Map - Wellow, Somerset (Wellow)

Wellow is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, about 5 mi south of Bath. The parish, which includes the hamlets of Twinhoe, White Ox Mead, Baggridge and part of Midford has a population of 529. The village itself falls within the southernmost boundary of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is recognised as having special architectural and historic interest, which led to it being designated as a Conservation Area in 1983.

There is a low water crossing (Irish Bridge) and late mediaeval packhorse bridge over Wellow Brook.

A little further west is the Neolithic chambered tomb known as Stoney Littleton Long Barrow. The Long Barrow, which is also known as Bath Tumulus and the Wellow Tumulus, is a Neolithic chambered tomb with multiple burial chambers. The barrow is about 30 m in length and 15 m wide at the south-east end, it stands nearly 3 m high. Internally it consists of a 12.8 m long gallery with three pairs of side chambers and an end chamber. There is a fossil ammonite decorating the left-hand doorjamb. The site was excavated by John Skinner in 1816-17 who gained the entry through a hole originally made about 1760. The excavation revealed the bones (some burned) of several individuals.

The parish gave its name to the Wellow Hundred.

On 26 June 1685 the Duke of Monmouth's rebellious forces made their way from Midford to Norton St. Philip after failing to advance into Bristol and Bath. Their exact route is subject to conjecture, but it is widely assumed that they would have taken their heavy cannons via the Wellow and Norton Brook valleys rather than tackling the steep ascent to Hinton Charterhouse, and that Baggridge would have been used as a vantage point for surveying the route ahead.

In the 1880s and 1890s a small mine extracting and drying Fuller's earth was situated between Wellow and Stoney Littleton and also beside Hassage Hill and Bath Hill linked to the roads by short tramways. The existence of Fullers Earth around Wellow has caused several collapses of local roads and has been used for forensic identification of a vehicle in a murder enquiry.

In World War II the Wellow valley became part of the GHQ stop line green, with defences intended to isolate southern England in the event of German invasion. The remains of a number of type 24 pillboxes and anti-tank cubes can be found in various riverside locations both upstream and downstream of the village.

Wellow Station, on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, opened in 1874 and closed in 1966. The station building was converted into a house by the artist Peter Blake and his then wife Jann Haworth, in the mid-1970s. The railway followed the route of the Radstock arm of the Somerset Coal Canal. Although the Camerton branch of the canal was very successful, the Radstock branch was not, mainly because its connection to the main line at Midford involved transhipment via a tramway, and it carried very little traffic. The canal was mainly obliterated by the railway although a sharp bend (still in water) at St Julian's Well, and a tunnel, were bypassed by the viaduct over the foot of Bull's Hill. The railway trackbed East of the village is now part of national cycle route NCR 24, the Colliers Way. From April 2013 the route has a level connection beyond Midford to Bath via the Two Tunnels Greenway. This project was partially funded by auctioning King Bladud's pigs, 104 sculptures decorated by different artists, which were exhibited throughout the Bath area in 2008. Wellow hosted several pigs, including the most expensive of all which was decorated by Peter Blake and housed in the village pub, the Fox and Badger. The cycle route continues westward via Wellow High Street and minor roads to Stoney Littleton and Shoscombe before rejoining the former railways to Radstock and Frome.