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About a mile north-east from Newbury is Shaw House, which is by far the most stately Elizabethan mansion in Berkshire, and in historic interest it yields to few in the South of England.

The house is built of red brick, with dressings of white stone; and its massive square-headed windows have mullions and cornices of the same materials. Like many other houses erected during the reign of “Gloriana,” its ground plan is a letter E, the porch projecting slightly less than the wings. It was completed in 1581, by Thomas Dolman, a member of an old Yorkshire family, who had settled in Newbury as a clothier and, having made a fortune, retired here to live as a country gentleman. The proceeding was distasteful to the townsmen, and they expressed their feelings in the lines:

Lord have mercy upon us, miserable sinners,
Thomas Dolman has built a new house
And has turned away all his spinners.

To which he retorted with the haughty couplet:

Edentulus vescentium dentibus invidet
Et oculos caprearum talpa contemnit.

(The toothless man envieth the teeth of those that eat,
And the mole despises the eyes of the roes),

which may still be read over the portico; and above the lintel of the principal doorway is the appropriate motto in Greek:

Let no envious person enter here,

which is sad evidence that the eyes and teeth of his assailants were all too sharp for his repose. It is said Dolman put up these verses as spells against those particular ill-wishers whose peculiar malice he dreaded.

The hall is lofty and well proportioned and, like the rest of the rooms, panelled in oak. The is a handsome staircase of polished oak ascending to the old drawing-room, which occupies the south-east angle of the first floor. In the wainscot of a bay window in this room there is, let into the wall, a brass plate perforated at a spot where a bullet may be seen. This is said to have been the work of a Roundhead soldier, who aimed at King Charles I when he was dressing himself at the window, on the morning of the Second Battle of Newbury when the house was heavily under siege. The plate bears on it the following inscription

Tantis, nequidquam ereptus periclis
Rex Carolus Primus
Hanc juxta fenestram
Instante obsidione
Scloppopetrae ictu tantum non
Trajectus fuit
Die Octob: XXVII, MDCXLIV.

Several generations of the Dolmans lie buried in Shaw Church, adjoining, including the gallant defender of his house during the Civil War who, at the Restoration in 1660, was rewarded by a well-earned knighthood. There is a handsome monument in the church to the son of the hero of the fight, another Thomas Dolman, who was knighted by Queen Anne at Shaw House in 1703, on her return from Bath. The state bedstead on which the Queen slept was long preserved in the house.

The walls of Shaw House are such as would be well suited to stand a siege and an assault, being in many places six feet thick, as shown by the deep recesses in the windows. The roof, too, is a very forest of timber; and the foundations of the house and cellars look as if they had been constructed by their founder to last for all time. The cellars are very numerous and spacious. They are said to have been used as dungeons for soldiers captured during the siege. Like the local tradition which states that there is an underground communication to Donnington Castle, the story is unlikely to be true.

The Dolmans eventually sold up to the 1st Duke of Chandos in 1721. His main residence was in Middlesex, but he must have stayed at Shaw on many occasions while travelling from London to Bath. He is still remembered in Newbury for his charitable works. His widow is buried in the the parish church. Today, Shaw House is part of an educational complex.

Edited from Walter Money's "History of Newbury" (1905)

Shaw House currently belongs to West Berkshire District Council and is undergoing a considerable programme of restoration.