Bitofapilchard
Serving girls...
....in the courtyard at the front of The Blue House, Frome in Somerset.
It was more than 500 years ago that William Leversedge, the Lord of the Manor, was moved by the plight of the Frome homeless and decided to do something about it. Compassion was an unusual sentiment amongst members of this difficult and cantankerous family, but William seems to have been a gentleman. He may have been influenced by the experience of his brother Edmund, a vain and dissipated youth who received a sharp lesson when he was struck down by the plague in Frome in 1465. His face became ‘black as any coal’, his tongue ‘as black as any pitch’ and protruded out of his mouth ‘the length of half a foot’. Edmund fell into a death-like trance and while in this state was taken on a journey through Hell. He survived to reform and record his experiences, which may well have inclined the whole family to good works.
The Blue House, located adjacent to the town bridge, was formerly the Bluecoat School and Almshouses, so named due to the colour of the school uniforms.
Built in 1726 at a cost of £1,401 8s 9d, it replaced a previous almshouse dating from 1461 (and rebuilt in 1621). The Blue House provided accommodation for 20 female widows, and schooling for 20 boys, and the front of the building is adorned by two statues, one of a man, colloquially known as "Billy Ball", and one a woman called "Nancy Guy", indicating the building's dual role. Its role as a school ceased in 1921, and it now provides studio and one bedroom flats for 17 elderly residents.
The charming statues of two serving girls in a small courtyard at the front of the Blue House came from the Keyford ‘Home’, founded by Richard Stevens, a wealthy leather currier, in 1796 as an almshouse for old men and as a school for training girls for domestic service. Stevens’ Asylum and Hospital, as it was officially known, was completed in 1803 at a cost of £6439. 18s. and, sadly, demolished in 1956, when the Blue House opened its doors to men as well as women.
Serving girls...
....in the courtyard at the front of The Blue House, Frome in Somerset.
It was more than 500 years ago that William Leversedge, the Lord of the Manor, was moved by the plight of the Frome homeless and decided to do something about it. Compassion was an unusual sentiment amongst members of this difficult and cantankerous family, but William seems to have been a gentleman. He may have been influenced by the experience of his brother Edmund, a vain and dissipated youth who received a sharp lesson when he was struck down by the plague in Frome in 1465. His face became ‘black as any coal’, his tongue ‘as black as any pitch’ and protruded out of his mouth ‘the length of half a foot’. Edmund fell into a death-like trance and while in this state was taken on a journey through Hell. He survived to reform and record his experiences, which may well have inclined the whole family to good works.
The Blue House, located adjacent to the town bridge, was formerly the Bluecoat School and Almshouses, so named due to the colour of the school uniforms.
Built in 1726 at a cost of £1,401 8s 9d, it replaced a previous almshouse dating from 1461 (and rebuilt in 1621). The Blue House provided accommodation for 20 female widows, and schooling for 20 boys, and the front of the building is adorned by two statues, one of a man, colloquially known as "Billy Ball", and one a woman called "Nancy Guy", indicating the building's dual role. Its role as a school ceased in 1921, and it now provides studio and one bedroom flats for 17 elderly residents.
The charming statues of two serving girls in a small courtyard at the front of the Blue House came from the Keyford ‘Home’, founded by Richard Stevens, a wealthy leather currier, in 1796 as an almshouse for old men and as a school for training girls for domestic service. Stevens’ Asylum and Hospital, as it was officially known, was completed in 1803 at a cost of £6439. 18s. and, sadly, demolished in 1956, when the Blue House opened its doors to men as well as women.