The Museum Collection: Blacksmith
Blacksmiths were common everywhere while there was a need for wrought iron to be shaped for individual purposes, especially of course for making and shoeing horses. The last one with a forge in Bradford was Albert Lailey’s in bridge Street. Today mobile smiths travel to the horse rather than the other way round and art smithing is done in mild steel.
Pestles and Mortars
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Pestles and mortars were important pieces of apparatus in the old-time chemist shop and are used as an international sign for a pharmacist. They were used to bruise, crush, grind and mix chemicals and the raw materials from which medicines were derived. They come in all sorts of sizes depending on the amount being dealt...
Read MoreThe Museum Collection: Schools
Bradford’s Free Grammar School, not as grand as it now sounds, was set up in the Saxon Church 300 years ago in 1712 and lasted until 1903. In the meantime, many private schools came and went and the Nonconformists set up the British Schools in Bradford and the Anglicans set up their own National Schools in town and villages. Secondary schools, Trinity and Fitzmaurice, came 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.
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Read MoreThe Museum Collection: Cobblers and Cordwainers
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Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire
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Cordwainers made boots, shoes and other articles from leather and are named after the Spanish city of Córdoba, which was famed for its leather workers. Generally they just referred to...
Read MoreThe Museum Collection: House and Home
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HeatingA cast iron Bath-pattern fire grate from the end of the 18th century. Coal became relatively cheap from about that time and through the 19th century and much of the 20th century. It came from a building in Silver Street, Bradford which was once a...
Read MoreThe Museum Collection: Post-medieval Archaeology
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Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire
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In this country, the Middle Ages are considered to have finished in 1485, when Richard III was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth Field. After that come the Tudor dynasty, the Reformation, the Stuarts, Georgians, the reign of Victoria and modern...
Read MorePaintings, drawings and prints
With the possible exception perhaps of Gainsborough, the artists who have worked in Bradford are mainly notable only for recording the local area. Bradford on Avon Museum has no paintings by Gainsborough, alas.
landscapes and townscapes by Elizabeth Tackle (1808-1877) “Timbrell’s Yard” oil painting Portrait of John Bailward, by a... Read MoreThe Museum Collection: Church and Chapel
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One of the largest objects in the Museum is the pulpit from Providence Baptist Chapel in Bearfield, Bradford. It was made of pitch pine as part of the furnishings when the chapel opened in 1858. The congregation of the chapel was always small and dwindled to the extent that it closed in the early 1980s. The...
Read MoreThe Museum Collection: the Rubber Industry
Bradford on Avon was the birthplace of a pioneering rubber industry. In 1848 Stephen Moulton, an Englishman living in New York and a friend of Charles Goodyear, came back and set up a factory to apply Goodyear’s discovery of vulcanisation in the redundant Kingston Mill. Moulton merged with a London company later in the 19th century, becoming George...
Read MoreCarboys
A carboy is a large glass vessel for containing a big quantity of liquid.
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Four decorative carboys were displayed in the chemist shop windows and are again in the reconstruction in the Museum. Of a distinctive shape, they form part of the identification of a chemist shop; even today small versions can be seen at the...
Read MoreSyringes, enemas and nasal douches
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Hypodermic syringe kit and its carrying box. These are designed to deliver a chemical or vaccine into muscle or blood vessel. The literal meaning of hypodermic is ‘under the skin’.
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Glass Bottles: Winchesters
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Winchesters are bottles of a gallon capacity, used for storage or for those chemicals of which larger quantities than the shop round bottles were needed.
This is one of a set of large bottles from the Christopher shop. They were made by Henry Ricketts in Redcliffe, Bristol to his 1825 patent for making...
Read MoreOld Photographs: The Town Bridge
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Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Read MoreOld Photographs: The Priory
The Priory was a late medieval mansion with later additions at the upper end of Market Street in Bradford on Avon.
The earliest parts were built in the latter part of the 15th century by Thomas Rogers, who was Sargeant-at-Law, a high-ranking legal official. The house would then have consisted of an open hall with wings at each end and a porch opening on to what...
Read MoreOld Photographs: St Margaret’s Street
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
see St Margaret’s Street today
Looking up St Margaret’s Street towards Hall’s Almshouses. In this view it is clear that the road continued into what is now Frome Road, with Besoar Street turning off on the left towards Trowbridge. On the left the Midland Railway Office had been the French Horn public...
Read MoreOld Images: Silver Street
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Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire
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Walter Henry Willson’s chemist shop, his assistant and sons in the 1890s. It had been opened by George Marks in 1828 and still retained his name above the door after...
Read MoreOld Photographs: Newtown
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Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
Look at Newtown today
The Bell Inn as it was in about 1960 complete with its 3-dimensional sign of a bell on a wrought iron bracket. It closed just a few years later and was converted into flats.
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Old Photographs: The Shambles
As one of the most picturesque corners of Bradford on Avon the Shambles figures strongly in old postcards. This was the area of the medieval market place and would originally have been temporary stalls (Old English scammel) put up for market and fair days. Eventually permanent stalls came, followed by houses. The Market Hall, with Town Hall on the upper floor was on the...
Read MoreOld Photographs: Street scenes
Views of the town’s streets tend to be from postcards or photographs taken by visitors or those interested in the picturesque. Photographs of the Town Bridge and Saxon Church are most popular of course. Images of the less picturesque parts are rare, but these are the most likely to have changed.
Market Street Silver Street The Shambles Church Street The Town... Read More