Browne's Folly (tower)

Brown's Folly or Brown's Folly (grid reference ST793662) is a folly tower sitting within a 39.9 hectare biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) near the village of Bathford in Somerset, notified in 1974: the site itself is known as the Farleigh (sometimes Farly) Down Stone Quarry, and is managed as a nature reserve by the Avon Wildlife Trust (AWT). The tower was built in 1848 and is a Grade II listed building.The site is situated on steep west-facing slopes which overlook the River Avon. The calcareous soils have developed on Lower Lias clays, fuller's earth and oolitic limestone strata of Jurassic age. The local geology is of major importance in the context of the British Bathonian stratigraphy.The site forms part of the Bath and Bradford-on-Avon Bats Special Area of Conservation and includes the remains of quarries used for the extraction of Bath Stone. These provide a rich variety of wildlife habitats. Downland flora has covered the spoilheaps where wild thyme, harebell and nine species of orchid (including the rare Fly Orchid) are found.: 252  Yellow Bird's-nest occurs here.: 108  The damp cliff faces support a variety of ferns, fungi and spiders. Pockets of ancient woodland on the lower slopes are home to woodpeckers, and unusual plants such as Bath asparagus.

Warleigh is a hamlet in the civil parish of Bathford, in the Bath and North East Somerset district, in the ceremonial county of Somerset, England. It lies 2.5 miles (4 km) east of Bath, on the River Avon, it is primarily known as the location of Warleigh Weir and Warleigh Manor.

Bathford (pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable) is a village and civil parish 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Bath, England. The parish, which includes Warleigh, has a population of 1,759 and extends over 1,800 acres (7.3 km2).

Shockerwick House in Bathford, Somerset, England was built as a manor house around 1750 by John Wood, the Elder. It has been designated as a Grade I listed building. It is set in 7.7 hectares (19 acres) of parkland within the Bybrook River valley. The site was a manor prior to its purchase in 1740, from the estate of Anthony Carew, by the Wiltshire family. The Wiltshires commissioned John Wood, the Elder to design the house and grounds. Thomas Gainsborough was a frequent visitor and painted several canvases in the orangery of the house including that of Edward Orpin, Parish Clerk of Bradford-upon-Avon which is now in the Tate. Another visitor was William Pitt the Younger who was at Shockerwick when he heard about Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz.In the 1880s the house was bought by Charles Morley the Member of Parliament for Breconshire. The house was altered in 1896 by Ernest George and Alfred B. Yeates. The Morley family owned the house until 1955. In 1961 it was bought by Henry Pelham-Clinton-Hope, 9th Duke of Newcastle who sold it in 1970 to the W.D. & H.O. Wills tobacco company who used it as a training centre. Since 1983 it has been used as a Nursing Home and is run by Bupa.

Monkton Farleigh is a village and civil parish in west Wiltshire, England, on high ground 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Bradford-on-Avon, and a similar distance east of the city of Bath. The parish includes the hamlets of Farleigh Wick and Pinckney Green. In the west and northwest the parish is bounded by Somerset. It is known for its underground mines of Bath Stone, which were converted into one of the largest Ministry of Defence underground ammunition stores in the country.

Claverton Pumping Station in the village of Claverton, in the English county of Somerset, pumps water from the River Avon to the Kennet and Avon Canal using power from the flow of the river. It is a Grade I listed building, having been upgraded from Grade II in 2019.The pumping station was built by John Rennie between 1809 and 1813 to overcome water supply problems on the canal. It uses a 24-foot (7 m) wide wooden breastshot water wheel to drive two Boulton and Watt 18-foot (5 m) long cast iron rocking beams, which power lift pumps to raise water 48 feet (15 m) up to the canal. The pumping station has undergone several modifications since its initial construction, including revising the wheel into two sections each 12 feet (3.7 m) wide separated by a 9-inch (23 cm) gap. The station's operational life ended in 1952, by which time its maintenance and repair had become uneconomical in the light of falling traffic on the canal. In the 1960s and 1970s restoration was carried out by students from the University of Bath and the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, who replaced and repaired the buildings and equipment and returned the pumping station to a functional state by 1978. It is now owned by the Canal and River Trust and maintained by the Claverton Pumping Station Trust CIO, open to the public as an industrial heritage museum.

The Bybrook, also known as the By Brook, is a small river in England. It is a tributary of the Bristol Avon and is some 12 miles (19 km) long. Its sources are the Burton Brook and the Broadmead Brook, which rise in South Gloucestershire at Tormarton and Cold Ashton respectively, and join just north of Castle Combe in Wiltshire. The river has a mean flow rate of 57.25 cubic feet per second (1.621 m3/s) as recorded at Middlehill near Box. A variety of flora and fauna is supported by the river including the endangered white-clawed crayfish. Twenty watermill sites have been identified on the river but none now remain in use.

Warleigh Weir is a river structure located on the River Avon in Somerset, near Bath. The weir was originally built to supply a head of water to a grist mill in Claverton. The weir was subsequently raised by a height of 12 inches between 1809 and 1813 as part of the construction program for the Claverton Pumping Station, which sits on the site of the old grist mill.The weir is accessed from the adjacent island which is created from the bifurcation of the river running to the Claverton Pumping station and the main flow of the River Avon. The weir and the bridge to the island are both owned by the Canal and River Trust.

Monkton Farleigh Manor is a Grade I listed country house close to the village of Monkton Farleigh in Wiltshire, England. Built on the site of a Cluniac priory founded in 1125, the house is about 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Bradford-on-Avon and 4 miles (6 km) east of the city of Bath.

The Priory of St Mary Magdalene was a Cluniac priory in Monkton Farleigh, Wiltshire, England, in the 12th to 16th centuries. The priory was founded soon after 1120 by Maud, widow of Humphrey de Bohun, and her son Humphrey II de Bohun. A priory church was probably completed c.1150 and the priory came to benefit from several manors, estates and churches. The priory was rebuilt in the early 13th century, with a larger church. On its dissolution in 1536 there were six monks. The Wiltshire Victoria County History has a detailed account of the priory and its properties.The remains of the priory were incorporated into Monkton Farleigh Manor. Monk's Well conduit house still stands, 280 metres west of the manor house; it has probably supplied water to the priory and manor house since the early 12th century and is a scheduled monument.

The Kennet and Avon Canal is a waterway in southern England with an overall length of 87 miles (140 km), made up of two lengths of navigable river linked by a canal. The name is used to refer to the entire length of the navigation rather than solely to the central canal section. From Bristol to Bath the waterway follows the natural course of the River Avon before the canal links it to the River Kennet at Newbury, and from there to Reading on the River Thames. In all, the waterway incorporates 105 locks. The two river stretches were made navigable in the early 18th century, and the 57-mile (92 km) canal section was constructed between 1794 and 1810. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the canal gradually fell into disuse after the opening of the Great Western Railway. In the latter half of the 20th century the canal was restored in stages, largely by volunteers. After decades of dereliction and much restoration work, it was fully reopened in 1990. The Kennet and Avon Canal has been developed as a popular heritage tourism destination for boating, canoeing, fishing, walking and cycling, and is also important for wildlife conservation.

Claverton is a small village and civil parish about 2 miles (3 km) east of Bath at the southern end of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in Somerset, England. The parish has a population of 115.