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Education - Rose Cottage

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About Rose Cottage

Garden

From Town Path

From River

Interior showing the display

The Trust purchased Rose Cottage. The total cost that now needs to be raised is some £310,000. Buying the property was £249,500 and an estimate for the cost of restoration and extension is likely to be a further £60,000.

The charming old listed building was built about 1840. It is beside the River Nadder, just above Harnham Mill and at the end of the Town Path that bisects our meadows. It is, literally, a bridgehead to them. A large part of the meadows is watered from the river through two large hatches and along a wide 'main carriage' (man made irrigation channel) all actually in the cottage garden.

The Trust has developed Rose Cottage as its Centre, on the meadows, to provide education and general public information about floated bedwork irrigation systems, both locally and more widely. We welcome visitors from schools, colleges, universities and community groups, including volunteers. There is a downstairs area with displays where small groups can meet, or have formal presentations about the history, operation and conservation of watermeadows. Upstairs the Trust is developing an archive that relates to Harnham and other watermeadow systems. This includes maps, diagrams, photographs (in hard and electronic format) copies of key references and books relating to landscape, agricultural and environmental science. This resource is available by appointment. We furthermore seek contact with groups that are presently seeking to conserve, restore and manage watermeadow systems elsewhere.

Fund raising is under way. Contributions (certified as eligible for Gift Aid tax status if applicable) will be gratefully received and should be made payable to 'Rose Cottage Appeal'. Please send to:

Harnham Water Meadows Trust, Caprice Cottage, Middle Winterslow, Salisbury, SP3 1QJ

Proposed Visitor Information and Education Centre

Right: ground plan with full size classroom (1) information and exhibition space (2) development and education office (3) The Education Centre will provide for:
	base for school classes, National Curriculum years 6 to 11
	public information
	post school study groups
	community conservation groups
	special interest groups
	start of access trails

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Development of Rose Cottage (started Septmber 2005)

Before and After

During

The History of Rose Cottage

The Trust's land is remnant of the 'agrarian powerhouse of the water-meadows' (Salisbury, the changing city Purvis 2003), the irrigated (or 'floated') systems prevalent throughout the Wessex chalklands in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The irrigation was fundamental to the 'early bite' of grass that sustained enormous flocks of Wiltshire Horn sheep, their manure sustaining the arable land, the grain harvest and the agricultural wealth of the area. We are fortunate that, on its 'island' our 88 acres have been protected, and survive, effectively inside the city of Salisbury. In 1931 when Fisherton Mill and its estate was sold, Rose Cottage fetched £250 and was described as: 'Brick, built and tiled, and contains 2 BEDROOMS, KITCHEN and range, Pantry and Washhouse and E.C. and water supply from stand pipe in Lot 6

(Island Cottage, dated somewhat earlier and shown on the Inclosure Map of 1787)'.

The cottage is later recorded by the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments in its Salisbury volume, not named, but as Building 590.

'Cottage of two stories with brick walls, partly tile-hung, and with a tiled roof, was built c1840. The S.W. front is symmetrical and of two bays with a central doorway'.

Rose Cottage was remote from the then tiny hamlet of West Harnham on the very edge of the valley floor. The original purpose was almost certainly to house the drowner, whose job was to operate and maintain the irrigation system. Until her death in 2004 Miss Jane Foster had lived in Rose Cottage for over fifty years and her recollections have been published by the Friends in their Newsletter 23 (Spring 2003) - click here to view pdf copy of this article.

It is fitting that the cottage will now house The Trust Bailiff, a twenty first century successor to the Drowner of earlier times.

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