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Explore Bradford on Avon:
Trowbridge Road
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Not surprisingly Trowbridge Road is the one that leads towards Trowbridge. It starts as a continuation of Beasor Street, now part of St Margaret’s Street and runs past some old houses known as the Folly, to Widbrook, then over Trowle Common. There are groups of late Georgian/early Victorian houses, a long late Victorian terrace and areas of pre- and post-war council housing.
Development started on the eastern side of the road because the other, as Great Poulton Field, belonged to the Lord of the Manor and was part of Barton Farm.
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Click on the thumbnail pictures for a bigger view.
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The first few houses in Trowbridge Road, according to old numbering are now counted as being in St Margaret’s Street! Victoria Terrace is a short terrace of four big houses of three floors and an attic storey in what is called an Italianate style. They were built by Bradford builder William Long (1823-1892) soon after 1858.
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As a consort for Victoria Terrace, William Long next built Albert Terrace in 1864. He lived in the house at the southern end, with his workshops behind, now redeveloped and known as Long’s Yard. There are three houses in the terrace, of four storeys.
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The next short terrace of big houses was built by another Bradford builder, Robert Cadby in about 1805. He lived in the right hand house with the porch supported by fluted Tuscan columns. The three-storey bay of canted windows was added at the end of the 19th century.
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The Plough public house occupies what were originally two three-storey houses on the end of a short early 19th century terrace called Regent Place and presumably dates from the period of the Regency, 1811-1820.
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Near the Plough are the remains of the Trowbridge Road iron foundry with the base of its ornamental chimney. It was started up by William Coles around 1820, was run by George Milsom from about 1860 and then Berkley Uncles & Sons from the 1890s until the 1960s.
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In 1894 Isaac Jones jr purchased a strip of land of 360 by 48 yards along the Trowbridge Road side of Great Poulton Field from the Lord of the Manor, Sir Charles Parry Hobhouse. On this he built terraces of similar houses and villas with names such as “Bellevue”, “Morley Terrace” and “Albany Terrace”, which he was selling off around the turn of the century.
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This stretch is called Beaconsfield Terrace, ending with a house that has a way through to a builder’s yard at the rear.On the right is a footpath that leads to the modern buildings of Poulton and to Fitzmaurice Junior School.
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Much of the eastern side of Trowbridge Road and roads leading away from it were developed as housing estates by Bradford Urban District Council from the 1920s. The Square, actually three sides of a square facing the main road, was the earliest part.
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The large pair of semi-detached houses with gables was called Avon Villas. The right hand one was for a while the home of Elizabeth Ann Tackle (1808-1877), the artist whose drawings and lithographs can be seen in the Museum.
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The Beehive Inn, right by the hump-back bridge over the Kennet & Avon Canal at Widbrook, appears from the 1850s as the New Inn, gaining its later name in about 1900 when it had stopped being so new. Unfortunately, it has now closed and its future is in doubt.
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At the far end, on what was Trowle Common and now in Trowbridge, is the Old Manor Hotel, an early 18th century house that was the manor and farmhouse of Great Trowle. Trowle was one of the Tithings of Bradford.