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33 Silver Street

Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

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33 Silver Street, Bradford on Avon in 2011

A big early Georgian house, distinguished by giant two-storey flat pilasters topped by ionic capitals and by first floor windows with heavy James Gibbs-style surrounds of blocking and keystones. Above the first floor cornice, an attic storey is much plainer under its own cornice and parapet. Unfortunately, the ground floor, which originally had Gibbs windows and doorway, was terribly disfigured by the insertion of a wide shop front with plate glass windows in the 1930s.

There must have been generations of houses at this spot, near the bridge and in the old market place, before this one was built. It was owned by Francis Hislop, a linen draper, between 1749 and 1769 and might have been built for him as his home and business.

By 1791 it, or at least a part of it, had become the grocery business of James Budgett (1765-1842), although there may have been a grocer here from as far back as 1775. James was related to a family of grocers, one of whom, Samuel (1794-1851) was the subject of a book called The Successful Merchant. Samuel’s firm grew from the Kingswood area to the east of Bristol to cover Clifton, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, South Wales, Guildford, London and even reaching out to New York.

James, a Methodist like the Kingswood Budgetts, built up a thriving business in Bradford which he had handed over to his sons, James Payne Budgett (1793-1862) and William Budgett (born 1799) by 1830 and retired to a large house that was built for him on Masons Lane. James Payne carried on at the shop after his brother left to extend the Budgett grocery business to Shrewsbury in Shropshire. Next came Robert Budgett Jones, son of James Payne and William Budgett’s sister Martha, who by 1885 had expanded into the shop next door. Jones died in 1892 and the business was taken over by Herbert Hugh Jones, who was not related. However, just a few years later, at the end of the century, number 33 had become Edwards’ pork butcher shop.

The butcher’s shop closed in 1931 and the building was purchased by the Bradford on Avon Co-operative Society who opened out the whole ground floor and inserted the plate glass windows. It became the Co-op’s flagship shop, of the many around town and beyond, later becoming a modern supermarket until closing in 1988, since when it has been split into separate units, with flats above.