Upper Seagry and Goss Croft Hall / Seagry House
Goss Croft Community Hall is a modern, eco friendly and attractive facility. It is run jointly with the adjoining villages of Startley and Great Somerford. Goss Croft is the ancient name of the field where it is sited. It was completed in 2012 to replace a much older hall which stood 100 yards along the road towards Startley; the new house called 'Old Hall' now stands where the hall used to be.
Across the road behind the wall is the parkland surrounding Seagry House; you have just walked around the southern and eastern sides of the parkland. If you took the optional cross-country route from Scotland Hill, you will have walked along the western and northern sides, and will have arrived via a footpath immediately next to the 'Old Hall' house.
If you are using the App, go to 'Next On The Trail' now, and then select 'Upper Seagry / Seagry Road junction' so that you can read about the houses between here and Hungerdown House. Then walk through the village to Seagry Road.
Take care as you leave Upper Seagry, and approach the junction with Seagry Road with caution; you will be safer if you walk on the left side of the road towards the junction, because cars tend to come round the corner quite fast.
Across the road is Hungerdown House, which was built in 1914, in an 18th-century style of red brick and stone with a tiled roof. Brick stables north of the house were also built in 1914, but were converted into a separate house in 1947.
Seagry House
Seagry House at Upper Seagry was a five-bay mansion built in the 18th century and rebuilt after a 1949 fire; the 18th-century gatepiers at the east and south entrances survive. The gatepiers are Grade II listed, as follows:
Set of four gatepiers, early C18, ashlar, channel-rusticated with projecting pilasters, moulded bases and moulded cornices broken forward over pilasters. Centre piers have gadrooned urns, outer piers have rounded urns. Wrought iron centre gates, spearhead iron rails each side, with dog-bars. Similar outer rails ramped down to large circular ashlar stop, carved with flower motif.
The Seagry House estate was bought in 1785 by Sir James Tylney-Long of Draycot Cerne. Through inheritance and marriage it passed down to William, 5th Earl of Mornington (1813–1863) and then Henry Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley (1804–1884). Christian Wellesley, 4th Earl Cowley, sold most of the land in 1920, but the house remained in the Cowley family until 1949.
The coloured photo from 1925-1935 is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institute, and is shown here for non-commercial use consistent with the principles of fair use under Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act.
Seagry
From the time of the Norman Conquest until the early 1900s Seagry parish was roughly triangular in shape, with the 'apex' at the bottom and a flat top bordering Somerford parish. The triangle was divided almost equally in two halves by the road from Sutton Benger to Somerford; the western half of the triangle included the village of Upper Seagry (formerly Over Seagry) and the eastern half of the triangle included Lower Seagry (formerly Nether Seagry).
The western boundary was close to the western edge of Upper Seagry, and the road to Stanton St Quintin was in Sutton Benger and Draycot Cerne parishes.
The three parishes of Draycot Cerne, Sutton Benger and Seagry became one parish, called Sutton Benger, in 1934; the parish of Seagry temporarily disappeared. However, Sutton Benger parish was split in two by the building of the M4 motorway, and all the land to the north of the motorway became the new parish of Seagry in 1971.