Dean and Chapter of Wells Cathedral. The Abbey required fish on Fridays, fast days and during Lent. Drainage of the surrounding area by monks of Glastonbury Abbey had reduced the size of the lake to at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Meare Pool had disappeared from maps by 1749. The current fish house was built between 1322 and 1335 when Adam of Sodbury was the Abbot of Glastonbury who also built the Church of St Mary in the village and the Manor House as his summer residence. It may have replaced a previous abbey building. The upper floor was the abode of the chief fisherman when he visited intermittently and the ground floor was used for storing nets and the salting and preparing fish. Some alterations were made, probably in the 15th century. Meare Pool was drained after the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the fish house fell into disrepair. It suffered a fire in the 1880s, which destroyed the roof and gutted the interior. In 1893 some repairs were made to the walls, although the roof was not replaced until work was undertaken by the Ministry of Works in the 1920s, with further conservation being carried out in the 1960s. A piece of timber from the building was subject to dendrochronology testing in an attempt to provide a more specific date for the buildings construction, but the results proved inconclusive. In 1910 the building was inspected by Charles Reed Peers under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1900 and taken into state guardianship. The fish house is now in the care of English Heritage. Architecture The rectangular Blue Lias stone building has a stone tiled roof. It is long and wide. The ground floor had three rooms, one larger than the others which had a fireplace, and a door in the southern wall. The larger room was the hall and linked by arched doorways to the smaller rooms. There were two rooms on the first floor, which were damaged in the fire of 1884, which also has a small entrance door which was accessed via exterior stone steps which no longer exist. There was also a latrine in a turret which no longer exists. There are small traceried arched windows. See also Grade I listed buildings in Mendip List of Scheduled Monuments in Mendip References External links Meare Fish House, English Heritage Buildings and structures completed in