The Trust’s main objective is to maintain, foster and encourage the character and the scenic, historic and architectural values of the town of Bradford on Avon.
The town has a population of approximately 10,000. It owes its position to the existence of a ford across the river Avon, which in the thirteenth century was superseded by a bridge still in use today. Apart from the bridge, the town has other medieval, and even earlier, structures including its renowned Saxon Church, a second bridge, generally known as the pack-horse bridge, and the Barton Farm area which includes the town’s famous Tithe Barn and is the site of the recently completed Trust project which will serve as the town’s Visitor Centre.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries the town became one of the most important centres of the woollen cloth industry. This period left, as a legacy, both the grand Georgian residencies of the rich clothiers and the more humble weavers’ cottages, which are a feature of the hillside and the protection of which was the reason for the creation of the Preservation Trust over 40 years ago. But for the Trust’s creation and the pressure from notable personalities in the architectural world, the whole of present day Tory, which is such a feature of the townscape, would have been swallowed up in a characterless public housing scheme.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Trust has important reservations on the town planning aspects of Taylor Woodrow’s plans for the redevelopment of the Kingston Mill site next to the town’s historic bridge.
|
