were in Wilton Parish and under different ownership, there may have been a need for a demarcated path linking the Cottages to Kibbear. In that sense, the lane was no different to any other, save for being narrower as it only served the two Cottages.
My other guess comes from Cutliffe Farm being, in 1715, the home of Simon Welman, the heir to Poundisford Park -- the principal estate in Pitminster. The existing farmhouse at Cutliffe looks like it could have been of Queen Anne vintage. If the Welmans had that rebuilt as an outlying part of their estates, suited to a young man waiting his turn to inherit, they might have laid out a bridle path over Cotlake Hill, so that father and son could visit one another in suitable style.
Neither hypothesis explains why the lane ended where it did in the 1880s. Had it been cut back by then? Was it never finished? I have no answers.
That's all of the information I have but the Somerset Archives index includes mention of various descriptions and plans of the Welman properties, along with assorted property papers. There may be more detail buried amongst those.
Otherwise, all I can do is contemplate what it must have been like to live in a cottage, part way up a muddy hill, surrounded by fields, with a network of footpaths, plus a cart track down to Cutliffe Farm but no road. In 1800, that might not have been so unusual a setting but it must have seemed more than a bit rough by the standards of 1911!
I have no idea when the Cottages were last lived in but I'll guess that it ended with either the 1914-18 or 1939-45 wars. Each of those changed attitudes and it would have been harder after them to get workers willing to take low wages in return for free housing if the housing was in such a setting.
Hope this is of some interest.
Trevor Kenchington
|
|
Trevor
This is fascinating, and I will have to sit down and read it fully to understand and appreciate. I have a huge interest in family history and often find addresses on the census of family member and visit them on google earth and street view.
I think I mentioned previously that Mary Jane Knight was my great grand mother, married to Charles Wood Snr, my grand father was also Charles Wood.
Charles had a builders business on 17 Landsdown Road, Cardiff. This was passed down to my grandfather but sadly was lost together with the house in 1970. Charles Wood snr went on to live in Porthcawl, and ended his years in Barry in 13 Birchgrove, Coldknap where he was taken care of my his daughter Nonah.
Mary Jane, Charles and Nonah are buried in Cathays Cemetary. They have a very large ornate family grave (no expense spared) and on the census employed a housemaid so must have been quite wealthy in their day!
Best wishes
Helen
|
|
Hi Helen,
Cotlake Cottages to a business in Glamorgan was real progress.
Curiously, I made almost the same move near a century later. From my parents' house in Sherford, where we could see the site of your great-grandmum's cottage, I went to university in Swansea (in 1974) and, on a clear day, could just about see Porthcawl from my residence room. That's a bit of a weird coincidence but I find lots of those in family history.
All the best,
Trevor
|
