Venue

The only surviving monastic fishery building in England, this housed the Abbot of Glastonbury's water bailiff and provided facilities for fish-salting and drying.

The Fish House was built for Glastonbury Abbey in the 1330s. It stands in a beautiful position by the site of a long-drained lake (the ‘mere’) on the Somerset Levels. The building’s design shows that it was not meant, as usually claimed, for processing or storing fish, but as a house.

The impressive full-height 15th-century tower and other remains of a remote abbey of Premonstratensian 'white canons'.

Shap Abbey is in a remote valley that was once home to a community of Premonstratensian canons. Living a contemplative monastic life, these canons also served as priests in nearby parishes.

The courthouse is a fine example of an early 15th-century timber-frame construction, set in an idyllic village. The ground floor (now tenanted) was the village poor house. You can visit an exhibition on the village in this property. Please note, there are very steep stairs.

The courthouse was the base for parish activities for four hundred years and was the venue for the annual manorial court which dealt with tithes and crimes such as selling bad fish, brewing without a licence, or overcharging customers.

The National Archives looks after the UK government’s documents. It holds records dating back nearly 1,000 years from the time of William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book to the present day. Some very famous documents created by some of the most important and significant people in the past are kept here, including Shakespeare’s will, Guy Fawkes’ signed confession and the 1225 version of Magna Carta.

The range of documents includes letters, reports, newspapers, photographs, maps, posters and even a mummified rat.