SILVER PLATED

SPOON

TEA SPOON

MARKED:

WAPW GT BRITAIN SILVER PLATED

IMAGE:

SELWORTHY

(NATIONAL TRUST LOGO)

SIZE:

104mm

CONDITION

SPOON GOOD CONDITION ,

BLACK BOX

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KNOWLEDGE / INFORMATION / HISTORY

Selworthy is a small village and civil parish 5 kilometres (3 mi) from Minehead in Somerset, England. It is located in the National Trust's Holnicote Estate on the northern fringes of Exmoor. The parish includes the hamlets of Bossington, Tivington, Lynch, Brandish Street and Allerford.

At 308 metres (1,010 ft) Selworthy Beacon, rising above the village, is one of the highest points on Exmoor. Its height defines as one of the 'marilyns" in England. Near the summit are a series of cairns, thought to be the remains of round barrows, and the British Iron Age Bury Castle.

Bossington is separated from Porlock Bay by a shingle beach, through which flows the River Horner, forming part of the Porlock Ridge and Saltmarsh Site of Special Scientific Interest. In the 1990s rising sea levels created salt marshes, and lagoons developed in the area behind the boulder bank. The village is on the South West Coast Path.

History

The name of the village means "enclosure or settlement near sallows or willows". In the Domesday Book it was recorded as Selewrda. It was held by Queen Edith of Wessex in 1066 and, with Luccombe, was awarded to Ralph de Limesy by William the Conqueror. In 1301 Edward I awarded it to Henry de Pynkeny. It passed down through the family until acquired by marriage by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland in 1802.

Selworthy was part of the hundred of Carhampton.

Selworthy was rebuilt as a model village, to provide housing for the aged and infirm of the Holnicote estate, in 1828 by Sir Thomas Acland, in a similar style to Blaise Hamlet, Bristol, which had been built a few years earlier. One of the cottages, known as Periwinkle Cottage, is now an award-winning tea room. Many of the other cottages, whose walls are painted with limewash that has been tinted creamy yellow with ochre, some of which are now rented out, are still thatched and are listed buildings. The village and the surrounding Holnicote estate was given to the National Trust in 1944 by Sir Richard Acland, having been passed down through the Acland family for nearly 200 years.

Few of the buildings preceding 1828 survive, but those that do include the church, the tithe barn and Tithe Barn Cottage.