A Brief History of Bear Flat

A Brief History of Bear Flat The neighbourhood of Bear Flat is rather informal in its bounds. Roughly, to the east lie the roads of Poets Corner on the flank of Beechen Cliff; to the north are the older houses of Hayes Place and Beechen Cliff Road; to the west is situated Bloomfield Avenue and the cul-de-sacs of Maple Grove and Maple Gardens; and to the south lies Wellsway, the Church of St Luke’s and the Devonshire Arms. This said, the Bear Flat community is very inclusive, so if you think you belong, then you do! The heart of Bear Flat is the shopping area lying along the few hundred metres of the Wells Road between Hayes Place at the top of Holloway and the division of the road into Bloomfield Road, Wellsway and Entry Hill. This stretch of road could also be considered its historical heart. Some Early History The A367 is the main southerly route out of Bath and originally formed part of the great Roman Fosseway that linked Lincoln to Exeter. The original route climbed up steep Holloway from Southgate and the old St Lawrence Bridge (or the Old Bridge, replaced in 1964 by Churchill Bridge), ran through the Bear Flat area, and then along Old Wells Road1 (what is now Bloomfield Road). The route was in use from Roman times through to the start of the 19th century when it formed a part of the toll road, or turnpike, to the south west. An old Fosseway tollhouse, Westfield Cottage2, stands at the junction of Bloomfield Road and Englishcombe Lane. However, years of neglect rendered Holloway unfit for use. Indeed one explanation for the name Holloway comes from “hollow way”, referring to the poor state of the road, though another explanation points to “Holy Way” from its use as a pilgrimage route to Glastonbury. Towards the end of the 18th century a new turnpike was deemed necessary and so, in the 1770s, the Bath Turnpike Trust3 commissioned the building of Wells Road from the city to Bear Flat to bypass Holloway. Three decades later the Wellsway was built to bypass Bloomfield Road. It would seem therefore that the section of road through Bear Flat itself is the only stretch of the old Roman road close to Bath that is still used for its original purpose. Why ‘Bear Flat’? Not that the name “Bear Flat” derives from the Roman period, or indeed from anything to do with bears. For this we need to look to an early medieval settlement, the village of Berewick, that lay close by4. The name means barley-village or barley-farm and is a common enough place name around the country – think Berwick-upon-Tweed. ‘Bere’ gave rise to the word beer and Bear is most likely a corruption of the word, with Flat being just that, an area of flat land. The area is known to have been farmed over many years. The land lying between Entry Hill and Bloomfield Road belonged to the ancient and long lasting Barrack Farm5 (Barrack is also thought to be a corruption of Berewick), whose buildings have been lost under the Corporation tip that now forms the Entry Hill Golf Course. On Bear Flat itself, Holloway Farm was situated on Wellsway, the farm buildings lying on and to the south of Kipling Avenue, just behind Austen Villas (see the following sketch map) and farmed the land stretching up Beechen Cliff that is now occupied by Poets Corner. West of Bear Flat and before the construction of Bloomfield Avenue, there were extensive orchards and market gardens, surviving in part as the Bloomfield Road recreational field and allotments. March 2014 1 Bear Flat now and then6. A sketch map of Bear Flat showing some of the current buildings in black outline, and lost buildings in red. Solid red shows buildings that stood in 1852, shaded red shows those that stood in 1886. A: Holloway Farm B: This building still stands as a garage block but there is some evidence that it might have been the stables for Holloway Farm C: Bloomfield Cottage D:Tugnett’s yard E: The southern most part of the building block was Bloomfield View, presumably a private residence F: The Bear Inn. A horse trough stood in the road outside. G: The Bear Brewery The Georgian Period The development of Bear Flat occurred over a number of distinct periods of building. The first significant phase coincided with the more general building of Georgian Bath, perhaps stimulated by the newly constructed turnpike. The terrace of Devonshire Buildings and the much shorter Devonshire Place, situated at the lower end of Entry Hill, were built in the late 18th century7, as was that of Elm Place and Bloomfield Terrace at the bottom of Bloomfield Road, Hayes Place at