Georgian grace

The late 18th century saw a wealth of fine country houses spring up in the county of Somerset

- Penny Churchill

THE picturesque village of Rode on Somerset’s eastern border, 10 miles south of Bath and five miles northeast of Frome, is one of a series of ancient wool villages that line the banks of the Frome. The river meanders along a treelined channel to the west of the village, with a historically important crossing-point at Rode Bridge and, over the centuries, it has been the life-blood of the area. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it provided power along its length for more than 30 mills associated with the wool trade, including a large woollen mill at Rode Bridge that, according to local records, employed 50 people in 1846.

By the end of the 18th century, prosperous local mill owners and landed gentry were building grand country houses in the Classical manner, inspired by the architecture of Bath and a ready supply of building materials from the village’s stone quarry and brickworks. One of the most impressive was Merfield House at Rode, built in about 1810 in the Greek Revival style by Jonathan Node, who inherited the land on which it was built from his adoptive father, a successful woollen miller. By the mid 1800s, however, the West Country wool trade was in decline and Merfield House was sold to the Batten-Pooll family of Rode Manor—lords of the manor and the leading local landowners.