Explore Bradford: Belcombe
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Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Newtown continues westwards in the direction of Avoncliff, Turleigh and Winsley as Belcombe Road.
Click on the thumbnail pictures for a bigger view.
Wellclose House appears to be a large five-bay mansion on three floors and an attic, but the fine Georgian façade is only one room deep and is an addition to a 17th century house that lies behind it. This front addition may well have been the work of John Wood the elder, the architect of the Royal Crescent and other buildings in Bath, who was employed to extend Belcombe Court in the 1740s for another member of the same family who were living at Wellclose.
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Belcombe Court, originally called Belcombe Brook House when it was built early in the 18th century for a member of the Yerbury clothier family. In the 1740s the Yerburys employed John Wood, the greatest architect in the West of England to extend it in the Palladian style. Wood recorded that he thought it was the best work on this scale. As part of this extension a round dovecote and a medieval-style barn were built and in the gardens there were temples, a grotto and a rustic cottage in the manner of Stourhead and other grand estates.