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Explore Bradford on Avon:

Woolley Street and Holt Road

Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

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Woolley Street continues on from Silver Street in the direction of Holt and Melksham. The name is a corruption of the name of the medieval St Olave’s chapel, through intermediate forms of Tolley and Toolley Street. The same happened when St Olave’s in Southwark became Toolley Street. Here the final name was also influenced by the name of the outlying hamlet of Woolley, to which it led.

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Click on the thumbnail pictures for a bigger view.

No.1 Woolley Street, on the corner of White Hill is a small house that shows signs in its stonework of having been updated in the 18th century. The trace of the gable of the earlier house can be seen, with additions to square up the front, a classical cornice and a wide Georgian door.

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The next house, no. 3 Woolley Street, is a small two-bay Georgian house with an ashlar front and a triangular pediment over the door. The cornice is continuous with the older house to the left. The two dormers in the roof were added in 1998.

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The house called Audley’s, 5 Woolley Street is Georgian, of three bays and three storeys in fine ashlar with a tuscan porch and a short simple balustrade. In the 19th century, it was the house of the Adye family, who were mostly medical men. Recently the ground floor has been an antique shop.

 

.7 and 9 Woolley Street were built, or perhaps refronted, to look like a single large house with a 1-2-1-2-1 window rhythm on the two upper floors. Of the three street doors, that on the right gives on to a passage that leads through to the back garden. Part has been another antique shop, called The China Hen.

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No. 11, Cranford, is another building that looks as if it has had a makeover in the past. It is likely to have once had two gables and the space between them has been filled to make a more fashionable 18th century façade with a parapet across the top. Large sash windows were inserted except between the former gables. An original roof truss from before the roof was raised is preserved in a room on the second floor. The left street door leads through to the back garden.

Kingston Lodge, 13 Woolley Street, retains its basic late 17th century form, of rubble stone with mullioned windows and stone-tiled roof. Notable changes are the addition of two 19th century canted bay windows and porch.

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The house called Lynchetts has three “venetian” windows, two of them in the canted right-hand side. It was requisitioned in World War 2 as the headquarters of the Admiralty’s Chronometer Department, the works of which were largely housed in temporary huts at the back. Many historical timepieces from the collection at Greenwich were stored here. The house belonged to Bradford Preservation Trust for a while.

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Moxham’s is a mid-Georgian mansion of five bays and three storeys, with a Doric door surround on fluted pilasters. Another bay has been added to the left, with an arch on the ground floor that leads to a small yard and the garden.

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St Olave’s is an early Georgian seven-bay, three-storey ashlar mansion that is distinguished by the line of open pediment hoods above the first-floor windows and  a Gibbs-style doorway with heavy blocks and keystone. Through much of the 19th century it was the home and surgery of the Adye dynasty of medical men and continued after them until the 1960s.

 

Set back from the road is The Dower House, but called Kingston Cottage in 1841, a neat Regency villa under a shallow pyramidal roof, with a tent-roofed gothick verandah of wrought iron along the front. The Cheltenham-like effect is spoilt by the addition of an unfortunate dormer in the roof.

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Woolley Street turns sharply off left up a short hill which is known to locals as “Frying Pan”; the line of the road continues as Holt Road towards Holt, Broughton Gifford and Melksham.

Woolley Hill House, a three-storey three bay Georgian house, was the home of poet William Charles Bonaparte-Wyse (1826-1892). His friend the French poet Stephane Mallarmé (1842-1878) wrote the poem Dans le jardin here. They were both, with Frédéric Mistral, influential in the preservation of Provençal language and culture.

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Holt Road

Woolley Street turns off to the left and the main road B3107 continues as Holt Road, towards Holt, Melksham and Devizes

The Hall, Holt Road, is a mansion dating from the Middle Ages and greatly remodelled in the early 17th century.

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A piece of the land at the beginning of Holt Road belonging to the Hall Estate has been developed for housing in 2016-2019, taking its name from Kingston Farm. The streets are named after associates of the late Dr Alex Moulton.

 

 

On the edge of the housing development, the company of Anthony Best Dynamics has expanded to a new building designed by SRA Architects of Bath. AB Dynamics is a high-tech company that designs test equipment and robotics for the car industry worldwide. Another building for the company stands on the other side of the main road.

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Holt Road Cemetery was opened by the Town Commissioners in 1856 under the provisions of the Burial Act of 1853. The buildings were designed by the Bath architect Thomas Fuller (1823-1886), who was also responsible for Bradford’s Town Hall, several buildings in Bath and in Canada and USA.

 

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