Otterhead House from South East c.1919

OTTERHEAD ESTATE AND LAKES HISTORY

PLEASE CAN YOU HELP?  

The Otterhead Estate Trust thanks everyone who has provided copies of old photographs and printed material over the years that this project has evolved. These are a resource not only of the Estate's history but in some cases are important for conservation and  restoration purposes, too.

Otterhead Gardens from House Terrace

House Lake from Otterhead Gardens

Now, with the project developing, the quest for additional information becomes more urgent. It is better to be offered the same material twice than not to learn of it at all. There is a risk in providing a guide as to the information being sought as it could imply other information is not needed; however, here are some possibilities:

Photographs of any date; Information about those who worked for the estate or who lived at Otterhead House; descriptions of Otterhead House before and after demolition began; the walled gardens; the cottage and the range of buildings near the Coach House; memories of the floods in 1968 and of the former lakes; information about trees, shrubs and other plants that formerly grew at Otterhead.

Please email otterheadestate@aol.com if you feel that you may be able to help.

To obtain information about the history of the Estate, please see details on this website of the heritage information sheet available as a free download from Taunton Deane Borough Council and from the Taunton, Axminster and Honiton tourist information centres; the following is not intended to replace the information sheet: 

Key events in the rise and fall of the Otterhead Estate:

From 1817 onwards William and Mary Oliver of Kingston St. Mary acquired land in both Churchstanton and Otterford parishes. Their son-in-law, William Beadon junior, is usually credited with building Otterhead House in the 1840's, possibly incorporating part of an old farmhouse, Weeke Farm. The Beadons owned Gotton House, close to Hestercombe and it is possible that the landscaped valley at the latter provided an inspiration for the pleasure grounds William Beadon developed in the steep sided section of the valley of the River Otter at Otterhead.

Beadon bought Church Farm, Otterford from the Bishop of Winchester in 1857 and became regarded as the largest landowner in Churchstanton parish. He acquired lime kilns and quarries at Bishopswood and bought many of the new enclosures by the present B3170 road in Otterford parish.

Following Beadon's death in 1864, Sir John Mellor, a Justice of the Queen's Bench, who lived at Culmhead (a property that still survives), acquired the Estate amounting to 1,200 acres. Beadon's town house at The Crescent, Taunton (another survival to this day), properties in Bath Place closeby and the Bishopswood kilns and quarries were all separately sold. A few years later the Estate was enlarged by the acquisition of the neighbouring Royston Estate.

The property was transferred to Alfred Mellor but following legal action it was sold by Sir John Mellor's trustees in 1893. By then a new dining room, a portico and a bell turret had been added to Otterhead House and Beadon's two Otterhead Lakes had been enlarged. Five more lakes had been constructed with others possibly incomplete. Otterhead's terraced walks may have been constructed at that time, too as well as an underground aquarium (converted to a fernery by 1904).

The new owners were the Lewis Lloyd family from Radnorshire where their centuries-old Nantgwyllt Estate had largely been acquired by Birmingham Corporation as a water resource (the Elan and Clairwen reservoirs). That controversial development is likely to have provided Francis Brett Young with the background for a best selling novel of that time. Further landscaping was carried out at Otterhead, particularly around the new lakes and additional land was acquired, bringing the Estate to more than 1,700 acres and including not only the headwaters of the River Otter but of the Rivers Culm and Yarty, too.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to sell the whole estate by auction, the Lewis Lloyds moved to Bath and back to Radnorshire, with Otterhead House, its pleasure grounds and home farms let successively on two five year leases and then from 1916 on a 21 year lease. The importance today of this tenure was that there would have been little incentive after 1904 to alter features on the 400 acres with Otterhead House and indeed much remains today (allowing for demolitions) as depicted on the First Edition Large Scale Ordnance Survey Map (surveyed c.1890).

The Public Trustee had managed the Estate for the Lewis Lloyd Trust following Robert Evan Lewis Lloyd's death while serving in the Royal Navy during the First World War. The Estate had been offered for sale by auction in 1919 and nearly all was sold, except that subject to the 21 year lease which failed to reach the reserve. Following the expiry of the lease, the remaining property, including Otterhead House, was offered for sale by private treaty and was purchased as a water catchment by Taunton Borough Council. Water was pumped to the Leigh and Luxhay Reservoirs and from there to the Fulwood Water Treatment Works. Water that had been destined to flow to the sea near Budleigh Salterton was carried over the watershed into the Tone-Parrett catchment which reached the sea at Bridgewater.

Otterhead House did not become a residence again. It was used during the Second World War for storage purposes, despite approaches to variously house a school evacuating from London; homeless residents of the rural district and officers from the Trickey Warren airfield. An application for use by the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society was also refused.

Asset stripping followed; the trees were sold for the price of their timber; slates and lead from Otterhead House were reserved for use on council houses in Taunton, when the house was mostly demolished in 1951-1952. Long leases to the Forestry Commission began in the 1960's. It was obvious that the Corporation only regarded the Estate as a water resource and the gardens went into decline. The services of the last gardener were dispensed with and the last crops were produced in the walled gardens in the 1960's.

There have been various changes in the water supply industry with the Estate being passed successively to South Somerset Water Board, Wessex Water Authority and Wessex Water plc. The Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation leased most of the land not subject to Forestry Commission leases as a nature reserve until 2004, by which time that trust had been renamed Somerset Wildlife Trust. That land, already neglected during the foot and mouth disease threat to the Otterhead area in 2001, remained unleased until 2008. A quite new limited not-for-profit company, the Otterhead Estate Trust, took over the management and its aims, besides wildlife conservation, are part restoration of built heritage features and the designed landscape as well as conservation of ornamental garden plants and developing the Estate as a community education resource. 

(Copyright The Otterhead Estate Trust Company Ltd. 2010)