The Sheppard family dominated cloth manufacture in Frome, Somerset, England. They were the first to introduce machinery into the area and in the first quarter of the 19th century were the largest employers.

First names of the Sheppard family occur again and again down the centuries: John, Edward, William, Thomas, Eleanor, Walter, George.

In the town their name is attached to three places: the Emma Sheppard Centre for dementia day care, Sheppards Barton where there is a plaque at the south end of the barton and Network Rail's Sheppards Overbridge on the lane leading to Garston Farm once owned by them.

John Sheppard (c1614-1675) founder of the family

John was the first of his surname to be directly associated with the cloth industry in Frome. There were earlier Sheppards in Frome, renting land in the 16th century on Rodden Down, but no pedigree can be established. His trade was as a cardboard maker - making boards for carding wool. Spinners prepared the wool by combing it. Wire drawers were needed to make the pins which formed the comb. Until the eighteenth century this was done by hand, combing the raw unwashed wool with a card in each hand at right angles to one another. The business was not just local; the cards were sold across the country.

John leased property on Catherine Hill from Champneys of Orchardleigh; this relationship with the Orchardleigh squires continued for two hundred years; this was probably 13 Catherine Hill and included houses, buildings, stables, orchards and a meadows nearby. Later he bought land directly from Champneys' widow; this is now part of Wine Street. He built what is now 21 Wine Street in 1650; it remained in the Sheppard family until 1847 when John, his grandson four times removed gave it to the Sheppards Barton Baptist Church. He purchased land in Nunney. These substantial leases and purchases suggest his business was flourishing.

The Sheppards were Baptists. Yet in 1675, just before his death, he leased some of his land on a 1,000 years lease to the Quakers for their first meeting house in Frome. One of his sons, Benjamin continued in the carding trade. His eldest, John is described as a clothier, a merchant in his own right. John's second son, Edward (1649-1686) was a maltster. He had three children by his second wife, who had three children of her own; they died within a month of each other in 1686. His brothers became responsible for bringing up the orphans.

John Sheppard (c1680-1720) clothier

Edward's eldest son, John, who as a minor inherited most of his father's property, became a cloth merchant in turn. In 1705 he married Philippa Humphrey of Berkley by whom he had six children. He renewed the lease on the Catherine Hill properties. He purchased more land at Critchill and leased further land to the Quakers. He built tenements on his land as well as being a substantial subscriber to the costs of building Sheppards Barton Baptist Church of 1707. There is a tradition that before the completion Baptists met in his house at No 13 Catherine Hill (beside the steps coming down from Sheppards Barton). He was a signatory to the successful Petition of 1713, in which Frome and other cloth towns protested about changes in duty brought about by the Peace of Utrecht that would have given French clothiers the edge. He died in 1720, leaving the greatest part of his property to his wife and four trustees to manage in trust for his eldest son, William. £700 was given to his eldest, then aged 11, provided the freehold of Sheppards Barton Church was handed over to trustees.

His widow effectively managed the family's business. She purchased what is now 30 Catherine Hill, next to the Baptist Burial Ground and lived there. She bought land and a dyehouse. She died in 1750, distributing through her will money and effects among her children and grandchildren.

William Sheppard (1709-1759)

John's eldest son, William was a clothier like his father. He was born in Catherine's Hill. With his wife, Eleanor, he had ten children. half of whom who survived into the 19th century at the height of their family's prosperity. These were William (1735-1814), Walter (1739-1810), Henry (1744-1811), John (1747-1806) and Edward (1741-1808). Of these only William and Edward had children. On his death he was buried in Sheppard's Barton.

By 1785 Eleanor was living with her son Walter at Iron Gates in King Street. She died 33 years after her husband in 1792.

William continued to expand the family's properties: building plots in what became High Street, Wine Street and South Parade, and land in Dyers Close. In the 1730s he built houses in High Street and Wine Street (note: High Street was named as it lay on the high ground next to Catherine Hill, not to be confused with a street of shops in modern usage); these were all built on land purchased by John Shepherd in 1650. By 1755 he had built 19 houses in High Street, bequeathing the eastern side to his son Henry and the western side to his son Edward. His sons established factories at Rodden, Willow Vale and Spring Gardens.

Sheppard's Barton

By the 1760s, a number of cottages had been built to house weavers on land first leased to John Sheppard (c1614-1675) by the Champneys, part of his Catherine Hill complex.

The word Barton derives from Old English bere (barley) and ton (enclosure) and is connected to Demesne, land belonging to the Lord of the manor. In the West Country, Bartons are frequently found, associated with farms in the main. In towns they may refer to small thoroughfares, often not wide enough to allow carts to pass through, a narrow lane. In Frome there are many examples: Plumbers Barton, Clavey's Barton (now Blindhouse Lane), Humphries Barton (now South Parade); the name has been applied to modern streets: Foundry Barton, Leonards Barton. Nearby Mells is transversed across its centre by a number of similar bartons.

