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Wellclose House

Belcombe, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

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Belcombe begins at the western end of Newtown, on the road from Bradford on Avon to Turleigh and Winsley.

Wellclose House appears to be a large five-bay Palladian mansion of ashlar stone, on three floors and an attic under a large pediment. However, the fine Georgian façade is only one room deep and is an addition to a 17th century farmhouse that lies behind it.

A house here, standing in what is probably the same 2 acres of ground, was mentioned as part of the marriage settlement that was made by Francis Yerbury, maulster (maltster), for his son Francis junior in 1687. At that time it was tenanted by William Alderwicke.

The steep 17th century gables of the rear of the house, seen from Belcombe Road

The front addition was probably the work in about 1730 of John Wood the Elder, the architect of the Royal Crescent and other buildings in Bath. Wood was employed to extend Belcombe Court  in the 1740s for another member of the Yerbury family. It continued in the Yerbury family until 1801.

The house was often tenanted. In the 1840s it housed a private school for girls that was run by the Misses Merrick who, by 1871 and still unmarried, had moved their school to Trowbridge Road.

The house is listed Grade II* and stands in the Bradford Conservation area and in the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.