Abbeylands, 48 Cheap Street, Sherborne

Image: © Jo and Steve Turner Taken: 11 Sep 2007

Grade II* Listed Boarding House for Sherborne School with a date in the spandrels of 1649 but it was probably built late in the 16th century; it was formerly possible to see on the façade 157. . . the fourth figure being illegible. On the site of monastery farm buildings the school first made use of Abbeylands for boarders in 1872. In the early part of the 19th century the house was in the occupation of John Melliar, an old boy of the school and in 1817 a Governor. Later it passed to the Cutlers and from them was first rented as a boarding house. A similar Francis Frith photograph of 1900 https://www.francisfrith.com/sherborne/sherborne-abbeylands-cheap-street-1900_46085 shows different fenestration on the ground floor with what could be a shop front with doorway. Some part of the premises had at one time been occupied by a firm known as the "Sherborne Coal, Timber, Corn and Cake Co." The shop front had gone in a postcard from the first quarter of the 20th century. The school raised funds by the sale of land endowment from Edward VI to secure its houses and in 1919 purchased Abbeylands from John Cutler grandson of Rev John Cutler headmaster 1790 to 1823 by a roundabout legal process involving the then current headmaster Nowell Smith. It is possibly as a result of this that the ground floor frontage was refurbished.

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