William Sheppard (1735-1814)

The first son of William and Eleanor, He was married to Anne Hulbert (1737-1820) in 1762. They had eight children: William Hulbert (1762-1804), Edward (1764-1849), Thomas (1766-1858), Anne (1768-1861), Elizabeth (1769-1841), Henry (1770-1854), George (1773-1855) and Eleanor (1777-1862).

The Sheppards Barton Meeting House of the Quakers was replaced by a new building in 1783, the quit rent still being paid to the Sheppards.

His brother Edward, the last son of William and Eleanor, married Elizabeth Harmer in 1777, by whom he had two children: Thomas Harmer (1778-1860) and Mary Harmer (1790-1840).

Frome's first MP

Thomas Sheppard (1766-1858) was the third son of William Sheppard. In 1800 in Friern Barnet, London he married Sarah Down (1775-1844). They had six children: Thomas (1802–51), Charles Down (1805–61), Walter Cope (1806–61), Sarah Frances (1808-post-1882), Susan (1810–96) and Frederick (1812–75).

Politically he was a radical and a Whig who was elected as Frome's first MP in 1832. The story of that riotous election may be found here. He was the only representative in the House of Commons who had a pigtail.

Like his election nominator, Thomas Bunn, Sheppard supported the Anti-Slavery movement and was a delegate for Frome at the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Convention, at the Freemason's Hall, London, on 12 June 1834.

Once elected, he spent much of his time in London, living in either The Lawn, Hampstead or in the city at Basinghall Street. In 1838 Thomas bought the Folkington and Wootton manors in the South Downs and built for himself a new Folkington Manor, designed by the architect William Donthorn. After the death of his son Frederick in 1875, it was sold to another family.

George Sheppard (1773-1855) captain of industry

George was the youngest son of William Sheppard and became the major clothier in Frome. He married Mary Ann Stuart Byard (1777-1838), daughter of Captain Sir Thomas Byard. They had four sons: Thomas Byard, George Wood (1807-1894), Walter (1809-1852) and Alfred Byard (1810-post-1871). and two daughters: Emma Martha (1813-?) and Jane Bunn (1814-?).

When George took over the family business, its only buildings were in Willow Vale: a warehouse and a fulling mill. They used the Town Mill, behind the Blue House. He bought a mill at Rodden, converting it from a flour mill. In 1795 he expanded the factory at Rodden, introducing scribbling engines; these replaced the first process of hand-carding in sorting out wool fibres. He worked with his brother Henry until Henry retired; then he went into a long partnership with his cousin William Hulbert Sheppard of Keyford House. In 1803 William complained to government commissioners of the difficulty of introducing a gig mill for treating the nap of cloth. At a time of rising unemployment, in part because of the increasing mechanisation of cloth production, the price of potatoes provoked a riot in Frome in 1816. Magistrates read the Riot Act and suppressed the trouble with local militia and dragoons, preventing an attack on a Sheppard factory. At Spring Gardens the Sheppard partnership had established a factory and three mills. He built two dozen cottages on Innox Hill for his workers, close enough for them to work irregular hours when required. The Spring Gardens works were later to enlarged and operated with steam engines by 1824. In full production they were producing broadcloths, kersey, doeskins and other cloths every week, 5000 yards of cloth.

He had Fromefield House built for himself and family in 1797. The early 19th-century extension of the garden of Fromefield House involved the levelling of a barrow, which was partly dug out in 1819-20 before the garden was landscaped. These diggings (which were not well recorded) apparently discovered five human skeletons, sherds of Neolithic pottery and limestone slabs apparently forming walled chambers. The house received its water supply from a nearby spring - hence Spring Road on the corner of which the house stands. There were two 'modern' amenities installed, now both gone: an ice house and a bath house (which had two rooms, the cold stream-fed pool and a changing room with a fireplace.

In 1803 he became a trustee of the Almhouses, Blue School, and Keyford Asylum. His son Thomas Byard joined him as a trustee in 1832. In the same year he was one of those, alongside Thomas Bunn, who supported financially the emigration of Frome inhabitants to Canada as part of the work of a 'Committee for the Relief and Employment of the Poor'.

His youngest sons, Walter and Alfred Byard never entered the family trade, the latter becoming an attorney and solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Thomas Bunn was a frequent visitor to Fromefield House. He was friendly with Mary, George's wife. At her death in 1838, he commented: "At our visit she received us in her garden with such kindness sweetness and affability that a friendship commenced without the shadow of a cloud from thence to the day. When I have been ill she visited me consoled me and talked and conversed with me. .... I was affected as we passed through the town at seeing so unexpectedly the shops closed."

Before his death in 1855, George had handed over the management of the cloth business to the two eldest sons, Thomas Byard and George Wood. Their partnership lasted until the firm closed. Changes in fashion in part had caused the decline: the black shiny broadcloth which was their speciality was replaced by checked and patterned cloths. Their conservatism killed the trade. In 1875, George Wood became a founder member of the Frome Cottage Hospital. This small eleven-bed unit was on the corner of Castle Street and Trinity Street and was a precursor of the Frome Victoria Hospital of 1901; unusually for the town, it was a Georgian brick building.

John Sheppard (1785–1879) writer