The Museum is closed, but it is still active …
Although Bradford on Avon Museum itself has been closed by the Covid-19 pandemic since mid-March, there is still some activity going on in the background. The Museum has recently acquired a set of Frobisher Resistivity Meter equipment for carrying out non-invasive archaeological exploration by using geophysics. A grant from the Bradford Area Board of Wiltshire Council helped us buy it. It measures minute differences in the flow of electricity through soil and can detect traces of walls, pits and ditches under the ground. The Museum’s Research Group has been putting the kit to use, during non-lockdown periods, in investigating enigmatic earthworks on Broughton Gifford Common (see a report here) and at the deserted medieval village at Rowley (and here), between Westwood and Farleigh Hungerford. A little excavation was carried out too.
We still don’t know when the Museum will re-open. We are anxiously waiting to see the effect of the promised vaccines.