Woodley Hill House
Network Vineyard Church own Woodley Hill House after its purchase in December 2013. We use the building for Sunday gatherings and midweek meetings and courses, in particular offering the suite of CAP courses. We are also working in partnership with Bracknell and Wokingham College who continue to run a variety of their adult courses during the week.
It is thought that the land on which the house stands was originally part of the Earley Heath Common land, which extended from the Three Tuns, Wokingham Road to Culver Lane. It is believed the house was built around 1870 and the grounds were much more extensive and covered areas such as Palmerstone Road, Eastcourt Avenue, Fairview Avenue and up to Church Roadd. They included tennis courts, two extensive kitchen gardens, stables, a coach house and undulating parklands. The house was build for Mr Galsworthy but seems to have been first occupied by a local banker, Charles Stephens, who lived here with 5 servants! The building housed part of the Archbishop Tennyson School during the second world war. In 1945 Berkshire County Council bought the house for use as a grammar school which opened the following year. It was then used by the first and second year department of Woodley Secondary Modern (later Maiden Erlegh) until 1962. In the 1970s the outside buildings were used by Earley St. Peter’s School. Adult education began in the 1960s and then merged with Bracknell & Wokingham College in 1967.