Floods
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The River Avon at Bradford on Avon has always been liable to burst its banks. The river rises quickly with heavy rainfall and usually falls just as quickly after a brief flood.
It spills fairly harmlessly over the floodplain above Bradford, with the roads to Staverton Bridge becoming inundated very easily. At Bradford it is...
Read MoreThe Medieval Period
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In Britain the Medieval Period, the Middle Ages, covers the time from the end of the Roman occupation in the 5th century until the beginning of the Tudor Dynasty in 1485.
Bradford on Avon enters history in 652 when Cenwalh, the Saxon King of Wessex fought a battle here. Numerous buildings from the Saxon period...
Read MoreJournal Articles
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By no means an exhaustive list; there are bound to be missing articles- let us know!
WAM stands for the Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine.
Guardian Angel is the publication of the Bradford on Avon Preservation Trust (selected...
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Holt in 1841
The old centre of Holt as mapped by the Bristol surveyor George Culley Ashmead in the late 1830s for the Tithe Apportionment of Bradford Parish. The elm tree on Ham Green was even then big enough to be marked. The woollen cloth factory buildings can be seen where part of The Courts garden is now...
Read MoreDotesio’s Cycling and Rambling Map
Dotesio & Todd were printers and publishers with premises in Silver Street, Bradford and had acquired an outlet in Trowbridge as well. This map is entitled “Dotesio’s new touring, cycling, and rambling road map of forty miles about Bradford-on-Avon“. There is no date, but was...
Read MoreBradford Manor Map
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The area that was included in the Manor of Bradford that was given by King Æthelred II to Shaftesbury Abbey in 1001 is within the thick line. The dashed lines are the boundaries of the present parishes.
Click on the thumbnail picture for a bigger...
Read MoreTurnpike Roads of the Bradford Hundred
Click on the map for a larger version.
The roads of the Bradford Roads Trust are in red; other turnpike roads are in blue.
The first Bradford Road Act in 1752 authorised a Turnpike Trust to make, maintain and charge tolls on a road from Combe Bridge (at the boundary of Bradford with Monkton Combe, near the Viaduct) to Winsley, Bradford, Staverton...
Read MoreThe Museum Collection: The Civil War
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The area around Bradford figured slightly in the English Civil War. Royalist troops under Sir Ralph Hopton are assumed to have crossed the Avon at Bradford and headed towards Bath, culminating in the Battle of Lansdown in July 1643. The other action was at Great Chalfield, where Parliamentary troops occupied the manor house, except for a...
Read MoreSources on the internet
Neil Mattingly’s Bradford on Avon site has huge amounts of pictures, reproductions and transcriptions of old documents. The National Monuments Record PastScape -archaeological and architectural heritage Bath in Time -photographs of Bradford and some of the villages Francis Frith -photographs from the postcard maker National Archives Family Search -the Mormon index of... Read More
Bibliography
Books and booklets about Bradford on Avon and its surrounding area.
Those in orange are available for purchase at the Museum
Alderslade, John & Porter, Trevor & Whitcombe, John 2000. Thirty years of the Pump: the story of the Village Pump Folk Club and Festival during the 20th...
Read MoreCanals to Bradford on Avon
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Explore the Kennet & Avon Canal Frome Road Canal Wharves Old photographs of the Kennet & Avon Canal Kennet & Avon Canal timelineRead More
The Bradford Manor Charter of 1001
A copy of the grant by King Æthelred II gives details of the boundary of the manor in 1001.
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The letter ð in the Anglo Saxon text represents a voiced “th”, as in “these”; so forð = forth.
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“Ærest of seuen pirien on ðere here wai, ðe schet suðward...
Read MoreThe Bradford Hundred
A Hundred was the administrative division below that of the Shire, or County. The name was probably originally related to the area of land nominally required to support a hundred eligible families. Hundreds and Shires came into being in the Saxon period, perhaps as early as the 7th century.
The Bradford Hundred Court was held by the Abbess of Shaftesbury, but was in fact presided over...
Read MoreBradford Hundred Timeline
c2000 BC: Early Bronze Age burial at Jugs Grave, Inwood
7th century BC: Early Iron Age Budbury hilfort
late 3rd century: Bradford and Atworth Roman villas built
652: King Cenwalh fought at Bradanforda be Afne
705: a monastery at Bradford mentioned by St Aldhelm
709: death of St Aldhelm
955: King Eadred granted the Manor of Bradford to St Mary,...
Read MoreA Bradford-centric railway map
Bradford was well-served by railways, but was not really the hub of the system! The map shows lines and stations, some still functioning, some swept away by the Beeching axe in the 1960s.
. Today, trains that stop at Bradford go onwards to: Southampton, Portsmouth and Brighton; to Yeovil, Dorchester and Weymouth; to Bath,...
Read MoreThe River Avon
Bradford’s river is generally distinguished from other Avons as the Bristol Avon. The name derives from Welsh afon, which simply means river.
Its course is unusual. It begins as several streams flowing east down the dip slope of the Cotswold Hills. They should really join the upper Thames, but the Avon turns to the SW following a vale cut in soft clay. Just above Bradford it...
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