Wool is a large village,

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

and

electoral ward A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected to ...

in south

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of , ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. In the 2011 census the parish – which includes

Bovington Camp Bovington Camp () is a British Army military base in Dorset, England. Together with Lulworth Camp it forms part of Bovington Garrison. The garrison is home to The Armour Centre and contains two barracks complexes and two forest and heathland tr ...

army base to the north – had 2,015 households and a population of 5,310. The village lies at a historic bridging point on the River Frome, halfway between Dorchester and Wareham. Woolbridge Manor House, a 17th-century building, is a prominent feature just outside the village and the location of Tess's honeymoon in

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wor ...

's '' Tess of the D'Urbervilles''. Other prominent features of the village include the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

church of Holy Rood, the

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

on the

South West Main Line The South West Main Line (SWML) is a 143-mile (230 km) major railway line between Waterloo station in central London and Weymouth on the south coast of England. A predominantly passenger line, it serves many commuter areas including south we ...

from

London Waterloo Waterloo station (), also known as London Waterloo, is a central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of ...

to Weymouth, and the

thatch Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...

ed cottages along Spring Street. The place-name 'Wool' is first attested in

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

Writs from 1002 to 1012, where it appears as ''Wyllon''. In the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

of 1086 it appears as ''Wille'' and ''Welle'', and as ''Welles'' in 1212 in the Book of Fees. The name means 'springs' in the sense of the related word

wells Wells most commonly refers to: * Wells, Somerset, a cathedral city in Somerset, England * Well, an excavation or structure created in the ground * Wells (name) Wells may also refer to: Places Canada *Wells, British Columbia England * Wells ...

. Near Wool, to the east of the village, are the ruins of

Bindon Abbey Bindon Abbey (''Bindonium'') was a Cistercian monastery, of which only ruins remain, on the River Frome about half a mile east of Wool in the Purbeck District, Dorset, England. History The monastery was founded in 1149 by William de Glastoni ...

, which was demolished in the Dissolution of the Monasteries of 1539, the stone being used to build castles in

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

Lulworth Lulworth is the popular name for an area on the coast of Dorset, South West England notable for its castle and cove. However, there is no actual place or feature called simply "Lulworth", the villages are East and West Lulworth and the coastal f ...

and Sandsfoot. According to local knowledge, only one building was destroyed during the war – on 3 May 1941. The building was a small bungalow by the name of "Two Birches", located on Bailey's Drove. The house was later rebuilt. A small single-lane hump-backed stone bridge, a Grade II*

listed structure In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

about 200m north from the railway station, is no longer used for vehicular traffic. The place name ''Wullebrigg'', recorded in 1244, indicates a crossing here in the thirteenth century and there is an extant record from 1343 of a bridge crossing the River Frome at this point. It has a stone half-way along it stating that those who deface or damage the bridge will be

transported ''Transported'' is an Australian convict melodrama film directed by W. J. Lincoln. It is considered a lost film. Plot In England, Jessie Grey is about to marry Leonard Lincoln but the evil Harold Hawk tries to force her to marry him and she w ...

(sent to Australia or another

penal colony A penal colony or exile colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general population by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. Although the term can be used to refer to ...

) for the rest of their lives. In January 2018 one of the bridge's stone parapets collapsed, undermined by floodwater, but the arches remained undamaged. Local places of interest include

The Tank Museum The Tank Museum (previously The Bovington Tank Museum) is a collection of armoured fighting vehicles at Bovington Camp in Dorset, South West England. It is about north of the village of Wool and west of the major port of Poole. The collection ...

and

Monkey World The Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre is a ape and monkey sanctuary and rescue centre near Wool, Dorset, England. History Set up in 1987 by Jim Cronin with assistance from both Jeremy Keeling and later operated by both Cronin and his wife A ...

. It also boasts surrounding hamlets, including East Burton and Giddy Green. The village received significant media coverage in January 2012, after a fuel tanker crashed into the front of a bungalow, starting a fire. No-one was injured in the incident, but the tanker driver was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. It received further media coverage in November 2018, when animal rights group

PETA Peta or PETA may refer to: Acronym * Pembela Tanah Air, a militia established by the occupying Japanese in Indonesia in 1943 * People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an American animal rights organization * People Eating Tasty Animals, an ...

requested that the village be renamed Vegan Wool, claiming that the village's name "promotes hideous animal cruelty", despite its true origins. The county council agreed to debate the issue. In December 2018, the council appeared to mock PETA on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

after repairs were carried out on Wool Bridge following erosion, tweeting, "Look away veggie lovers, #Wool bridge is now looking meaty".

Notes

References

* Pitt-Rivers, Michael, 1968. ''Dorset''. London: Faber & Faber

External links

Holy Rood Church Website
*
Four decades in the life of a Wool village tree

Wool Carnival
{{authority control Villages in Dorset