Outbuilding and Store Attached to the Decoy
OUTBUILDING AND STORE ATTACHED TO THE DECOY, WOOLLEY LANE
Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places
Overview
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1232768
- Date first listed:
- 03-Apr-1990
- List Entry Name:
- Outbuilding and Store Attached to the Decoy
- Statutory Address:
- OUTBUILDING AND STORE ATTACHED TO THE DECOY, WOOLLEY LANE
Have you got a photo to share?
Join the Missing Pieces Project. We want you to share your photos and memories.
Location
Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.
Use of this mapping is subject to terms and conditions .
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.
What is the National Heritage List for England?
The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.
The list includes:
 |
Buildings |
 |
Scheduled monuments |
 |
Parks and gardens |
 |
Battlefields |
 |
Shipwrecks |
Local Heritage Hub
Unlock and explore hidden histories, aerial photography, and listed buildings and places for every county, district, city and major town across England.
Discover moreOfficial list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1232768
- Date first listed:
- 03-Apr-1990
- Date of most recent amendment:
- 13-Dec-2001
- List Entry Name:
- Outbuilding and Store Attached to the Decoy
- Statutory Address 1:
- OUTBUILDING AND STORE ATTACHED TO THE DECOY, WOOLLEY LANE
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
Location
- Statutory Address:
- OUTBUILDING AND STORE ATTACHED TO THE DECOY, WOOLLEY LANE
The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.
- District:
- Bath and North East Somerset (Unitary Authority)
- Parish:
- Charlcombe
- National Grid Reference:
- ST 74943 68791
Details
ST 76 NW
146/4/248
03-APR-90
CHARLCOMBE
WOOLLEY LANE
(West,off)
OUTBUILDING AND STORE ATTACHED TO THE DECOY
(Formerly listed as:
WOOLLEY LANE OUTBUILDING AND STORE ATTACHED TO ROSE COTTAGE)
II
Former gunpowder works building and store (probably refining house and saltpetre
store), now outbuilding. Mid C18; altered C19 and C20. Rubble-stone with stone dressings, outbuilding with pantile roof, store largely underground with red brick vault. Outbuilding one storey, 5 bays, with store at left end, projecting forward. Quoined doorway at left end with a window on its left; similar wider doorway with chamfered, round-cornered, lintel and board door at right end with inserted small-pane window on its right; between these 2 original doorways a former long, 6-light window with stone surround and flat-faced mullions, the lights now blocked and at right end a large doorway inserted. Store, projecting at left end, has quoined doorway with chamfered lintel in re-entrant angle. Rear: outbuilding has top of a quoined doorway on right and traces of other original openings; various inserted openings.
Interior: outbuilding has large-scantling cross-beams; principal rafter roof trusses, square-sectioned diagonally-set ridge-piece, through purlins, old rafters. Store has barrel vault, quoined at entrance. These buildings served the Woolley Gunpowder Works which operated from the 1720s to c.1803.
HISTORY: Gunpowder was manufactured on this site from the 1720s until c1803, after which it reverted to agricultural use. It was the first of three in Somerset which were started to supply local mining interests and also foreign markets through the port of Bristol, and all of which closed by the mid-C19. These sites, of which Littleton is the best preserved, provide evidence of the dispersion of gunpowder making away from the South East during the C18.
B J Buchanan and M T Tucker, "The Manufacture of Gunpowder: a study of the
documentary and physical evidence relating to the Woolley Powder Works near Bath",
Industrial Archaeology Review, V, 3, Autumn 1981, pp 185-202; Brenda Buchanan, "The Technology of Gunpowder Making in the Eighteenth Century: Evidence from the Bristol Region", Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 67 (1995-6).
Listing NGR: ST7494368791
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 408169
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Sources
Books and journals
Buchanan, B J, Tucker, M T, Industrial Archaeology Review in The Manufacture of Gunpowder: A Study of the Documentary and Physical Evidence Relating to the Woolley Powder Works near Bath, Vol. 3, (1981), 185-202
Buchanan, B, Transactions of the Newcomen Society in The Technology of Gunpowder Making in the Eighteenth Century: Evidence from the Bristol Region, Vol. 67, (1995-6)
Legal
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Map
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. This copy shows the entry on 29-Jun-2026 at 06:49:26.
Download a full scale map (PDF)End of official list entry
All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.