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Bradford Leigh
South Wraxall, Holt & Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Bradford Leigh is an area to the north of the town which now, because of boundary changes, is partly in Bradford, partly in South Wraxall and partly in Holt. The name Leigh suggests that it started as a Saxon clearing in woodland. It was a Tithing of the Bradford Hundred, paired with Woolley. Fairfield, between the Leigh Park crossroads and the Plough public house, was where Bradford’s annual fair was held.
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Leigh Park Hotel, at the crossroads, was a 16th century house that was bought by lawyer Daniel Clutterbuck in 1788 and rebuilt. It was later the home of Admiral Sir Thomas Fellowes (1778-1853), then of Miss Isabella Poynder and of Lady Jane Henrietta Swinburne, mother of the poet Algernon. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice of Leigh lived there and took his title from it, before it became Bradford on Avon District Hospital until 1979 and then the present hotel. Learn More
A resident of the Leigh Park crossroads who briefly gained national fame was the dog Winston. Nobody knows why he ended up living there, but there have been plenty of theories. He was looked after by hospital staff and was provided with a kennel. He died in October 1978 and money was raised to train a guide dog for the blind, also named Winston, in his memory.
Old BBC film about Winston (opens a new tab)
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On the other side of the crossroads was North Leigh House. Like several big houses, this was requisitioned in World War 2 and was used to house several evacuated families and released in 1954. After a fire in 1955 it was demolished and the land used to build a group of bungalows, but two lodges, gatepiers and walled garden walls still remain.
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The eastern lodge of the former North Leigh House, on the road towards Corsham. The stone gatepiers are listed ‘buildings’, but the house and identical North Lodge are not.
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Across the fields from North Leigh was a pair of houses with the odd name of Nettlecreep Cottages, now long gone. In one of them Constable Rendell of Bradford’s police force lived after the Great War; his handcuffs are now on display in the Museum.
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Facing the field where the fair was held, appropriately, is Fairfield House. The fair was held here, on the Monday after St Bartholomew’s Day (August 24th), from the middle of the 18th century until the middle of the 20th century. The house is divided into flats and now a bit of a mess, with old cars littering the front.
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Bradford Leigh had a public house- The Plough, which closed in 2014. Its history seems to have been shared with the pub of the same name in Trowbridge Road, Bradford. The long service wing in rubble stone to the right of the old house was added in the 1980s.
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The main road goes on past the Plough towards, Corsham, but the road to the east is a ridgeway that heads towards Great Chalfield and Holt. The first building on the right is Bradford Leigh Methodist chapel, which was built in 1892 in the form of a corrugated iron mission hall, an offshoot of the church in Coppice Hill. It closed in 1951 and was converted into a house in 2011 and extended in 2016.
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Further along the ridgeway were several small farms, one of which is Merkins Farm. The photograph shows the buildings of the farmyard in the 1990s before they were converted into holiday ‘cottages’. As well as the cottages, the farm also has a popular café and a Caravan Club campsite.
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Blackacre Farm has ceased to be agricultural, with its famhouse and a large barn converted to residential purposes. The name Blackacre is usually associated with an archaeological site due to the darkening of soil by ancient habitation.
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