engineering

The Abbot's Fish House, Meare

The Abbot's Fish House, Meare is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Abbot's Fish House, Meare rather than just read about it. In short: The Abbot's Fish House in Meare, Somerset, England, was built in the 14th century and has been designated as a Grade I listed building and scheduled monument. It is the only surviving monastic fishery building in England.

Key takeaways

The Abbot's Fish House, Meare belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Abbot's Fish House, Meare to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Abbot's Fish House, Meare from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Abbot's Fish House in Meare, Somerset, England, was built in the 14th century and has been designated as a Grade I listed building and scheduled monument. It is the only surviving monastic fishery building in England. Fishing was an important source of food for the monks of Glastonbury Abbey. Fishing was carried out in artificial ponds, which were mentioned at Meare in the Domesday Book and from the River Brue and Meare Pool. The present rectangular stone building was constructed by the abbot between 1322 and 1335 for the storage and processing of the fish and as a residence for the chief fisherman. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the building fell into disrepair and it was seriously damaged by fire in the 1880s. Some restoration has been undertaken during the 20th century, including the replacement of the roof in the 1920s.

History

The fish ponds surrounding the Fish House were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 when they were tended by ten fishermen. The fishponds, which were connected with drains and gullies were up to 30 metres (98 ft) long and 5 metres (16 ft) wide. These were connected to the Meare Pool and the River Brue. At one point 5,000 eels were caught each year. Pike, bream and "white fish" were also caught. Meare Pool was formed by water ponding-up behind the raised peat bogs between the Wedmore and the Polden Hills, and coring has shown that it is filled with at least 2 metres (6.6 ft) of detritus mud, especially in the Subatlantic climatic period (1st millennium BC). Early drainage work was carried out in the later years of the 12th century, with the responsibility for maintaining all the watercourses between Glastonbury and the sea being placed on named individuals among whom were Ralph de Sancta Barbara of Brentmarsh. Its precise boundaries varied according to season, and, over the longer term, as efforts were made to drain the area. The south end was bordered by the high ground that the village of Meare is built upon. The pond would have extended no further west than the current Westhay to Wedmore road, where a shelf of rock formed a natural boundary. To the north lies the Godney ridge. The eastern extent is harder to determine, and it may have gone as far as the site of the Glastonbury Lake Village. The importance of this fishpond industry is illustrated by a series of acrimonious disputes between Glastonbury and the Dean and Chapter of Wells Cathedral. The Abbey required fish on Fridays, fast days and during Lent. Drainage of the surrounding area by monks of Glastonbury Abbey had reduced the size of the lake to 500 acres (200 ha) at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Meare Pool had disappeared from maps by 1749. The current fish house was built between 1322 and 1335 when Adam of Sodbury was the Abbot of Glastonbury who also built the Church of St Mary in the village and the Manor House as his summer residence. It may have replaced a previous abbey building. The upper floor was the abode of the chief fisherman when he visited intermittently and the ground floor was used for storing nets and the salting and preparing fish. Some alterations were made, probably in the 15th century. Meare Pool was drained after the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the fish house fell into disrepair. It suffered a fire in the 1880s, which destroyed the roof and gutted the interior. In 1893 some repairs were made to the walls, although the roof was not replaced until work was undertaken by the Ministry of Works in the 1920s, with further conservation being carried out in the 1960s. A piece of timber from the building was subject to dendrochronology testing in an attempt to provide a more specific date for the buildings construction, but the results proved inconclusive.

In 1910 the building was inspected by Charles Reed Peers under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1900 and taken into state guardianship. The fish house is now in the care of English Heritage.

Architecture The rectangular Blue Lias stone building has a stone tiled roof. It is 12.4 metres (41 ft) long and 6.6 metres (22 ft) wide. The ground floor had three rooms, one larger than the others which had a fireplace, and a door in the southern wall. The larger room was the hall and linked by arched doorways to the smaller rooms. There were two rooms on the first floor, which were damaged in the fire of 1884, which also has a small entrance door which was accessed via exterior stone steps which no longer exist. There was also a latrine in a turret which no longer exists. There are small traceried arched windows.

See also Grade I listed buildings in Mendip List of Scheduled Monuments in Mendip

References

External links

Meare Fish House, English Heritage

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Abbot's Fish House, Meare

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Abbot's Fish House, Meare claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Abbot's Fish House, Meare before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Abbot's Fish House, Meare ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Abbot's Fish House, Meare

In research: The Abbot's Fish House, Meare appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Abbot's Fish House, Meare in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Abbot's Fish House, Meare is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures completed in 1335, English Heritage sites in Somerset, Grade I listed buildings in Mendip District, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Abbot's Fish House, Meare outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Abbot's Fish House, Meare in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Abbot's Fish House, Meare means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Abbot's Fish House, Meare out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Abbot's Fish House, Meare in simple terms?

Why does The Abbot's Fish House, Meare matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Abbot's Fish House, Meare?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Abbot's Fish House, Meare.