Situated on Peartree Green, Peartree House was built in the reign of Elizabeth I, probably between 1590 and 1600. Its builder and owner was Francis Mylles, tenant of Bitterne Manor House. It is said that Mylles re-used stones from the Roman settlement at Clausentum. The house is a long two-storey building with a stucco front and a tiled roof behind a castellated parapet. The central part is set back, with a ground floor verandah between the projecting wings.
In the 19th century General Shrapnel, inventor of the shrapnel shell, lived at the house, and died there in 1842. In the 1930s the estate was sold off for redevelopment. Southampton Town Council bought the house in 1949 and converted it into a home for the elderly. It is Grade II listed.
Further reading:
Lost Houses of Southampton, by Jessica Vale. (HS/i)
‘The Country Houses of Southampton’, by Jessica Vale in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, volume 39, 1983, p174, 180, 185, 186. (HS/i)
Southampton’s Historic Buildings, by R. J. Coles, p13. (HS/k)
Buildings of England: Hampshire and the I.O.W., by Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd, p597. (H/i)
Southampton People, by John Edgar Mann, p84-85. (HS/t)
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