Over Stowey

Before the Norman Conquest Over Stowey, which was on the Herepath, or military road, over the Quantocks, formed part of a hunting estate. Over Stowey belonged to a succession of Anglo-Saxon Kings, ending with King Harold in 1066. The Domesday Book records that in 1086 Marsh Mills (Mulsella) was held by Alfred D'Epaignes, who probably built the castle, of which the remains can be seen in the field a short distance north of the church.

In Saxon times, King Alfred's military road, the Herepath, ran up from Combwich, Cannington and Over Stowey, along the present course of the Stowey road, across Dead Woman's Ditch to Crowcombe Park Gate, south along the main ridge of the Quantocks to Triscombe Stone, then west across the valley to the Brendon Hills and Exmoor. The road connected a series of forts and lookout posts, which allowed Alfred's armies to move along the coast to cover Viking movements at sea and forestall any raids ashore. The path from Dowsborough to the Herepath is called Great Bear Path, and this is taken to be a corruption of Great Herepath, which suggests that Dowsborough could have been a Saxon lookout over the Bristol Channel.

The first record of a church in Over Stowey is in 1144, but the present building is of a later date. It is constructed of local red sandstone, in roughly coursed rubble, with freestone dressings. The oldest surviving part is the tower, which is of the Perpendicular period, and in architectural terms two-staged, embattled, with offset plinth and diagonal buttresses. Apart from the west window, it retains its original form. The nave and north aisle are of a similar date, but were largely rebuilt in 1840 when the church was extensively restored and extended by the architect Richard Carver. Further additions were made around the turn of the century.

Over Stowey Church St Peter and St Paul Parish Church

The church has a ring of six bells—Tenor 1714 by Thomas Wroth of Wellington; Fifth & Third c. 1470 by a medieval foundry at Exeter; Fourth 1790 by George Davis of Bridgwater; Second 1865 by Warner & Sons, London, and Treble 1939 by John Taylor of Loughborough.

The Church Organ made by Henry Bryceson of London, and installed about 1847 with the proceeds of a fund started at the age of 17 by Kate Ward, the youngest daughter of Thomas Ward. In her memoirs Miss Ward, who died in 1925 in her 100th year, recalls that there were no organs in the village churches in her early days— 'At Over Stowey we had a flute, a clarinet and a bass viol, and one man with a big bass voice, who could not read'. The church in Over Stowey was chosen by the Royal mail as the subject of the Millennium Christmas 1st class stamp  Quantock Lodge at Over Stowey was  the former Quantock School and before that a Sanatorium Over Stowey, one of the most rural parishes in Somerset, lies on the north-eastern slopes ofthe Quantock Hills, with much of it in sight of the sea to the north, the Somerset Levels to the east and the Polden and Mendip Hills beyond. As the ground rises to the summit of the hills to the south and west, the agricultural land and the small scattered hamlets give way to the moorland, woodland and forestry plantations which constitute some three quarters of the parish, and into which run three of the deep and steeply sided Quantock combes.

There have been settlements in this part of the Quantocks from earliest times. Flint tools found on the top of the hills are evidence of Prehistoric inhabitants. The hill fort in Cockercombe and the many burial barrows confirm the presence of Bronze and Iron Age
peoples. The road from Combwich, through Keenthorne and Over Stowey and over the hills was an important Anglo-Saxon military road, and by the time of the Norman invasion in 1066 Over Stowey formed part of a royal hunting estate belonging to King Harold himself. The Norman baron to whom William the Conqueror granted the Stoweys, meaning the Stoneways from which the name derives, established his first fortress beside the military road, before constructing the strongly fortified castle on the Mount. Plainsfield and Marsh Mills are both recorded in Domesday Book. By the 12th century Over Stowey had a church, and, one hundred years later, a monastic settlement with a small chapel in Adscombe. Parsonage Farm and Plainsfield Court have medieval cores—Plainsfield Court was the ancestral home of the Blake family from whom Admiral Blake was descended. Subsequent building styles are well represented. In 1833 the liberal politician Henry Labouchere, later Lord Taunton, purchased a substantial estate from
the Earl of Egmont, and in 1857 commenced the building of the great house which is Quantock Lodge. In 1920, purchased by the Local Authority, this became an isolation hospital for TB patients until the early 1960's, and housed Quantock School for the next
thirty years. Over Stowey once had three water mills—at Adscombe, Plainsfield, and Marsh Mill (which was still working well into the 20th century). Copper was mined in Bincombe in the 1750s, and for hundreds of years many villagers scraped a living burning charcoal or manufacturing brooms from heather. The gathering and selling of whortleberries remained an important contribution to the income of the poorer people until the middle of the twentieth century. In literature, Coleridge,Wordsworth and their friends were frequent visitors to Over Stowey during their walks in the Quantocks; the vicar the Rev. William Holland kept a diary from 1799-1818 which has come to be recognised as one of the outstanding journals from this period, and Phyllis Bottome, daughter of a later vicar, wrote beguilingly of her childhood here in the late nineteenth century in Search for a Soul. In 1956 the Quantock Hills were
designated the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England, since when areas which lie in the parish have also been made a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a County Wildlife Site.

