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Explore Avoncliff
Westwood and Winsley, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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The hamlet of Avoncliff is shared by the parishes of Westwood, on the southern side of the River Avon and Winsley on the northern. It lies in a narrow part of the gorge-like valley, where a weir provided power for mills on both sides. The river, the Kennet & Avon Canal and the railway are the most notable features.
It is named after the steep side of the Avon valley leading up to Westwood. It was first named, as Aveneclife, in the reign of King Henry II (1133-1189) and appears later in various forms, including Ankly, Anclift and Ancliff, showing that the pronunciation of Avon was like Welsh afon, not as modern “ayvon”. The name was used for the whole steep slope as far as the confluence of the Avon and the Frome. There was also a place name Avoncliff on the Winsley side, but further down the river.
A mill on the Westwood side was noted in the Domesday Book in 1086, paying 10 shillings a year and belonging to Winchester Cathedral, like the rest of the manor of Westwood. It was a grist (flour) mill for most of its existence, but was converted to fulling woollen cloth in 1763 and became the centre of a large factory at the end of the century.
The mill on the northern, Winsley, side might have been the second of the two mills in the manor of Bradford listed in Domesday Book, but this could equally have been at Limpley Stoke or in Bradford itself. A mill was certainly there in 1249 when a boy named David was killed by the wheel and a miller is mentioned in 1439. It had a changeable career in milling flour, making flock and shoddy from recycled clothing in tandem with the Westwood mill, making green colouring from chlorophyll and firelighters. Both mills have burnt down- Winsley in 1883 and completely rebuilt and Westwood in 1901 after which it was reduced from four floors to two.
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Apart from the weir, the Westwood and Winsley sides are connected by the Kennet & Avon Canal’s Aqueduct, which was built in the 1790s to the design, like the rest of the canal, of John Rennie. The low central arch has sagged, but a reinforced concrete trough was made to hold the weight of water when the canal was restored in the 1980s.
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The Westwood side
The Cross Guns public house is said to date back as far as the early part of the 17th century and to take its name from the rifle range of the local volunteer regiment that was nearby. It occupies a short row of houses behind which the canal was built in the 1790s.
Ancliff Square is a range of houses on the old track towards Freshford. It was probably built in the 1790s as accommodation for apprentice workers at the woollen cloth mills, but was converted to be the “workhouse” of the Bradford Poor Law Union in 1835. In 1917 it became a Red Cross hospital, treating soldiers injured in the Great War. Next, in 1923 it became the Old Court Hotel, then requisitioned in World War 2 as the offices of the British Museum. It was converted again into houses in 1987-9.
Good freestone was extracted from Avoncliff and Westwood Quarries, which had miles of underground passages that followed the best beds from adits in the hillside. A tramway carried stone blocks down the hill, across the aqueduct to a yard by the railway on the Winsley side.
The Winsley side
The Winsley side mill in the process of restoration and conversion to domestic use after many years of dilapidation, during which the roof fell in. The rusted iron shelter, now replaced, is over the undershot mill wheel.
Mill Cottage was the home of the owner or manager of the mill, but became separated from the industrial buildings when the railway was built between them in 1857. Storing road salt by the County Council has damaged part of the stone wall.
Opposite Mill Cottage is a house that was built in 1883 as the pumping station of the Bradford Waterworks. It was used for pumping a supply of water from a well and adits in the hillside up to the main reservoir on the Bradford Road in Winsley
The Wilts Somerset & Weymouth Railway’s Bathampton to Bradford branch was opened in 1857 and involved burrowing under the canal aqueduct. Avoncliff Halt opened in 1906 and did not suffer from the axe in the Beeching era of the 1960s, mainly because it was not practical to replace the trains with buses.