Watchet's Heritage - St. Margaret's Hospice
This is an historically very important building. A building of some sort would have occupied this position since at least Medieval times, as was indicated when its restoration was being carried out.
Sympathetically renovated in recent times, it has a number of important interior features including two fine, original fireplaces on the ground floor complete with elm lintels, typical of West Somerset in the 17th century. The elm beams are almost certainly contemporary with the fireplaces. There is some evidence that it may have been a longhouse and there are a number of curious incisions on the one beam, suggesting either merchants' marks or, what seems more likely, Witches' marks!
Now run as the St Margaret's Hospice shop, it was for a short time an art gallery, an antique shop and prior to that, a cafe called The Old Coffee House. To the rear of the building, it is quite possible to visualise that this was once a burgage plot and would have stretched as far as the railway.
This part of the original property contains two artists' studios and a private dwelling, which have been converted from extensive stabling serving the railway and almost certainly, the overspill from the West Somerset Hotel during the age of the horse.
For further information about the town as a whole,
please visit the home page or click
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This page is provided by Watchet Conservation Society with the help of Watchet Chamber of Trade
and with funding from Somerset West & Taunton Council's High Street Emergency Fund.
Text and history provided by Nick Cotton