the top of Holloway and the large houses of Prospect Place8 stretching up the cliff from Hayes Place. The ancient Bear Inn stood close to the site of the current pub of the same name9. The Georgian period saw Beechen Cliff recognised as a place of recreation and a fine viewpoint for the city. John Wood described the view and said that the city ‘will appear much the same that Virgil declares Carthage to have appeared before Aeneas’. Later in the 18th century Jane Austen described Beechen Cliff in Northanger Abbey ‘That noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath’. Many years later, Thomas Hardy wrote a short poem ‘On Beechen Cliff’ and further down its slopes on Holloway, Walter Sickert painted ‘Paradise Row, Holloway, Bath’ (now in possession of Manchester City Art Gallery), his easel perched just uphill from the gates of Paradise House10. March 2014 2 Victorian Period During the Victorian period the area of Bath south of the river gradually acquired a population of professional and business classes. This led to a second phase of building, including large houses along Wells Road and up Beechen Cliff Road, and the construction of Bloomfield Avenue. The Bear Brewery opened sometime in the first half of the 19th century to supply beer to the Bear Inn as well as a pub in Walcot Street. It continued to operate until the early 20th century when heavy fines were imposed because of the illicit use of sugar candy in its beer making. It fell upon hard financial times and finally closed in 190211. During this period Beechen Cliff was farmland and, in 1877, Holloway Farm became the setting for the Bath and West Show12 (nowadays it is held on its permanent ground near Shepton Mallet). The show covered the whole area of what is now Poets Corner and was considered to be one of the most successful. This very upbeat assessment needs to be tempered by the tragic event over the River Avon where the great number of show visitors, marching from the railway station towards Holloway and thence the showground, caused the collapse of the Halfpenny Bridge, drowning a number of people13! In the mid 19th century the ecclesiastical needs of the community were the responsibility of St Mark’s church at the bottom of Lyncombe Hill. The nearest place of worship was the small and very ancient Magdalene Chapel halfway down Holloway, built in the 15th century by the Prior of Bath Abbey to serve the adjacent leper hospital. With the expanding population of Bear Flat and surrounding areas there was a clear need for a new, more local church. However, the Revd. James Sproule of St Mark’s was having none of it. The church of St Matthew had recently been built close to St Mark’s at the bottom of Widcombe Hill and, noting that the reverend’s income derived from pew rents paid by his parishioners, he was understandably reluctant to accept a further dilution of his income. An initial site opposite the Bear Inn was offered and refused (Beechen Cliff Free Methodist Church, built in 1906, now stands there). Finally a site close to the Devonshire Arms was agreed upon and, in 1864, the first vicar of St Luke’s Church was appointed14. One of the stranger buildings of Bear Flat also has religious connections. The Roundhouse, also known as the Temple, stands in Greenway Court at the top of Chaucer Road and adjoins Beechen Cliff School playing fields, from where it can be clearly seen15. The building has two storeys and is elliptical in cross-section. Its date of construction is not known but is almost certainly before 1870 and was probably built as a gazebo or pavilion for viewing Lyncombe Vale from its upper floor. More interestingly, the associated house was owned by Abraham Abrahams between 1869 and 1874. Mr Abrahams had strong connections with the Corn Street synagogue and it would appear that he used the lower storey of the Temple for baking unleavened bread and used the upper floor as a meeting place for members of the Bath Hebrew Congregation. It is also likely that the building served as a synagogue in later years following the closure of Corn Street. March 2014 3 The great era of Victorian railway construction included the Somerset and Dorset Railway, running from Green Park Station south to Bournemouth and nicknamed the ‘slow and dirty’ or, suggesting that unreliable railways are not just a modern phenomenon, the ‘slow and doubtful’. The railway passes just south of Bear Flat via the Devonshire Tunnel, built in 1874 and running below the Devonshire Arms, though there is very little evidence of this from road level.

Load more