Tuckers Cottage - Melbourne Street
Tuckers Cottage - Melbourne Street


The presence of the ‘1621’ timber lintel with initials above the front door of the thatched cottage at 1 Melbourne Street indicates a property over 400 years old.

Listed as one cottage, a garden and an acre of orchard with an initial rent of twelve pence (one shilling) as well as one or more turkey, capons or hens, it entered possession of the Longleat estate in 1669. Occupied at this time by Christopher White, a member of the homage or jury of the manorial court of Bratton, and then ‘Widow White’, it soon passed to three generations of the Tucker family who were required to plant three apple or pear trees annually in the orchard. It was then sold to the Peplars, a family of blacksmiths; and then again in 1825 to Edward Seagram, owner of Bratton House, when the rent was still a shilling.

Constructed in the vernacular style of its time, the timber framed building appears to be divided into two dwellings on late 18th century and 19th century maps, one of brick, the other stone, and is confirmed to be ‘two houses’ in a survey of 1876, becoming a single dwelling again in about 1902.

The economic aftermath of the First World War obliged the 5th Marquess of Bath to sell off large swathes of his estates, and on New Year’s Day 1920 he sold the house at 1 Melbourne Street to local landowner, Wadham Neston Diggle of Bratton House, for the sum of five hundred pounds. Included in the sale was a plot of land called ‘Balders Close’ to the west of the school in Stradbrook. Thereafter the brick section of the house functioned as a grocer’s and a butcher’s shop through the 20th century, when it was occupied by first one Smith family and then an unrelated Smith family from 1980 until the current owners took possession in 2019.

Historic England listing





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Bratton History Association.

The Bratton History Association aims to provide all those curious about local history with an opportunity to meet, exchange ideas, and discover more about the history of Bratton and Wiltshire. Activities include monthly meetings, talks by professional historians, visits to places of interest to historians, and our own local history project.

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