Museum Celebrates Lottery Win!
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Bradford on Avon Museum has been successful in a bid for an award from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s “All Our Stories” round of grants. With the HLF funding and support, community groups like ours will carry out activities that help people explore, share and celebrate their local...
Read MoreAgriculture in the Bradford Hundred
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The area covered by the Bradford Hundred lies on the boundary between the two classic Wilthire agricultural environments: “chalk and cheese”. The limestone uplands are the equivalent of the chalk land elsewhere in the county, producing grain and sheep. The lowland clay-dominated vale was traditionally dairying country. The steep...
Read MoreOld Photographs: Farming
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Building haystacks near the J & T Beaven leather works in Holt.
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Mushroom cultivation
The tunnels that had been cut out of the hillsides in Bradford and Westwood by underground stone quarrying provided ideal conditions for growing mushrooms on a commercial scale. Insulated from the weather, they give stable levels of temperature and humidity all year round and, unlike plants, fungi do not need light for growth. The techniques were imported from France, where they had been...
Read MoreThe Museum Collection: Farming and horticulture
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A hand butter churn (left) that holds four quarts -in other words, one gallon (4.55 litres). Butter is made by churning cream until the fat separates from the liquid and clumps together. There are many sorts of churn; this has wooden paddles turned by a handle through gearing. The glass jar allows the...
Read MoreHaymaking
Cutting hay when it was largely done by hand was a communal activity, with family, friends and neighbours taking part. In larger fields it was possible to use machinery, drawn by horse or tractor, to cut the grass, turn it to dry it out and even to lift it on to wagons. Small plots, like this field just off the Trowbridge Road, might involve using a scythe, rakes and pitchforks. At the end of...
Read MoreUpper Bearfield Farm
Upper Bearfield Farm was one of two farms and a couple of smallholdings in Ashley Road, on the northern side of Bradford. A big and handsome farmhouse stands on one side of the road, while a farmyard with a large stone barn and other buildings were on the opposite side. It was almost entirely a livestock farm, producing milk. The farmyard was relocated to a site towards Great Ashley, where a...
Read MoreBarton Farm
This was the capital farm of Shaftesbury Abbey’s estates in Bradford and the home of the Abbey’s Steward. The standing buildings date from the mid-14th century, including an immense barn popularly known as the Tithe Barn. Archaeology has shown that the West Barn was originally part of a barn from the 13th century. The farm consists of a square yard with the Tithe Barn along...
Read MoreWater meadows
Water meadows were a development of the 18th century agrarian revolution. It had been noticed that grass grew earliest and best where floods had been, so shallow canals were dug to flood low-lying ground artificially in late winter to produce early growth. This process was known as “drowning” or as “floating” and was carried out by surveyors, as the laying out of the distributary...
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