The Bee Shelter,

Hartpury Hartpury is a civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It has an area of about . Hartpury Parish Council estimates 700 people live in around 270 houses. The population of the central village area within the parish was estimated at 550 people by ...

Forest of Dean The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the Counties of England, county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangle, triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and no ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

, England, is a 19th-century bee shelter. It is a Grade II* listed structure.

History and description

The bee shelter was originally located in

Nailsworth Nailsworth is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Stroud District in Gloucestershire, England, lying in one of the Stroud Valleys in the Cotswolds, on the A46 road, south of Stroud and about north-east of Bristol and Bat ...

and was moved to the grounds of Hartpury College in 1968, before being relocated to the churchyard of St Mary's Church in 2002. Until the late 20th century, the beehive shelter was believed to date from the early 17th century and that it functioned as a beehive rack. Recent research has confirmed that it was constructed in the 19th century as a bee shelter by the

stonemason Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone as the primary material. Stonemasonry is the craft of shaping and arranging stones, often together with mortar and even the ancient lime mortar ...

Paul Tuffley, a member of a prominent Gloucestershire family of masons, stone merchants and quarrymasters. The date can be confirmed by the stone tooling marks on the shelter, which are "typically

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

" and by the reference made to the shelter in a deed dating from 1852. The shelter is 7.3m long and 2.1m high, and comprises three tiers of shelving separated by

pilasters In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

. The structure is elaborately decorated.

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bee Shelter, Hartpury, The Beehives

Forest of Dean