The name "Willsbridge" means "the spring" or "Well by the bridge" and is Anglo
Saxon in origin. The village Pub the Queen`s Head is the oldest building in
the village. It appears on a map of 1670 the present pub is certainly a 1660
1670 building with later, eighteenth century additions. It began life as a private house whose occupier brewed beer using water from Mill Clack Brook or a nearby well. Then itd up its Kitchen and fireside to drinkers and became an alehouse. By 1719 The Queen's Head was a licensed house.
Court Leets were held in the pub, ( a poor man`s court). Only minor offences, with the usual punishment of a fine, were dealt with. Not surprisingly the pub is listed in CAMRA`s "Good Beer Guide".
There was a slaughterhouse at Willsbridge in the late 1800s the slaughterhouse building adjoined the Queen's Head rank " the modern day pub cark park". slaughtering methods in those days were barbaric and Willsbridge Meat became the butt of many a joke it was not always very decent.
opposite the slaughterhouse, on the other side of the road, was a yard with cottages where tanning was carried out. today this area is still known as " The Tanyard " together the two industries sent their waste and stench spilling into Siston Brook and the surrounding area. It must have been a delightful place on a warm summers day.
The Queen's Head
also served as the first village Post Office. These were the days before there was any postal sevice as we know it today. To send a letter it had to be taken to the nearest Receiving House, where it was stamped by the Receiver of mail, i.e.the pub landlord, and then despatched by mail coach. At a much later date an unusal old post box was discovered in the back room of the Queen's Head.
Another very interesting house in the village is Willsbridge House, often called Willsbridge Castle. Originally, a small cottage stood there and the first of the Pearsall family who settled in Willsbridge about 260 years ago added a small house probably some 30 or 40 years later. One of the Persall sons had it enlarged to its present size.
But it was after the Pearsalls ceased to reside there that Captain Stratton had it castellated in 1848 to give it a more imposing and distinctive appearance.
Life in Willsbridge is not as harsh now as it was before the war.
LYDIA WELLS looks back on village life in Willsbridge
There are no families crammed into a hovel built from a pig’s sty and slaughterhouse waste is no longer chucked in the brook.
But where is the gossip, colour and convenience of the small shops?
The hamlet had two pre-World War II sweet shops.
William Frampton (known as Golly because his hair stuck up) had previously run the Railway Inn and he sold lemonade in bottles topped with marble stoppers from his shop opposite the petrol station. It closed in the 50s.
A slightly earlier kiddies’ heaven was Ephraim (Effie) Haskins’s emporium. Effie was one of 10 children and born at The Tanyard.
He lived at spooky Speedwell Cottage adjoining the Queen’s Head from where he sold his own ice-cream, fudge, toffee, and sugar mice, and tempting jars of pear drops, lemon drops and aniseed balls filled the tall window.
The much loved Railway Inn was built in the 18th century as a turnpike tollhouse by the Bath Road-Keynsham Road junction.
The tollhouse closed in 1867 and was gradually converted into a shop.
Widowed grocer Rachel Bence married another Willsbridge butcher-grocer, Francis Neads, and they established a thriving business there, adding an off-licence in 1890 to cater for the men who worked on the nearby Dramway.
It was an Aladdin’s Cave of a shop, with groceries, pots, pans, nails, batteries and all sorts packed inside, but it was demolished in 1962 for a road scheme.
When Willsbridge Post Office closed last year, it ended 185 years of postal service.
George Burgess, landlord of the Queen’s Head, had started it all with his Post Receiving House run from the pub and adjoining house.
Burgess stamped the mail and a post boy collected it until 1828 when a mail coach called.
It was not until 1901 that the post office moved to a cottage in Brockham Terrace which had been a grocer’s shop since about 1880.
Alfred Bence and family were the first to run the Post Office from here and they did so for almost 40 years.
Mail was sorted in an old blacksmith’s forge next door (an archway is still visible) where Miss Dorothy Bence,
purveyor of postcards, stamps, hairgrips, Fry’s chocolate and Lyon’s tea, scolded the schoolboys who liked to tease her.
Queen’s Head publicans had also been butchers, on and off, for 200 years and by 1900 a converted stable near the alehouse was still Willsbridge’s chief slaughtering site.
King and Co, butchers, began trading in The Ferns in 1927 John King began in the business as a delivery boy, taking meat to customers on his bicycle. Initially, the shop had its own slaughteryard, one of several in the
hamlet at the turn of the last century. At John and Beryl King’s retirement party in 1991 about a hundred well wishers surprised them with a magnificent cake. The crowning glory of this creation was a mini-beaming Mr King fashioned from icing-sugar, a touching tribute to Willsbridge’s last butcher.
