NEW – Museum Discussion Group

Looking at aerial photographs

From September, we are starting up a new Museum group for Members.  The Discussion Group will be held on the first Wednesday of every month at 7:30pm in the Library Meeting Room.  These informal sessions are FREE to Members and will cover a broad range of topics, with a different speaker introducing the theme each month.

Here are the topics for the first four months:

Wednesday...

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Millennium Embroidery at Fringe Festival

Millennium Embroidery at Fringe Festival

The Museum’s Bradford on Avon Millennium Embroidery will be displayed as part of the Bradford Fringe Festival. The twelve panels depict episodes in each of the centuries between the two Millennium Years of 1001 and 2001 and were sewn by hand by Bradford people, based on paintings by the late Jeanne Walpole. It can be seen for the period of 1st to...

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‘Flog It!’

‘Flog It!’

Hot on the heels of ‘Antiques Road Trip’ another BBC-tv crew has visited Bradford on Avon Museum. As part of making an insert for a ‘Flog It!’ programme, another antiques and auctions-based series, they videoed some of the museum’s old images of Bradford, then headed off with presenter Paul Martin to shoot around the town.

Follow this website for...

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Antiques Road Trip

Antiques Road Trip

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On Thursday 18th July a team from STV spent an entire morning filming in Bradford on Avon Museum’s chemist shop. This was for a piece that will be included in a programme in a forthcoming new series of the BBC television series “Antiques Road Trip“, which is a spin-off from the venerable and well-known “Antiques Road...

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Museum Trip to Dorset

Wimborne Minster (photo by Memorino, Wikipedia)

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—FULLY BOOKED—

New date for your diary – Saturday 14th September 2013.

The June outing for members of the Museum Society has been postponed, and will now be taking place on 14th September instead.

We will visit the Priest’s House Museum in Wimborne Minster, a...

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Exhibition: A Life on Wheels

EXHIBITION NOW RELOCATED TO ST LAURENCE SCHOOL FOYER UNTIL 8th FEBRUARY

Following the recent death of Alex Moulton, the inventor and developer of the Moulton bicycle, Bradford on Avon Museum has mounted a display about his life.

It draws on the material from the  exhibition that was jointly staged by the Museum, Preservation Trust and Town...

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Alex Moulton 1920-2012

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Dr Alexander Eric Moulton, the inventor of the small-wheel Moulton bicycle, died on Sunday 9th December 2012 at the age of 92.

He was best known for his involvement with two of the style icons of the 1960s: the range of innovative bicycles and the Mini car. In both he developed a suspension that was...

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New Air-conditioning

New Air-conditioning

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During the week 10-14 December new air-conditioning machinery and associated pipework are being installed in the Museum and in the meeting/exhibition room next door.

As a precaution against the dust that could have accumulated in the roof space being released when suspended ceiling tiles are removed, as much as practical of...

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A New Museum Publication: The Hall

A New Museum Publication: The Hall

Bradford on Avon Museum’s publications group has come up with another in our series of booklets about local subjects, in conjunction with Ex Libris Press.

Pamela Slocombe’s booklet, which is in a slightly larger format than the previous ones, is about The Hall, the ancient and beautiful mansion on the eastern side of Bradford. It gives a history of the development of the...

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Museum Celebrates Lottery Win!

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, share and celebrate their local...

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A School Visit

A 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...

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TALK: 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...

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Another Museum Booklet: The Saxon Church

Another 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...

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More Museum Publications

More 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...

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Future 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...

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New Museum Publication: Lost Pubs

New 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....

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New 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 Broughton items, but is also probably a new...

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Jeanne Walpole paintings exhibition

Jeanne 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...

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New 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 quarries.

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Jeanne Walpole Painting

Jeanne 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...

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