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Woolley Grange

Woolley, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

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Woolley Grange is a large house, now a hotel, in the outlying hamlet of Woolley on the north east side of Bradford on Avon.

In a Jacobean-Stuart style, it does contain a 17th century core and bears the date 1665, but much of what can be seen today results from enlargement of the mid-19th century. It is listed Grade II*.

In the 17th century it was owned by the Randolph family and it was Francis Randolph (died in 1706) whose initials are associated with the 1665 date. His widow, Margaret, married again, to Isaac Selfe of Beanacre near Melksham. In 1729 it was leased and soon sold to Quaker clothier John Baskerville, who died in the same year. The Baskerville family continued to own it until the 1860s, although at times it was let to others.

One of the people who leased the house was Captain Septimus Henry Palairet who lived there from about 1840, renewing the lease in 1848 for 21 years at £100 per annum. Palairet is remembered for his support for Stephen Moulton and the development of Bradford’s pioneering rubber industry and he paid for building Christ Church School. He carried out the restoration and extension of the house and diverted the road away from its door, but he died in 1854 and his brother Richard surrendered the remainder of the lease in 1863. From 1902 to 1918 it was owned by Sir Percy Kendall Stothert of Stothert & Pitt, the Bath engineering company. In World War 2, like many big houses, it was requisitioned and it became an antenatal hospital for London evacuees and continued after the war as a nursing home. In 1989 it became the Woolley Grange Hotel.