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Explore Wingfield
Wingfield, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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The only remaining medieval part of the Parish Church of St Mary is the 15th century battlemented west tower, with pierced stone bell chamber windows. The rest was rebuilt in the 18th century and a north extension that houses the organ and vestry was added in 1861. It is all faced in ashlar stone and roofed with stone tiles, except for Welsh slate on the chancel.
The former Rectory, next to the church was largely rebuilt for Rev Edward Spencer from 1797 to 1819 where he held a school for up to 30 boys, including Thomas de Quincey, assisted by his unmarried daughter Bridget Elizabeth. It was sold off in 1969 as a private house.
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Also next to the church is Church Farm. The big farmhouse, of rubble stone, gabled, with stone mullioned windows under relieving arches is dated 1636, but its core is a late 15th century hall house. The buildings around the farmyard no longer have agricultural functions, but have been converted to housing.
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Along Church Lane is Wingfield School, a single-storey building with windows in 16th century perpendicular gothic style. It was designed in 1849 and opened in 1852. Since then it has been extended at the back and a further building added beyond. Since 2001 it has been part of what is called the Mead School, sharing facilities and name with a new school on the Paxcroft housing development in Hilperton.
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Church Lane leads from the Bradford to Rode Turnpike road. The development of eight houses called Moore’s Yard was built in 2000 on the site of the timber and coal merchant yard that had belonged to the Moore family.
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Lying back from the Turnpike, opposite Church Lane and just off Shop Lane is The Poplars public house. Besides its beer from Wadworth of Devizes and its food, a major attraction is that the village cricket ground is on the same site. From 1880 until the 1920s it was run by George Tucker Couch, who died in 1923 and is buried in the churchyard. It was sold in the following year to Wadworth.
Wingfield House, at the crossroads, was begun in the 18th century, but most of what can be seen today is in 19th century gothic style. The extensions were done for the Caillard family, who were the largest landowners and lords of the manor. It was a Red Cross hospital during the First World War. In 1935 Bernard Caillard and his wife gave it to the Waifs & Strays Society in memory of their daughter Margaret, who had died at 20. The Margaret Caillard Memorial Home for Boys held 30 boys, but it only lasted until 1938 and the house was requisitioned, again, by the army during WW2. The house and its outbuildings were divided into four residential properties after the war.
Wingfield Green, or just The Green, at one time called Trowle House. Built in the 17th century and belonged to the Wadman family until 1806. It was the home of John Bayfield Clark, a woollen cloth manufacturer of Trowbridge, from 1854 until his death in 1898 and he added new wings and a conservatory.
Wingfield Court was a new build on a greenfield site in the late 1920s that was designed by Sir George Oatley and his brother-in-law George Churchus Lawrence, the architects of Bristol University and many other buildings in Bristol. It was built for William Nelson Haden (1859-1946) of a Trowbridge engineering, heating and ironfounding firm.
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North of Wingfield, halfway to Bradford, Midway Manor lies back from the road. Its gate piers are topped with four cannonballs, which represent the exploding shells that were invented by General Henry Shrapnel, who lived there. The gate piers are also carved with the shells and with the names of battles that were won using them. Shrapnel left the place to go and live near Southampton and the present house was built in 1893 by a later owner, Henry Summers Baynton.
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Stowford, in the northwest of the parish, is a hamlet of old buildings with a mixture of modern uses. Stowford farmhouse, now known as Stowford Manor, has 15th century origins with Tudor and later additions. A mill powered by the River Frome was used for fulling cloth and leased to the Abbey of Keynsham in the Middle Ages was rebuilt in the 1840s and converted to milling corn, but now a bed-and-breakfast. Some buildings have been converted to studios for art and crafts and there is a campsite.