Yew Trees House - Lower Road
Yew Trees House - Lower Road


Yew Trees House in Lower Road was opened as a school for the sons of non-conformist gentlemen after the Toleration Act of 1689. The Whitaker family who lived in the house for three centuries, initially as tenants of the Longleat estate, combined keeping the school with farming, supporting the chapel and playing their part in local government. The school included boarders and day boys, usually about thirty five of them. The boarders slept on the top floor and the schoolroom was on the first floor with access to the garden by an outside flight of steps and a balcony. The balcony is still there but the steps have gone. The boys carved their initials at various heights around the outside walls of the house. According to a surviving advertisement for the school 'young gentlemen' were instructed in everything necessary to form the scholar and man of business.
Tragedy struck in 1789 when a boy set alight to the school and subsequently committed suicide. This accounts for the C18th front of the house today. The school continued until 1820 and the Whitaker family stayed in it until 1947 when Jane Whitaker sold the family house and went to live with her cousin in the cottage, Whitakers, next door. There is a particularly charming photograph of what must have been a great day in the village: the wedding of Robert Reeves and Edith Whitaker in 1900. Jane is identifiable as a small bridesmaid in clothes no child of the present day would ever be persuaded to wear!
Antonia and Hugo Southern came to live here in 1970 and heard many stories of the house at first hand from Jane Whitaker and her nieces, Kathleen Reeves who lived all her life in the village and Marjorie Reeves, the distinguished medieval historian, who lived and worked in Oxford.

'Early Education in Bratton' by Kathleen White

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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