Cowley Way

The first new houses here were built in the 1970s and the roads are named after important people in the village’s history. Cowley Way is named for the Cowley family, owners of the Draycot Estate in 1920. Westlake Place is named for Canon Westlake, the vicar in 1903. Gregory Close for the Gregory family who were the wheelwrights and built the Village Hall. Lee Crescent for John Lea, another person who lived in the village. Queens Close is named after the main field that was here. The field at the back of the Recreation Ground is still called Queen’s Field.

There used to be a road out of the village, where the first part of Cowley Way is, when roads were just muddy tracks. You can still follow the route that it took, to Langley Burrell and Chippenham, if you follow the footpaths across the fields, past the Sutton Lane Meadows.

The 'Draycot Straight' on the main road between Chippenham and Sutton Benger was only built in about 1760. Before then the road went from Kington Langley into Draycot Cerne and then to Sutton Benger. It was much quicker to go across the fields here via Langley Burrell, until the 'Draycot Straight' was built as a 'Draycot Cerne by-pass'.

After the arrival of motor cars in the 1900s, and especially as they gradually became more widespread in the 1930s, the main road through the village became very busy. In 1939 there were plans for a by-pass to be built around the village. It would have cut through the Poplar Farm land to the south of the village, across where the houses are today, and across the school playing field and the Recreation Ground. Fortunately, the plans were shelved when the Second World War started.

A note on a 1943 Planning Application (for the proposed Sutton Engineering Works) refers to the By-pass, giving it as a reason for rejecting the Planning Application; so the scheme was still being considered at that time. However, nothing else has been found about it, and the road was never built.