page_title: Frome
section_title: Landmarks
hierarchical_section_title: Frome / Landmarks
caption_attribution_description: The Blue House, a grade I listed building
context_page_description: Frome is a town and civil parish in eastern Somerset, England. The town is built on uneven high ground at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills, and centres on the River Frome. It is approximately 13 miles south of Bath, 43 miles east of the county town, Taunton and 107 miles west of London. In the 2011 census, the population was given as 26,203. The town is the largest in the Mendip district of Somerset and is part of the parliamentary constituency of Somerton and Frome.
  Frome was one of the largest towns in Somerset until the Industrial Revolution, and was larger than Bath from AD 950 until 1650. The town first grew due to the wool and cloth industry; it later diversified into metal-working and printing, although these have declined. The town was enlarged during the 20th century but retains a large number of listed buildings, and most of the centre falls within a conservation area.
  The town has road and rail transport links and acts as an economic centre for the surrounding area. It provides a centre for cultural and sporting activities, including the annual Frome Festival and Frome Museum. A number of notable individuals were born in, or have lived in, the town.
context_section_description: The older parts of Frome – for example, around Sheppard's Barton and Catherine Hill – are picturesque, containing an outstanding collection of small late-17th- and 18th-century houses. The Trinity area, which was built in the latter half of the 17th century and first half of the 18th, is a fine (and rare) example of early industrial housing.  More than 300 houses were built between 1660 and 1756 in an unusual early example of a planned grid pattern. Although about half the area was demolished in the 1960s under a Slum Clearance Order, before its historical importance was realised; the remainder was saved and was restored at a cost of £4 million between 1980 and 1984. In this area is the elaborate former Selwood Printing Works. Stony Street, which leads into Catherine Hill, is a steep, cobbled road climbing out of the town centre. In the centre of the town, Cheap Street contains buildings dating to the 16th and 17th centuries and has a stream running down the middle fed by the spring at St John's Church. Cheap Street has never been used for vehicular traffic and its layout is based on land plots dating to approximately 1500. Despite a fire in 1923 the buildings have remained substantially unchanged since 1830, apart from shop-frontages.
  The town bridge, originally built in the 14th century, was rebuilt in the 17th century and widened in the 19th, at which time houses were built on it. It remains one of only three bridges in England that have buildings across them; the others are the Pulteney Bridge in Bath and the High Bridge in Lincoln. The Tourist Information Centre in Justice Lane is contained within a circular dye-house known to have been in existence by 1813, one of two surviving in the town (the other being in Willow Vale). It was restored in 1994. In the 1990s and early years of the 21st century, Frome benefited from considerable investment in the restoration of its historic buildings through the English Heritage Heritage Economic Regeneration Scheme and the National Lottery Townscape Heritage Initiative.
  Frome has 370 listed buildings, the greatest number within Somerset, outside of Bath. Individual buildings are best examined through Historic England's listings. Three of these (including the parish church) are Grade I listed. The Blue House, next to the town bridge, is one of the Grade I buildings; it was formerly the Bluecoat School and Almshouses, named after the colour of the school uniforms. Built in 1726 at a cost of £1,401 8s 9d, it replaced an almshouse dating from 1461 and rebuilt in 1621. The Blue House provided a home for twenty widows and schooling for twenty boys. The front of the building is adorned by two statues, of a man and a woman, indicating the building's dual purpose. They are colloquially known as "Billy Ball" and "Nancy Guy". The building's role as a school came to an end in 1921 and it now provides studio and one-bedroom flats for seventeen elderly residents.
  Rook Lane Chapel was a nonconformist chapel built between 1705 and 1707 by James Pope: "The size and pride of the building are remarkable at so early a date." The chapel had a gallery around three sides and the centre of the ceiling was domed and supported by two Tuscan columns. Rook Lane ceased to be used as a chapel in 1968 and there followed twenty-five years of neglect. In the early 1990s the building was compulsorily purchased by Somerset County Council and transferred to the Somerset Buildings Preservation Trust, which carried out repairs and restorations. In 2001 it was converted by a firm of architects, the ground floor becoming a community hall and arts centre managed by Rook Lane Arts Trust and the galleried upper floor becoming offices for the architectural firm NVB Architects.
  Frome is reputed to have one or more systems of tunnels beneath the streets of the older parts of the town. Some entrances are visible above ground; for example in the wall at the top of Stony Street, with other entrances in the cellars of shops and houses. Their purpose and full extent remain unknown but they have been investigated in recent years b
caption: The Blue House, a grade I listed building
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