Wookey Hole
village in Somerset, England, UK
Wookey Hole is a village in Somerset, England. It is the location of the Wookey Hole show caves.
Location
Wookey Hole is located in the civil parish of St Cuthbert Out. It is one mile north-west of the city of Wells, and lies on the border of the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).
Toponymy
One possible origin for the name Wookey is from the Old English wocig (an animal trap), although it is also a possible alteration from a Celtic word ogo (cave), referring to Wookey Hole Caves.
Features
The village of Wookey Hole is dominated by the Wookey Hole Caves tourist site which has show caves and a controversial crazy golf course which was built on the site of the village bowling green.
The village has shops, a pub, restaurants, hotels and a campsite. The Grade II listed Church of St Mary Magdalene dates to 1873-74.
The former paper mill building, whose water wheel is powered by a small canal from the river, dates from around 1860 and is a Grade II-listed building. The production of handmade paper ceased in February 2008 after the owner Gerry Cottle concluded there was no longer a market for the product, and therefore sold most of the historic machinery.
“Wookey Hole” enters the record as village in Somerset, England, UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wookey, Hole and village can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Wookey Hole” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Wookey, Hole and village provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3397589. Authority coordinates are 51.224, -2.674. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1860 and 2008.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Wookey Hole” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.