HARTPURY

 The village name ‘Hartpury’ is derived from the Saxon word for the pear: Hardepirige – a hard pear, like the perry pear. There is a perry pear known as the Hartpury Green recorded as early as 1662.

Hartpury lies about 5 miles north of Gloucester. A couple of miles outside the main village, is a collection of historic, and curious buildings, cared for by the Hartpury Heritage Trust. The Trust owns the national perry pear collection at Hartpury Orchard Centre, where perry is once again being made.

Amongst the buildings are: the former Dominican Chapel, or the Old Chapel Hall, as it is now known. It had been used as a farm store for years, and has been restored to a high standard. It is now used for community events.

The magnificent Tithe Barn opposite the church, and Watermill nearby, are in private ownership, but easily viewed from the road.

The development of agriculture and enlargement of the Abbey’s possessions in the locality during the 13th century meant that the Manor required storage in Hartpury. The barn, now incorrectly called a tithe barn was built during the 14th century to store all the produce from the manor, not merely the tithe. During the first part of the 16th century the manor was let, but responsibility for the repair of the barn and pigeon house remained with the Abbey, so the barn may not then have been let with the farm, but became used as rent in kind received by the Abbey.

Measuring 161ft x 36ft, Hartpury’s tithe barn is one of the largest in Gloucestershire, and indeed, in the country. At one end of the roof it has a winged dragon as a finial and at the other, a couchant lion – the English lion looks towards Wales and the Welsh dragon towards England. 

St. Mary's church

and, in the churchyard of St. Mary's, this rather unique and curious bee-shelter. 

There was a lot of dispute about the age of the shelter, but old deeds in Gloucestershire record office quickly resolved the question by actually naming the stonemason responsible as Paul Tuffley. He had built the Bee Shelter in the garden of the house in which he lived until 1852 (when his mortgagee repossessed and sold it!). Successive generations of the Tuffley family were Victorian stonemasons and quarry masters, who used the canal network to supply Cotswold stone throughout Britain.

The Bee Shelter had been constructed from Cotswold limestone, part weatherstone and part freestone. The visible tool marks are all typically Victorian, using the technology of the time.

Tuffley assembled the bee shelter in the ornamental garden of his house, but the mystery is why. It seems likely that the shelter had to be reduced in size to fit into the garden, which suggests that it may have been made for a client who then defaulted on payment. Another possibility is that the bee shelter was intended to act as an advertisement for the Tuffley quarries and masonry skills.

The Tuffley home became part of the Nailsworth police station, but when the station closed in the 1960s and the site was scheduled for development, the bee shelter was in danger of being destroyed.
The Gloucestershire Beekeeping Association stepped in to save the bee shelter. They dismantled it piece by piece and reassembled it in the grounds of Hartpury Agricultural College.
Over time, the shelter weathered and began to show signs of decay. Hartpury College gave the shelter to the Hartpury Historic lands and Buildings Trust, who had it restored and re-erected at the back of the St Mary's Church burial ground.