New Booklet: The 1841 Map

In the late 1830s the Bristol surveyor George Culley Ashmead (1801-1895) was commissioned to survey the parish of Bradford (then including Atworth, Holt, Limpley Stoke, South Wraxall and Winsley too) which was published in 1841. The survey was for the Tithe Apportionment, to determine who was liable to pay tithes (a tax) to the church. The tithes were to be commuted from goods...
Read MoreNew Museum booklet: Bradford on Avon 1500-1700

This booklet in our more detailed and referenced Monograph Series follows up on Ivor and Pam Slocombe’s previous volume about the Medieval town, covering the developments over the next 200 years during the reigns of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties when the woollen cloth industry was growing.
Profusely illustrated as usual and crammed with detailed and well-researched...
Read MoreNew acquisition: 18th century portrait of a Bradford on Avon clothier

Filling a gap in Bradford on Avon’s collection relating to the woollen industry that made the town as it is today, the Museum has recently acquired this early eighteenth century oil painting of John Bailward (1677-1742). Bailward was a local man, from a Wingfield family, who was involved with the great clothier families at the time when west Wiltshire was the centre of fine...
Read MoreOnline lecture by Michael Wood

Bradford on Avon Museum, jointly with the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes and the Saxon Church of St Laurence in Bradford, is co-hosting an online lecture by the well-known historian Michael Wood on “King Æthelstan and the making of England” on 5th May 7.30-9.00 pm. Æthelstan (c894– 939) is regarded as having been the first...
Read MoreA Year On …

It is now a full year since Bradford on Avon Museum closed its doors to the public on 15th March 2020 (the Ides of March!). We are told that the earliest that museums will be allowed to reopen is the 17th May, but that depends on circumstances prevailing at the time. We will not wish to risk reopening until we believe it is absolutely safe to do so, as our space is so small that...
Read MoreTwo New Books from Bradford on Avon Museum

While the Museum has been closed the Publications Group has, socially distanced of course, been busy and we have two new books to offer you.
First is Rubber Town by Dan Farrell of the Moulton Bicycles Company. Following on from the success of Dan’s Riding on Rubber book, which appeared in the wake of bringing the Iron Duke calender machine back to...
Read MoreNew acquisition: a Roman silver signet ring

The Museum has added to its collection of Roman objects with the acquisition of a Roman finger ring, made of silver and still having its ‘jewel’ of opaque blue glass that has been engraved with a genius figure. It is a fairly hefty thing, weighing 18g, and probably belonged to a man -a piece of Roman bling! It was found in Broughton Gifford by a metal detectorist, declared as...
Read MoreThe 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....
Read MoreThe Museum is still closed

Restrictions on the use of the library building in which Bradford on Avon Museum is located mean that the Museum is unable to re-open yet. For the last seven months, not even the Museum’s Honorary Curator has been allowed to go in. Even now, he can have an hour, by booking an appointment. It is very frustrating!
So, regrettably, it does not seem likely that we will open...
Read MoreRe-opening? -Not yet

You may have heard that, as of Saturday 4th July, museums and galleries would be among the categories of establishments that were allowed to re-open. However, much as we would love to welcome visitors again, Bradford on Avon Museum will not be opening just yet.
Although independent, the Museum is situated in a Wiltshire Council library building. The Council has launched a...
Read MoreWhoosh! -a history of Bradford on Avon for children

One-time Trustee of the Museum, Gill Winfield has written a book to help children explore the long and interesting story of Bradford on Avon. Billy and Bella, new residents of the town, are guided through it by the Memory Keeper, who shows them a series of episodes in town life from the Iron Age to modern times, all beautifully illustrated by local artist, Mike Dickinson.
The...
Read MoreThe lock-up on Bradford on Avon Town Bridge

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Bradford on Avon Museum Trustee, Ivor Slocombe, has welcomed the Prison History group from the Open University to Bradford to show them the lock-up that sits one of the cutwaters of the Town Bridge. They filmed the interior which you can see here, on the Prison History website page (the link opens on a new...
Read MoreAnother clock!

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Fairly hot on the heels of the Joshua Rudd clock the Museum acquired a year ago comes another. This is of a later generation of Bradford clockmakers and was made here in about 1840, so it is bigger, with a painted face rather than brass and Arabic rather than Roman numerals. The case is veneered with Cuban mahogany and has stringing in...
Read MoreMillennium Embroidery on display at the Tourist Information Centre

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Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Bradford on Avon Museum’s Millennium Embroidery has gone off for one of its periodic outings, this time to the town’s Tourist Information Centre.
The embroidery, which was stitched by a team of local people and finished in 2003, illustrates periods...
Read MoreNew Museum Book

The third in our monograph series focuses on the area that was the medieval manor of Budbury, on the northern side of the town and traces its prehistory and history from an enigmatic Late Bronze Age site, through an Early Iron Age Hillfort and a palatial double Roman Villa, right up to the present day. Roy Canham explains the archaeological background, while Pam Slocombe examines...
Read MoreAnyone for tea?

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A recent new acquisition for the Museum’s collection is this four-piece silver-plate tea set. Each piece is engraved with the initials H.J.T. and the teapot’s base has been engraved “Presented to H.J. Taylor Esqr. by Fellow Townsmen Bradford-on-Avon May 20th 1931”.
Harold John Taylor was a member of a family...
Read MoreNew Acquisition -a Bradford on Avon clock

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A clock that was made in Bradford on Avon has been close to the top of our wish-list for many years and last we have one.
The Museum has been given a 30-hour long-case clock that was made here by Joshua Rudd in the 1750s or 1760s, in an oak case that may have been made a little later in the 18th century. It formerly belonged to Katherine MacKean, who once ran the...
Read MoreGreat War medallion finds a home

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A second Bradford on Avon Great War medallion has been handed over to the family of a man who did not receive it in 1919.
Jesse Francis Fletcher, who was born in Ashley Road, died from a poison gas attack in France on the 9th August 1916. On 9th August 2018, on the 102nd anniversary of...
Read MoreExhibition: What we bought in the 1950s and 60s

Wednesday 1st August until Friday 31st August.
Bradford on Avon Museum has gone shopping crazy! We have another exhibition on shops showing what housewives were buying in the 1950s and 60s.
As an extension to our current shops exhibition – Brylcreem and Broken Biscuits – in every shop in the town, the Museum is...
Read MoreNew booklet: Bradford Leigh Fair

The Museum’s latest addition to our growing list ….
It builds on the talk that Rob gave to the Museum Discussion Group about Bradford’s now extinct annual fair. The subtitle tells you something of the subjects covered beside the long history of the fair.
Price £4 from the Museum or Ex Libris Bookshop in The Shambles. Roll up! Roll...
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