The 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...
Read MoreMillennium Embroidery on display
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Bradford on Avon Museum’s Millennium Embroidery will be on show in the Library Gallery/Meeting Room from Wednesday 28th March to Saturday 28th April during Library opening hours and on Sundays and Easter Monday 2-4pm when the Museum is open. Admission is free.
The Embroidery...
Read MoreSpencer Moulton tennis balls
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The George Spencer Moulton rubber company in Bradford on Avon made a wide range of things of rubber, including sports goods. A special line was tennis balls, but their absence from the Museum collection has at last been filled by a donation of a set of three in their original tin container. The base of the tin is embossed “LTA”, which probably means that the balls had been...
Read MoreNew acquisition- a medieval lion
Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire .
Despite being surrounded by medieval buildings, Bradford on Avon Museum is a little short on medieval objects. So, we are delighted to have received a small stone carving of a lion from early in the period. He was carved out of fine oolitic limestone and has been dated to the 13th/14th centuries- confirmed...
Read MoreGreat War exhibition success
Bradford on Avon Museum’s exhibition about the Great War has now closed and has been a great success. Just under a thousand visitors were counted during the times when a Steward was on duty and there must have been many more uncounted when it was not stewarded too.
A special event was the opportunity for children to dress up in military and nursing...
Read MoreGreat War exhibition extended
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Over the August Bank Holiday weekend there will be two extra opportunities to see the the Wiltshire at War -Community Stories exhibition, which is being hosted by Bradford on Avon Museum.
Both the exhibition and the Museum will be open on the afternoons of Sunday 27th and Bank Holiday Monday 28th August in addition to the...
Read MoreWiltshire at War exhibition
. The Museum will be holding a special exhibition about how communities in Wiltshire were affected by the Great War, 1914-1918. It features display material from “Wiltshire At War – Community Stories” that has been put together at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre and we will showing items and photographs from our own collection...
Read MoreNew book: a history of the rubber industry
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“Riding on rubber” is the Museum’s biggest publication to date, produced in collaboration with Ex Libris Press. A history of Bradford on Avon’s rubber industry, which was so important to the town’s economy until recently, has long been needed. Dan Farrell of the Moulton Bicycle Company has admirably...
Read MoreMillennium Embroidery film
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A video that was filmed at the opening exhibition of Bradford on Avon Museum’s Millennium Embroidery in 2003 has now been put on the web.
You can watch it by clicking here -this is a link to the YouTube site and opens in a new tab.
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Films about the Avon rubber works
The films that were shown in the Vaults at the events connected to the unveiling of the Iron Duke are now available on line:
Remembering the Avon -reminiscences of people who worked at the factories in Bradford on Avon- can be seen here.
The Iron Duke film can be seen here.
Both links are to the Vimeo website and open in...
Read MoreBradford on Avon Fire Brigade
The Museum has added to its collection of items relating to the history of the fire service in Bradford with a new donation. We have received helmets, one of the Wiltshire County Brigade and another two from the previous Bradford Urban District Brigade, an axe with its leather case that would have been clipped to a belt, a heavy jacket with county brigade buttons and a county cap.There are...
Read MoreThe Iron Duke unveiled
At last, the culmination of so much work and fund raising, on Saturday 24th September the historic Iron Duke rubber calender machine was unveiled. A large crowd, amongst whom were were many who worked at the rubber factory, watched as the curtain fell.
Associated with the ceremony were activities in the Vaults, including films of ex-workers’ memories and a history of the machine...
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