Museum 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 MoreA School Visit
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.Bradford on Avon Museum has a small temporary display of letters of thanks that were sent by children from the Grove Primary School in Trowbridge.
They had visited Bradford and the Museum at the beginning of October as part of their studies about...
Read MoreTALK: The Saxon Church in Bradford on Avon
Tuesday 15th January, 7:30pm at Holy Trinity Church
If you already have a ticket for the November talk which was cancelled due to the flooding, then your ticket is STILL VALID for the new date, so please do come along! Please note the change of venue.
David Hinton, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton is the author...
Read MoreAnother Museum Booklet: The Saxon Church
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Hot on the heels of the Bradford printers and Abbey Mills booklets comes one about Bradford’s Saxon Church. It has been written by David Hinton, who recently retired as Professor of Archaeology at Southampton University and is the author of several books on the medieval period. He carried out an...
Read MoreMore Museum Publications
The Museum’s publications group has been busy and now two more booklets have joined the Museum’s growing list.
Bradford on Avon printers and town directories is the work of Roger Jones, who as the publisher Ex Libris Press has himself had plenty of experience of the printing industry. He gives a history of some of Bradford’s...
Read MoreFuture exhibitions
We hope you got a chance to see our last exhibition ‘Jubilee’ which was in the Library Foyer from Monday 28th May to Tuesday 19th June, and to see Stephanie Laslett’s fascinating panels of the shops in Bradford in the 1950s which were displayed in shop windows over the past couple of weeks.
If not, we’re hoping to be able to redisplay some of this information...
Read MoreNew Museum Publication: Lost Pubs
The Museum has now published the second of its series of booklets.
The Lost Pubs of Bradford on Avon is subtitled “A walker’s guide” and is designed to be a trail guide for a walk around the town, looking at the buildings and occasionally the sites that have at one time been public houses, but, for one reason or other, where pints are no longer pulled....
Read MoreNew Acquisition: a Neolithic Flint Arrowhead
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Bradford on Avon Museum’s collection is very poor in objects from Broughton Gifford, which, as an area in the Bradford Hundred, falls within the the collecting area of the Museum. The chance find of a Neolithic flint arrowhead near Monkton adds not just to the collection of...
Read MoreJeanne Walpole paintings exhibition
A retrospective exhibition of the work of local artist Jeanne Walpole (1928-2011) includes some of the paintings that Bradford on Avon Museum commissioned from her as the basis for the Millennium Embroidery. The exhibition is split between the Library (normal opening times, not Sunday or Tuesday) and The Ale & Porter, Silver Street (not Sunday or Monday). Admission...
Read MoreNew Acquisitions: Stonemason Tools
Stone plays a large part in forming the character of the area around Bradford on Avon.
The work of stone quarriers, stonemasons and builders in stone has been an important aspect here for centuries, especially since the development of large underground freestone...
Read MoreJeanne Walpole Painting
Bradford on Avon Museum has acquired a painting by local artist Jeanne Walpole, who died recently. Jeanne painted fanciful allegorical pictures that usually featured buildings and people of the town in a medieval setting. Paintings by her, commissioned by the Museum, were the basis for the scenes of the Millennium Embroidery. The Museum’s new painting will be on show after it re-opens on...
Read MoreBradford Voices
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A new edition of the oral history book “Bradford voices” by Margaret Dobson has been published. It has been expanded to cover the years from 1997, when the previous version came out, and the first decade of the 21st century and contains many new illustrations including several from Bradford on Avon Museum’s collection.
It...
Read MoreBeavens’ of Holt Oral History Project
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The Museum’s Oral History Group is embarking on a project to record memories of the J.&T. Beaven leather and glove factory in Holt. They are hoping to find and interview as many former workers as possible.
Anybody who would like to help should telephone Jenny Arkell on 01225 782061.
See an article about...
Read MoreA Holt Collection
Bradford on Avon Museum has acquired a collection of items from the modern parish of Holt, the village to the east of the town.
It was assembled by the late Pam Gooding and it was her wish that it go to the Museum after her death. Pam set aside a room in her house as a Holt museum and welcomed visitors to it.
The collection contains photographs, newspaper...
Read MoreNew Home for Great War Medallion
Since they were discovered in the Town Council’s office, the Museum has been holding 17 medallions for the Council. Medallions were presented to all those Bradford citizens who had served in the forces in the Great War, but these had apparently not found their way to the named person in 1919.
At the beginning of this year’s Annual General Meeting one of them finally reached...
Read MoreThe Iron Duke
Moves are afoot to bring the Iron Duke back to Bradford. It is a big calender machine that was used to roll sheet rubber and cotton together and vulcanise them to make waterproof fabric. This was the actual machine with which Stephen Moulton started the rubber works in Bradford in 1848 and is important not just in Bradford’s history, but in the history of technology.
It was...
Read MoreMuseum Publication: The Christopher Pharmacy
The first of Bradford on Avon Museum’s booklets has now been published, in conjunction with publishers Bed and Bolster.
The all-colour booklet details the history of the chemist shop that now forms the centrepiece of the Museum and gives an idea of how its business was carried out.
The booklet sells at £2 and is available in the Museum and from the Tourist Information...
Read MoreSt Laurence School model Roman villas
For a second year the Museum is co-operating with St Laurence School to produce a short display of models of Roman villas. They have been made by the school’s Year 7 History Skills Project pupils, inspired by the villa that lies under the school playing field.
The exhibition is in the exhibition room next to the Museum. It is open during Library hours and runs until 6th...
Read MoreNew Acquistion
There are certain social history objects that we have been hoping for over the years, but have eluded us. One such is a fireman’s helmet from Bradford’s volunteer fire brigade.
Well, finally one has come our way. It dates from the 1930s and belonged to Willson Moore. It is very light and seems to be made of shellac-covered fabric over a layer of shock-absorbing latex foam,...
Read MoreMuseum gets Accreditation
We have recently heard that Bradford on Avon Museum has received full accreditation from the MLA -Museums, Libraries & Archives, the central government’s overseeing body and one of the quangos that is going on the bonfire.
This means that we have been judged to have met the MLA’s national standards for the Museum’s constitution and for our procedures for collection...
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