Heywood is a civil parish and small village in the county of Wiltshire in southwestern England. The village is approximately north of Westbury and south of the county town of Trowbridge. Heywood village, which has approximately 200 inhabitants, lies between the A350national route and the B3461 road, which links nearby Yarnbrook and the Westbury industrial area. The hamlet of Dursley is situated directly to the west of the village on the other side of the railway line. The parish also includes the hamlets of Hawkeridge and Norleaze; in the south are the West Wilts Trading Estate and part of The Ham, close to Westbury. The Biss Brook forms the west and northwest boundary of the parish.
History
For most of its history, Heywood formed part of the parish and hundred of Westbury. From the 13th century the manor of Heywood was an estate of Stanley Abbey. It was acquired by Sir Edward Bayntun in 1537; later landowners included the Long family and the Earls of Marlborough. In 1848 the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway was built through the parish, passing between Heywood and Dursley, to link the Swindon-Bath line with Westbury via Trowbridge. This line remains open. The civil parish of Heywood was created in 1896 from the northern section of Westbury parish; part of Heywood was transferred back to Westbury in 1909.
Brook Hall, in the west of Heywood parish near the Biss Brook, is a c. 1600 farmhouse which incorporates a Grade I listed wing of a 15th-century manor house.
Heywood House
built a house at Heywood in the early 17th century. Around 1700 this house was owned by the Phipps family, cloth merchants; William Phipps, a former Governor of Bombay, died at the house in 1748. Later in the century the house came into the Ludlow family, and in 1837 Henry Gaisford Gibbs Ludlow had the present Heywood House built on the same site, east of the present A350. On Henry's death in 1876 the house passed to Henry Charles Lopes, of the Lopes family who owned Westbury manor. Henry Lopes was created Baron Ludlow in 1897; the title became extinct in 1922 on the death of his son, also Henry Lopes. Since then the house had several owners and for a time housed the headquarters of the National Trust; in 1987 it was designated as Grade II* listed. The house is now multi-tenanted offices.
A small Congregational church was built at Hawkeridge in 1844. As of 2015 the church remains in use. The Church of England parish church of the Holy Trinity was built in 1849 and served a new ecclesiastical parish which was formed from the northern half of the parish of Westbury. The building is in the 13th-century style; Pevsner describes the east window of 1876 as "especially horrible". The church closed in 1981 and was converted for residential use.
Amenities
There is a pub at Hawkeridge, the Royal Oak. The village primary school was closed in 1971. It had been built in 1836 at the expense of Henry G.G. Ludlow and educated children of all ages until 1930. Tumblewood Community School, near Dursley, is a specialist school for girls.
