Little is currently known of the history of the buildings to the north of the main house. Local lore says that the row fronting onto the lane to the east had once been two cottages. The lane, nowadays locally called The Drain, was once called Coombe Lane. However there are also remains of other buildings which do not front onto Coombe Lane - click on the plan for a larger version (opens in a new window). The main building (now roofless) was once the pub's skittle alley.
The photo is of the Coombe Lane side around 1985.
The main house became a pub in, perhaps, the late 1830s (See the house history) but there are currently no records of the pub being called The Bakers Arms until the 1861 census.
As far as is known, the Old Bakery had been a cottage before becoming the village bakery, at an unknown date. It is shown on the 1830 map as a wooden building. However the old oven doors remain as a feature and are of some historical interest having been made by Petter and Edgar of Yeovil who traded from 1873 until Frank Edgar's death in 1886. Dates courtesy of Bob Osborn from his Yeovil history site. So this seems to date the use of this building as a bakery to around that period. The old access door visible in the top photo seems to have been a loading door for flour to the bakery. This old wooden door has long since rotted and the entrance filled in.
The pub ceased trading as a pub in the early 1950s. When listed in June 1953 the official listing states Former Inn, now a private house. The buildings at the rear are not included in the listing details.
Permission was granted in January 1958 to convert the inn to dwellings and the outbuildings into 2 garages. One of these was the building marked Store room to the left as you enter the courtyard. The other was the Old Bakery. The steel beam that was over the garage door remains visible, see the photos below.
An aerial photo, probably from 1960, shows the buildings mostly still roofed.
By the 1980s these cottages were partly in ruins.
In 1989 The Bakers Arms was owned by Mick & Robbie Mazzeo and their son Tony. They were builders. In 1989 they were granted consent to turn the outbuildings into four holiday lets. They sold the property in 1994; only The Old Bakery had been fully converted. Jasmine Cottage had been partly converted: the kitchenette and shower rooms had not been fully equipped. The cottage was used as an office thereafter. The conversion plans include a third cottage, now the workshop and a fourth incorporating the Old skittle alley and the log store.
The photos show the two cottages before we bought The Bakers Arms
We moved in to the property in late December 2020 and set about renovating the two cottages. We have used many holiday cottages ourselves over the years and we knew what we liked. We aimed to make the two cottages the sort of places we would be happy to return to ourselves. Letting started in April 2021, when covid restrictions were relaxed. Jasmine cottage first. It had been use as offices so was in good repair so easy to convert fully. the Old Bakery had been neglected - there was water ingress from no fewer than 5 sources - so it look longer to dry out and was opened in June 2021.
The photo (takes May 2021) shows both cottages after clearing the various plants which had been allowed to take over.
Document URI: https://westdorset.org/about/history/cottages/index.php
