Our Team

It was in the 1880s when my great grandfather came south from Loughborough in Leicestershire where he and his six siblings grew up. There was already a family land agency business, but it was not big enough to take on all of the brothers. In fact, one brother became a local solicitor while another moved on and was instrumental in the formation of the Kent-based firm, Smith-Woolley.

 

My great grandfather, John Turton Woolley, came to Wiltshire. Initially he worked with a Mr John Dear and in 1884 they formed an auctioneer and land agency practice in Salisbury. Their partnership didn’t last long – in 1888 apparently Mr Dear just ‘disappeared’, leaving J T as a sole practitioner.  Then, in 1903, he joined up with a local farmer and auctioneer, William Wallis, from Fordingbridge and the firm of Woolley & Wallis was born.

 

Between and after the World Wars, my grandfather, Major Dick Woolley, and his brother Stanley continued working together with Frank Wallis, William’s son, establishing a mixed practice of professional and agency work, and running livestock and fine art auctions. The third generation, Peter Woolley and his cousin Tim Woolley, followed. The Wallises didn’t stay in the firm but the family continue to farm in the area.
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I became the fourth generation Woolley, working on the rural side of the business, originally starting out in livestock auctioneering and land agency, having been articled with a similar type of firm in Grantham, Lincolnshire. That was just before we all became Chartered Surveyors when the three professions merged in the early 1970s.
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At that time, the original family firm in Loughborough still existed, coincidentally with my namesake in charge, but after his death, the business merged with another local firm, and its identity went too. Woolley & Wallis continue to practice across the central southern counties of England, but with deaths and retirements, no representative of the family remains. So, instead, we started this independent consultancy in 2016.
 
We are proud of our strong local connections and, like our ancestors, John Woolley Ltd will aim to maintain client relationships built on trust, reliability, knowledge and continuity, and to bring our professional commitment to the rural and wider community.