Bradford on Avon

Bradford on Avon is a small country town in England between Bath and Trowbridge

Built in the same fine oolite limestone as Bath, the town was already a settlement in the Iron Age, and people have been living there ever since. The foundations of a large Roman villa - the centre of an estate many miles across - were recently found in the grounds of the town's secondary school, and it has one of England's few surviving Saxon churches and a magnificent medieval Tithe Barn, crowned with one of the largest stone roofs in the country. But the handsome buildings which climb up the hills from the 'broad ford' (and, since Norman times, the bridge) across the river are mostly Georgian, the legacy of a few hundred years of prosperity as a centre of a textile industry making fine woollen cloth from Cotswold sheep. Towards the end of the Georgian period the industry and its money moved north to Yorkshire and Lancashire, and building largely stopped for around 100 years. The old textile mills were taken over in the 20th century by the rubber industry, making goods like tyres (and the small-wheeled Moulton bicycles, briefly famous in the 1960s and 70s as town runabouts), but that too eventually moved away. Today Bradford is largely a residential town.

See

Bradford-on-Avon is a very pretty town and has lots of old buildings and lots of history. It is good for sight-seeing and a peaceful day out. Bradford-on-Avon is also close to the city of Bath, which is also known for its sights.

• ⊙Courts Garden, Holt, BA14 6RR (3 miles east of Bradford on Avon), ☎ +44 1225 782875.  
• ⊙Westwood Manor, Westwood, BA15 2AF (3 miles south west of Bradford on Avon), ☎ +44 1225 863374.  
• ⊙Great Chalfield Manor, near Melksham, SN12 8NH (3 miles north east of Bradford on Avon), ☎ +44 1225 782239.  
• ⊙Bradford on Avon Tithe Barn, Pound Lane, Bradford-On-Avon, Wiltshire, BA15 1LF. Daily 10:30AM-4PM. A spectacular 14th-century monastic stone barn, 51 metres long, with an amazing timber cruck roof. Free. (updated Mar 2018)