The population is about 450, most of whom live in the small hamlets which are so characteristic of the parish. Industry is predominantly forestry and farming. Over Stowey has neither shop nor public house, but is well served for local facilities by nearby Nether Stowey. Amenities include the church; the village hall with club and bar; the sports field with tennis court and cricket pitch; Quantock Lodge with swimming pool and gym, the hills and their wildlife.

Some three quarters of the parish consists of moorland, natural woodland and forestry plantation, and the remainder fields, with scattered woods. Small streams run down each combe. The moorland flora is principally heather, whortleberry and bracken, with isolated holly, hawthorn and mountain ash trees. The higher ground comprises Hangman grits, with marls and valley gravels lower down the slopes, where stone, including the green Cockercombe tuff from which Quantock Lodge is built, has been quarried for centuries. The natural forest, which comprises sessile oak, mountain ash, holly and beech, was utilised for charcoal burning until the twentieth century, and a number of the pits and platforms from this activity has survived. The forest has reclaimed a number of former fields on the lower edge. Many parts of the forest are still bordered with the characteristic beech hedge banks. The extensive Forestry Commission plantations, mostly of conifers, with some deciduous trees on the borders, were started around the time of the Great War, when timber could not be imported. The fields remain mostly small, and divided by thick banked hedges of hazel, blackthorn, holly, spindle and beech, with many hedgerow trees, notably oak, ash and beech. The great elm trees are gone, but the species survives in the hedges.

Over Stowey has seven distinct, long established settlements—the village of Over Stowey itself, Adscombe, Aley, Bincombe, Friarn, Plainsfield, and a settlement on the western slope of the castle hill of Nether Stowey. The only additions of any size to the parish have been in the 20th century - Council housing in Hack Lane and Aley, and new school buildings at Quantock Lodge.

Over Stowey village, the original settlement beside the Norman castle, has changed little, and includes the parish church, known to have been in existence by the 12th century; the parsonage (now Parsonage Farm), mostly 17th century, but with a medieval wing which may well have been the original priest’s house; the 17th century manor house (now Cross Farm), the vicarage, dating from of the first part of the 18th century, the early Victorian school (now the Village Hall) and its school house. East of Over Stowey along the Bridgwater road are a number of houses and cottages of varying dates, including Marsh Mill House, dating from the eighteenth century, the adjoining Mill, built about 1815, Park House, also of 18th century origin, but extended at the time that Quantock
Lodge was built, and Halsey House, of about 1980. Adscombe is a small hamlet with a substantial farmhouse and adjoining
cottages, dating from the 18th century, and a cross-passage house of tudor date, believed to have been the guest house to the nearby monastic farm.

Aley is a concentrated group around a former Tudor yeoman’s farmhouse, with cottages of 18th or early 19th century date, a large walled barton or farmyard serving Quantock Lodge, and 20th century Council houses. Quantock Lodge, a substantial Victorian
mansion, with two large modern annexes, replaced the small hamlet of Aley Green, with its public house, the Dial, said to have been the oldest in the county. Bincombe comprises a single cob cottage by the green at the top of the hill, and a small group of early, traditionally built cottages and farm at the bottom. Bincombe Green lost many of its dwellings in the middle of the 19th century.
Friarn housing, spaced out along the lane high on the hillside, originated as humble huts built by squatters on the roadside verge, became estate cottages to Quantock Lodge, were sold off in 1920, and extensively modernised and extended in the late 20th century. Plainsfield, on the southern edge of the parish, is the largest settlement - previously with its own smithy and mill and centred round its medieval manor house, with farm and cottages mostly of 19th century origin or earlier. Castle Hill. 20th century infilling between the cottages on the western slope of the Mount have made this in effect a continuation of Nether Stowey’s principal street.

Hack Lane, on the hill opposite, originated as council houses in the 1930s. Before the 19th century the principal local building material was the local red sandstone, with some cob, generally of an early date. At the beginning of the 19th century the traditional thatched roof began to be replaced with clay pantiles and roman tiles, initially imported, but later produced locally at Bridgwater, and this is now the predominant building style, later houses having dressings of red Bridgwater hard brick around window and door
openings. Later in the 19th century many of the more important Quantock Lodge estate buildings were standardised with slate roofs and dripstones above windows. A few houses were built between the wars with pebble-dashed walls, and this fashion led to this finish being applied over original stone elsewhere. Modern planning has allowed some additional external finishes such as brick, but traditional roof tiles are generally insisted upon. Agricultural and Equestrian Buildings dating from before the 20th century are of stone. A few early 20th century corrugated iron farm buildings remain, but in recent years increasing numbers of barns have been built of asbestos or composition sheeting, and stables and field shelters of timber construction.

part from the straight ‘New Road’ from Marsh Mills to Plainsfield, built by Lord Taunton in 1857 to divert the old Taunton road around his estate, Over Stowey’s roads are the centuries old narrow, winding and undulating lanes, often wide enough for only a single
vehicle, and unsuitable for much more than local traffic. The agricultural areas of the parish have a network of ancient footpaths and
bridleways, many of which require regular clearing to prevent them becoming impassable.

Contributed by: Lucy Pinknall. Gerald James