Blue doors, white doors, the estate village

Abbotsbury is an estate village and has been since Sir Giles Strangways bought the abbey in 1539. The Ilchester Estate still owns most of the houses, the Swannery, the Gardens, the barn and the farmland. You can read the tenancies off the front doors. By long custom a blue door is an estate cottage let on a rental, a white door is a house on a lease, and any other colour means freehold. The estate built the Victorian terraces on Rodden Row between 1850 and 1890, the school on Market Street that is now Strangways Hall, and the Schoolmaster's House on Back Street. The Ilchester Arms, the old coaching inn on Market Street, has the Strangways coat of arms over the door.

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