Woolley is a hamlet and former civil parish, now in the parish of Barham and Woolley, in Cambridgeshire, England. Woolley lies approximately west of Huntingdon. The hamlet is in Huntingdonshire, which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England. In 1931 the parish had a population of 29.
A 12th century church dedicated to St Mary was demolished in 1962 due to dwindling population and the deteriorating fabric of the building.
History
In 1085 William the Conqueror ordered that a survey should be carried out across his kingdom to discover who owned which parts and what it was worth. The survey took place in 1086 and the results were recorded in what, since the 12th century, has become known as the Domesday Book. Starting with the king himself, for each landholder within a county there is a list of their estates or manors; and, for each manor, there is a summary of the resources of the manor, the amount of annual rent that was collected by the lord of the manor both in 1066 and in 1086, together with the taxable value.
Woolley was listed in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Leightonstone in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written as Cileulai in the Domesday Book. In 1086 there were two manors at Woolley; the annual rent paid to the lords of the manors in 1066 had been £3 and the rent was the same in 1086.
The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there was 14 households at Woolley. There is no consensus about the average size of a household at that time;estimates range from 3.5 to 5.0 people per household. Using these figures then an estimate of the population of Woolley in 1086 is that it was within the range of 49 and 70 people.
The Domesday Book uses a number of units of measure for areas of land that are now unfamiliar terms, such as hides and ploughlands. In different parts of the country, these were terms for the area of land that a team of eight oxen could plough in a single season and are equivalent to ; this was the amount of land that was considered to be sufficient to support a single family. By 1086, the hide had become a unit of tax assessment rather than an actual land area; a hide was the amount of land that could be assessed as £1 for tax purposes. The survey records that there were six ploughlands at Woolley in 1086 and that there was the capacity for a further ploughland. In addition to the arable land, there was of meadows at Woolley.
The tax assessment in the Domesday Book was known as geld or danegeld and was a type of land-tax based on the hide or ploughland. It was originally a way of collecting a tribute to pay off the Danes when they attacked England, and was only levied when necessary. Following the Norman Conquest, the geld was used to raise money for the King and to pay for continental wars; by 1130, the geld was being collected annually. Having determined the value of a manor's land and other assets, a tax of so many shillings and pence per pound of value would be levied on the land holder. While this was typically two shillings in the pound the amount did vary; for example, in 1084 it was as high as six shillings in the pound. For the manors at Woolley the total tax assessed was 3.5 geld.
Church
The church is not mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086, but the Romanesque stone chevrons built into the south nave wall suggest the existence of a building here in the 12th century. The chancel, nave, aisles and transepts were built c1300. The nave was lengthened and the tower and spire built in the late 14th century. The chancel was restored in 1857; the south transept and aisle were rebuilt in 1907, and the north aisle restored in 1914. The nave arcades were strengthened and the tower and spire restored in the 1930s.
Unfortunately the church was partly demolished in 1962. However, much of the south wall survives, as does elements of the west tower.