Shute is a village, parish and former manor located west of

Axminster Axminster is a market town and civil parish on the eastern border of the county of Devon in England. It is from the county town of Exeter. The town is built on a hill overlooking the River Axe which heads towards the English Channel at Ax ...

East Devon East Devon is a local government district in Devon, England. Its council has been based in Honiton since February 2019, and the largest town is Exmouth (with a population of 34,432 at the time of the 2011 census). The district was formed ...

, off the

A35 road The A35 is a major road in southern England, connecting Honiton in Devon and Southampton in Hampshire. It is a trunk road for some of its length. Most of its route passes through Dorset and the New Forest. It originally connected Exeter and So ...

. It is surrounded by farmland and woodland beneath 163-metre (535') Shute Hill. St Michael's Church dates from the 13th Century and contains many monuments to the Pole family, including a marble statue of

Sir William Pole, 4th Baronet Sir William Pole, 4th Baronet (1678 – 31 December 1741), of Colcombe Castle, near Colyton and Shute, near Honiton, Devon was an English landowner and Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1701 and 1734. ...

(1678-1741), Master of the Household to Queen Anne. A later 19th. century member of the family, Margaret Pole, is commemorated by an alabaster sculptured panel depicting her greeting her daughters at the gates of heaven. There exist within the parish the two former Pole Family

Manor House A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

s of

Old Shute House ::See also: New Shute House Old Shute House (known as Shute Barton between about 1789 and the 20th century), located at Shute, near Colyton, Axminster, Devon, is the remnant of a mediaeval manor house with Tudor additions, under the ownership ...

(or Shute Barton), a historic mediaeval house, now owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

, and the Georgian New Shute House, privately owned. In 1981 the vicar of St Michael's and his wife founded the Shute Theatre and Arts Guild (STAG). The church was slightly altered to accommodate a permanent stage and extra power was bought in for stage lighting. STAG perform regular productions in the church and in nearby Kilmington Village Hall to this day. The village was the scene of the murder of 84-year-old Ivy Batten in 1987. The immediate village of Shute, with around only 150 residents, as opposed to the wider parish with a population of over 600, claims to be the smallest village in England to host a literary festival. Shute Festival was established in 2014, as an annual event, but was moved online with regular events following the 2020 pandemic lockdown. Previous guests have included the authors Phillipe Sands, Sophie Hannah, Tracy Chevalier, Christina Lamb, and Sir Anthony Selden. The

West of England Main Line The West of England line (also known as the West of England Main Line) is a British railway line from , Hampshire, to in Devon, England. Passenger services run between London Waterloo station and Exeter; the line intersects with the Wessex Ma ...

passes through Seaton Junction to the south of the village.

References

External links

Villages in Devon Former manors in Devon {{Devon-geo-stub