Yeovil's Virtual Museum

trinity house

Peter Street

 

The draper and mercer Peter Daniell of Penn House owned a mansion in Middle Street that had been built by his father. This mansion stood where the rear of the WH Smith building bordering Wine Street stands today. He also owned much land between Middle Street and South Street and much of the land on the north side of Grope Lane, today's Wine Street, as seen on the first map below. In the late 1820's or early 1830's he planned and built an extension to Grope Lane which became Union Street, then Bond Street to connect Middle Street with South Street and finally Peter Street, named after himself, to join Bond Street with Grope Lane / Union Street.

Trinity House is one of the few remaining original buildings in Peter Street. It was built in the Regency style and displays 'marginal lights' in the first floor windows - a typically Regency feature. During a recent (2017) re-roofing of the building, a rafter was seen to be dated, with '1836, T.H' carved neatly into it and fortuitously dating the building.

It was built in brick (now colour-washed) with stone rusticated quoins and eaves cornice under a Welsh slate hipped roof. It is of three storeys with irregular fenestration and a modern large bow window at ground floor level. To the first floor are two symmetrically placed 12-pane sash windows with Regency-style margins in plain openings, and to the second floor are three symmetrically placed 16-light sash windows without margins, also set plain. The side walls are rendered and quite plain.

During the 1890s and 1900s Trinity House was the home of George Henry Whitby (son of Ebenezer Whitby) and his family.

In both 1866 and 1869 a Mrs Wilson placed advertisements in the Western Gazette for her Boarding and Day School in Trinity House.

 

 

Map based on the 1901 Ordnance Survey. Trinity House is on the south side of Peter Street, below the 'S' in Peter Street, with Holy Trinity Church to its immediate east.

 

 

Trinity House on the south side of Peter Street, a nice example of Regency fenestration.