History of Hesperus Cottage

In the 1840 records, Crowcombe Cottage, as Hesperus Cottage was then known, was the second house name to occur in the documented history of our hamlet. The first was Tracemills, mentioned in the Doomsday Book when William the Conqueror had a tax survey compiled in 1086. We can be pretty sure though that the cottage dates back to around 1600. There are 2 main reasons for this: the first is that, when a new roof was put up in 1966, the architect found that the jointing and pegging in the roof timbers dated back to around 1600 and the second reason is that the name Crowcombe Cottage could be linked to Thomas Carew of Crowcombe who was the grandfather of a local heiress, Jane Bluett, who got married in 1595. It is thought that her money could have paid for new buildings in their manor and that she could have named one after her grandfather.