Outbuilding And Store Attached To The Decoy

This is a mid-18th century former gunpowder works building and store, likely a refining house and saltpetre store, that has been altered in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is constructed of rubble stone with stone dressings, with a pantile roof on the outbuilding and a red brick vault for the store, which is largely underground.

The outbuilding is one storey and comprises five bays, with the store projecting forward to the left. At the left end of the outbuilding is a quoined doorway with a window to its left. The right end has a wider doorway with a chamfered, round-cornered lintel and a boarded door, with an inserted small-pane window to its right. Between these doorways is a former six-light window with a stone surround and flat-faced mullions, now blocked. The projecting store has a quoined doorway with a chamfered lintel in the re-entrant angle. The rear of the outbuilding shows traces of original doorways and openings, along with various inserted openings.

Inside the outbuilding are large-scantling cross-beams and principal rafter roof trusses with square-sectioned diagonally-set ridge-pieces, through purlins, old rafters. The store has a barrel vault, quoined at the entrance.

The buildings served the Woolley Gunpowder Works, which operated from the 1720s until around 1803. The works manufactured gunpowder from the 1720s until around 1803, after which the site reverted to agricultural use. It was the first of three gunpowder works in Somerset that were started to supply local mining interests and foreign markets through the port of Bristol, and all of which closed by the mid-19th century.