Old Photographs: Frome Road
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.The Three Horseshoes pub, at the beginning of Frome Road, in the 1890s. Externally at least, little has changed in more than a century; apart from the transport, the main difference is the loss of the large gas lamp.
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A New Museum Publication: The Hall
Bradford on Avon Museum’s publications group has come up with another in our series of booklets about local subjects, in conjunction with Ex Libris Press.
Pamela Slocombe’s booklet, which is in a slightly larger format than the previous ones, is about The Hall, the ancient and beautiful mansion on the eastern side of Bradford. It gives a history of the development of the...
Read MoreExplore Bradford: Views
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Bradford Town Bridge with Abbey Mill beyond and the terraces of Tory and the hillside in the background.
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The hillside seen from the railway station. Directly...
Read MoreOld Photographs: Trowbridge Road
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Trowbridge Road looking north towards the centre of town.
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At the junction of Trowbridge Road with St Margaret’s Street...
Read MoreOld Photographs: Bradford in the 1960s
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A small collection of black-and-white photographs which belonged to a former Museum Steward and Treasurer. Structurally little has changed since these were taken, but the cars give the date of the pictures -many of which would be regarded as “classic cars” now.
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Read MoreCanal Quarry, Frome Road
Canal Quarry had a special significance in the history of science. It was one of the places in the area where the Bradford Clay was found and the fossils that were collected there in the early nineteenth century found their way into collections all over the world. It has gone now, except for a small exposure which is classed as a Regionally Important Geological Site, with an...
Read MoreThe Hall, Holt Road
The Hall, situated on the eastern outskirts of the town, is one of the most important of Bradford on Avon’s buildings.
A house existed here in the mid-13th century and the family who owned it took their name of Hall from it. John Leland, who was reporting on the state of the nation for King Henry VIII, in about 1540 described it as “a pratie stone house...
Read MoreExplore Bradford: Conigre Hill-Huntingdon Street
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Conigre Hill is part of an ancient line of paths and roads that leads from Church Street via Rosemary Lane to Huntingdon Street and across the fields to Monkton Farleigh and beyond. Conigre is the Wessex word for rabbit warren and there are several localities in Bradford that include the name. The road, now traffic-free, is of...
Read MoreKelston
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Kelston, now a village on the north-western side of Bath in Somerset, was, like Bradford, a manor that belonged to the Abbey of Shaftesbury in the Middle Ages. It seems to have been run as a part of the Abbey’s holdings in Bradford.
No charter granting Kelston to the Abbey has been found, but it was listed in the...
Read MoreChurches and Chapels in Bradford
No remains of a Christian church in the Roman period have yet been found, but it has been suggested that a circular structure built on top of a mosaic floor in the St Laurence School Roman Villa was a palaeo-Christian baptistery.
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The Saxon Church, called St Laurence, in Church Street is a small...
Read MoreSchools in Bradford
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Schooling was provided by the priest of Thomas Horton’s chantry from 1524 and survived the chantry’s dissolution in 1540, however its funds were appropriated from the Crown in 1559 towards funding a school in Salisbury. Rents on some pieces of land were given over by Edward Norton [Horton?] to support the foundation of a Grammar School...
Read MorePublic Houses in Bradford
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Public houses come and go over the centuries; unfortunately, at the moment it is mostly go. They also have a habit of changing their names at the whim of the owner or publican, which makes for a confusing historical record. Small beer retailers, usually a sideline in a private house, appear in lists and directories; a few of them developed into...
Read MoreOld Photographs: Church Street
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Bradford commemorated the death of King Edward VII in 1910 with a parade and a service at the parish church. On the right, the buildings of Church Street Mill are unoccupied and windows have been smashed. They were still at...
Read MoreSt Laurence School Roman Villa
It had long been known that there was significant Roman building in the Budbury area, on the plateau just north of the centre of Bradford. An excavation in 1976, when new houses were being built, found a bath house, so the villa house had to be nearby.
A fragment of plaster that had fallen from the walls of the bath house. Many of these pieces were conserved in a...
Read MoreExplore Broughton Gifford
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Now situated on the southern edge of the village, St Mary’s Church has a west tower in 15th century perpendicular style, while the body is 13th century Early English gothic with an arcade on the north of the nave. A south chapel was added c1300 and next to it...
Read MoreExplore Bradford: Ashley Road
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Ashley Road runs from the Bath Road to the hamlet of Ashley in the parish of Winsley. The first part is behind the old terraces of Bearfield, then passes St Laurence School and post-war housing, before entering countryside and a maze of narrow lanes.
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The house...
Read MoreExplore Bradford: Silver Street, southern side
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The Lamb Factory, beside the Town Bridge, was built in 1917 for the Spencer Moulton rubber company on the site of the old Lamb Inn and a small shop. It is faced with stone, but has a frame utilising an early system of reinforced concrete. Now closed like the rest of the factories, it is being converted to new uses, including a...
Read MoreExplore Bradford: Silver Street, northern side
The first building on Silver Street and just around into Horse Street (Market Street) is known as Ward’s Corner after the newsagent and stationer Atkinson Ward, whose wife wrote under the name of Fay Infawn. No 2 was the shoe shop of Mark Uncles.
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Explore Bradford: Whitehead’s Lane
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Whitehead’s Lane is a short street that goes up hill from Silver Street at around the point where the chapel of St Olave once stood. It is named after Manasseh Whitehead, a 17th century Quaker.
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Sundial House, so-named...
Read MoreExplore Bradford: Coppice Hill
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Coppice Hill (or Lane) is a short street that goes up hill from the old market place at the junction of Silver Street with The Shambles. It is lined with picturesque gabled houses, but does not go far before ending in front of what had been a Methodist Chapel.
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