Museum booklet: Geology, landscape and building stone
Bradford on Avon Museum’s latest addition to its list of booklets comes with the publication of this one about the foundations of our local area. It has been written by Isobel Geddes who was the author of a book about the geology of Wiltshire a few years ago.
Like the others in the series, this booklet is lavishly illustrated. It is available from the Museum, Tourist Information...
Read MoreMuseum 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,...
Read MoreBradford People: Joseph Chaning Pearce (1811-1847)
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Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Joseph Chaning Pearce, in the course of a short life, built up one of the largest collections of fossils in the country in the early nineteenth century.
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Canal Quarry, Frome Road
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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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...
Read MoreWinsley Quarries
Winsley, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Murhill Quarries lie to the west of the village of Winsley, on the edge of the plateau level. A larger upper quarry was in 1905 the site for the Winsley Sanatorium, now Avon Park retirement village.
Stone from Murhill was used for the façade of Bristol Temple Meads...
Read MoreWestwood Quarries
Westwood, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire .
The steep hillside above Avoncliff has been extensively quarried for Bath Stone. Underground workings that cover large areas open from adits near the top.
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Avoncliff Quarry, despite not being worked for a long time, retains...
Read MoreBradford Quarries
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Stone quarries can be found all round Bradford town, including extensive underground workings.
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Bridge Street Quarry had an area of open working, with an adit that went into the hillside under St Margaret’s Hill. These workings must have been cut through by...
Read MoreLimpley Stoke Quarries
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Although there are signs of small-scale quarrying around the hill that forms most of Limpley Stoke, the main working is underground. Stoke Quarry is operated by the Bath Stone Group. Recent use of Stoke stone can be seen in the modern Bath Spa building and the facing of the Southgate development in...
Read MoreThe Museum Collection: Rock and Stone Samples
The rocks of the Cotswold Hills in the west of the Bradford Hundred are largely limestones and calcareous mudstones and clays. They include the fine building stones that are called Bath Stone and were important in the local economy. The lower land to the east has more of the clays with some limestone bands.
Click on the thumbnail picture for a bigger...
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...
Read MoreThe Museum Collection: Mollusc Shells
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Bradford on Avon Museum has to be selective about objects of natural history that are added to the collection. This is because of the difficulties in preserving organic material. This restricts the collection to just mollusc shells and some skeletal material and teeth of vertebrate animals. However, the Museum is keen to...
Read MoreLocal geologists
The country around the Bradford Hundred forms part of what has been called “The Cradle of English Geology” due to its association with William Smith, the “Father of English Geology” and many other founders of the science. It was around here that the order of strata was worked out.
Rev Richard Warner BA, FLS 1763-1857
Richard Warner was an antiquarian who...
Read MoreThe geographical setting
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Bradford on Avon lies where the Bristol Avon changes from a lazy river in a wide clay vale to a rushing stream that a has cut a deep gorge-like valley through the limestone of the Cotswold Hills.
It is just on the junction of the limestone uplands and the clay lowlands- the classic “chalk and cheese” of Wiltshire. The...
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