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History of Shapwick The name Shapwick is from the Saxon period and means a sheep farm. It is thought that Shapwick was once part of a multiple estate which might have been Roman in origin and which covered a large part of the Polden ridge. That multiple estate which was known as Pouelt in 1086, stretched west as far as Woolavington and probably had Shapwick as its administrative focus.
The village is laid out on a very distinctive 'ladder pattern', with two parallel roads running top to bottom, and a series of rungs of the ladder running between them. Most of the houses are set along the 'rungs' of the ladder. The similar grid layouts of Shapwick, Catcott, Edington, and Chilton Polden, and their regular boundaries raise the possibility of conscious planning, presumably by For more info go to: URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=15115.
Ownership of Shapwick Glastonbury Abbey owned Shapwick from the 8th Century, officially recorded in 1086, after the Norman Conquest. The abbey continued in possession until 1539, after which the Manor and Estate passed to the Crown on the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey. It then passed through many hands over the centuries until in 1943 Mary Alice Shafto Warry, widow and sole heir of Bertram Arthur Warry, sold the estate, with the exception of the manor house and adjoining parkland, to Samuel Vestey, 2nd Baron Vestey (d. 1954). The estate remains in the hands of the trustees of the Vestey Settlement. Mrs. Warry remained in occupation of the manor house until 1956, and it was subsequently converted to the Shapwick House Hotel.
Shapwick House Records of 1515 indicate that the village had a hall surrounded by a moat. This medieval Manor house is now the Shapwick House Hotel, which is estimated to have been built around 1475. Excavations at Shapwick House revealed that there was indeed a moat which was filled in around 1620. http://www.archaeology.co.uk/ca/timeline/saxon/shapwick/origins2.htm The Church in Shapwick The Shapwick church, noted in the charter of King Edgar of 971, is first certainly mentioned in 1168, when it was considered one of the seven churches attached to St Mary’s Church was built on its current site in the centre of the village in 1331. It was built in the exact form and dimensions of the earlier church, which lay about a mile to the west in a field still known as Church field.
The Church building was originally dedicated to St. Edith (feast 16 Sept.). That date, normally a weekday, proved by 1464 to be inconvenient when farm work was pressing, and the patronal feast was therefore changed, only by a few days, to the Sunday following the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (16 Sept.), when parishioners were not at work. By 1541 it was named after the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom an altar had been dedicated c. 1245. For more info go to: URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=15115. The Shapwick Project
The Shapwick Project is an investigation into the archaeology, history and topography of Shapwick, co-directed by Dr. Chris Gerrard with Professor Mick Aston. The Project was established specifically to address issues concerning medieval settlement and in particular, the formation and development of nucleated settlements during the period between the 8th and the 13th centuries. http://www.dur.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/?mode=project&id=264 The Shapwick Coin Hoard Roman settlement in the area was clearly intensive. Whilst metal detecting at Shapwick, See more at: http://www.somerset.gov.uk/somerset/culturecommunity/museums/somersetcollection/shapwick/
The Geography The parish of Shapwick lies towards the eastern end of the north side of the Polden hills. The parish falls gently northwards from the Polden ridge at just over 80 m., largely of clay with underlying limestone, to 12 m. south of a slight ridge called Nidons and continues to fall beyond it to 4 m. on the raised moss peat deposit of Shapwick Heath. Limestone was quarried from the 15th century and the peat was exploited much earlier. In origin this area is a deep drowned valley, filled approximately to sea level by clay and alluvial silt, with occasional 'islands' of raised beach deposits. From c. 4,500 B.C. the area was gradually transformed into a series of dry islands surrounded by fresh water marsh and brackish reed swamp punctuated with open pools. Increasing rainfall encouraged plants to form a raised peat bog which continued to grow, in some places until c. 900 A.D. The deepest peats, more than 7 m. thick, occur in the moors furthest inland and there was a complex and ever changing mosaic of reedswamp, open shallow water, and alder carr woodland to the north and south of the Polden ridge,. Turf cutting has been significant for several centuries, continuing on a more limited scale into the early 21st as well as the gathering of sedge, and rushes, until the drainage of Extensive flooding occurred over a large area around Godney between the mid to late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. Mesolithic flints found on the 'islands' and the wooden trackways found in the peat leading to them and dating from c. 4,000 B.C. to 400 B.C. demonstrate the extensive use of the marshes by hunter-gatherers and later by farmers.
The Shapwick Heritage Group See http://www.shapwick.org.uk/
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