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Explore Bradford on Avon:
Woolley
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Woolley is a hamlet, or now rather a suburb, to the north-east of Bradford. Houses are grouped around a triangular green, now on the route of heavy traffic, and along a street that connects it with Bradford. Woolley, usually coupled with Leigh, formed one of the Tithings of the Hundred. There were shops, a dairy and commercial greenhouses here, but today only The George public house and Woolley Grange hotel.
Its name could be derived from a clearing that was associated with a Saxon called Ulf, or even with wolves, but not with wool.
The George Inn, in the hamlet of Woolley, was three houses and a small factory in 1841 and seems to be of different building dates. There was another public house, called The Crown, nearby from the 1830s to 1870s and a group of houses on the other side of the road is called Crown Court. After closing in 2014, it reopened in July 2015.
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Woolley Terrace leads off from the Bradford to Woolley Green lane towards Holt Road and the cemetery. It is a rank of houses, built in about 1830, of varying sizes that is unified by their porches and the broad string course which curves between them. The different roofing materials has rather spoilt the impression, as do modern houses on the other side.
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The last house in Woolley Terrace, at the top of the hill, is called Corner House and was added some years after the others, with a change from Georgian to Victorian style.
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Just off Woolley Terrace, in Kingsfield Grange Road, is the large mansion that is now called Conigre House. It was called Sevenfields when it was built in the 1830s, but two decades later had been renamed Woodleigh House and got its present name in 1933. Like other large houses it was requisitioned in World War 2 and used to house evacuated families. Afterwards it was divided into flats.
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A short stretch of countryside separates the terraces of Woolley Street from Woolley Green. Woolley Grange Hotel is a large rambling mansion with an early 17th century core that was the home of members of the Baskerville family. It current appearance is due to building by Captain Septimus Henry Palairet, who lived there from 1846 until his death in 1854. It was converted into a hotel in 1990.
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On the right a Victorian gothic archway originally led to Woolley House, a large house built in the 1770s. The house was demolished in the 19th century, but several of its subsidiary buildings and gateways in the walls remain.
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Woolley Green would be a lovely place if it were not for the heavy traffic, which cuts through from the A363 at Frankleigh to Staverton, by-passing Bradford on one of the turnpike roads built by the Bradford Roads Trust. Several farms and houses are grouped around the green and the line of the lane from Bradford continues as a track and footpath towards Bradford Leigh. Woolley Green House has a datestone of 1788 and initials T S (possibly Thomas Spackman?)