page_title: Norton House, Somerset
section_title: Later history and demolition
hierarchical_section_title: Norton House, Somerset / Later history and demolition
caption_attribution_description: English: Restored wellhead at Silver Street Nature Reserve, Midsomer Norton, that used to serve Norton House.
context_page_description: Norton House was a mansion in Midsomer Norton, Somerset. It was built around 1789 by the Savage family, investors in mines in the Somerset Coalfield. It was demolished in 1937-8 to make way for housing but several features from the house and its estate survive to this day.
context_section_description: In 1874 the house was separated from some of its land when the new Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway connecting Bath and Bournemouth was built across the estate just south of the house. Midsomer Norton railway station Records from 1885-6 also show solicitors' charges for Mrs. Savage (wife of Major Frederick S. Savage) relating to land transactions with the railway company.
  When the last of the Savage family died in 1888 the house was sold to Frederick Bird for £3,050 with 27 acres of land attached.  When he died in 1904 it was acquired by Gerald Thatcher, the brother of the composer and music administrator Sir Reginald Thatcher and the brother-in-law of coalmine owner Sir Frank Beauchamp, before being sold in 1912 to an individual known as Prince Tschajkowsky, popularly believed to be Russian. He refurbished the house but left within two years with reports of debts and rumours that he was a spy. In World War I the building was used to house Belgian refugees.
  Photographs of the house show a typically Georgian mansion in the conventional classical style, with lawns, landscaped gardens and a conservatory.
  After the war it was used as a school. A proposal was made in 1926 for a "Mentally Defective School" at Norton House.  It was demolished in 1937-8 to make way for housing.  Most of the grounds are now occupied by the 1930s housing estate Park Way, Somervale School and Silver Street Nature Reserve.
caption: Restored wellhead at Silver Street Nature Reserve, Midsomer Norton, that used to serve Norton House.
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