Old Photographs: Road Transport
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The Bradford Roads Trust tollhouse at Holt in about 1880, around the time when the toll roads were being made free. The schedule of toll charges was painted on the board on the wall of building on the left, which is where the tolls were collected.
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Old Photographs: Motorcycling
Members of Bradford Motorcycle Club posing for a group photograph in Druce’s Hill, Church Street. Many of them have sidecars for conveying wife/girlfriend and child. No helmets are worn, but most of the drivers have goggles. The date would be after the beginning of 1912, when one of the bikes was registered.
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Royal Enfield Motorcycles
In June 1941, during the Second World War, part of the Royal Enfield Company moved from Redditch in Worcestershire to old underground stone workings at Westwood Quarry. In the safety of the quarry the firm carried out the manufacture of Type 3 predictor sights for anti-aircraft guns and control equipment for Bofors guns.
At the end of the war the company made...
Read MoreTollgates and Milestones
Tolls were charged on the turnpike road between Cockhill, Trowbridge and Widbrook, Bradford. The Widbrook Tollhouse still exists, now a private house. It has a projecting central section where the doorway for the keeper to attend to the gate and charge the tolls is now converted into window. This was presumably built after 1839, when the town’s roads started to be supported by the rates...
Read MoreTurnpike Roads of the Bradford Hundred
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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...
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Stokeford Bridge, Limpley Stoke & Winsley
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As a route to Bath, horses could cross the Avon at Stoke Ford, at the foot of Winsley Hill. In 1731 Thomas Dike of Limpley Stoke and Moses Cottle sr of Winsley, who owned the land on their respective sides, agreed to build a bridge over the Avon. Stokeford Bridge was in existence by 1739.
Originally it was a wooden...
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