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.

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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.

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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.

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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. After the closure of the line in 1966 the track between Green Park and the Devonshire Tunnel became the recreational Linear Park. The tunnels have now been re-opened as a cycle and walking path, allowing level access all the way through to Midford.

Britain’s celebration of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee is marked on Bear Flat by a small, now disused, fountain to be found on the junction of Wellsway and Bloomfield Road, backed rather ignominiously by a large green metal box, a Wessex Water valve station. However, the Flat also put on a celebration of bunting and banners for the day itself, as can be seen in an early photograph of the Bear Flat Inn and surrounding buildings.

Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Bear Flat 1897

Photograph reproduced with kind permission of “Bath in Time”

Edwardian Expansion and lead up to the Second World War

The turn of the 20th century saw a substantial phase of building centred mainly on the land of Holloway Farm, with the construction of ‘Poets Corner’ (Shakespeare, Kipling, Milton and the other poet Avenues) between Beechen Cliff Road and Devonshire Buildings. Elsewhere around Bear Flat some larger houses were demolished to make way for new housing, including Beechen Cliff Villa situated opposite Prospect Place on Beechen Cliff Road and, further down the hill, the large Holloway House and its grounds made way for the Magdelene Road and Avenue housing.

In 1902, the council bought the land on top of Beechen Cliff to prevent it being built upon and opened a park commemorating the coronation of Edward VII and named after the queen consort, Alexandra. The park has changed little over the intervening years, though did originally sport a bandstand to the side of the bowling green, now occupied by a stand of beech and ash trees.

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In the same year as the opening of Alexandra Park, the Bath Electric Tramways company started its electric tram service around Bath. The tram depot was in Walcot Street (the tramshed still stands) and one of the routes ran south, through Bear Flat, up Wellsway and then east to Combe Down. Little remains of that service today. A commonly held view is that 131 Wellsway, an unusual single-storey house at the bottom of Wellsway, was a tram ticket office and certainly its ornate wooden facia reminds one of the intricate woodwork of a Victorian railway station. However, there appears to be no real evidence that there was any association with the tramway, despite detailed research by the current owners16.

In 1932 the southern side of Beechen Cliff became the site for the City of Bath Boys School, relocated to here from the Guildhall, where it was called the Bath City Secondary School. It became Beechen Cliff School in 1970 when it amalgamated with Oldfield Boys School. After considerable legal wrangling the school achieved grant-maintained status in 1990 and is now a foundation school. It has a long list of well- known alumni, including the conductor Raymond Leppard, musician Curt Smith (founder of Tears for Fears), athletes Roger Bannister and Jason Gardener, and actor Arnold Ridley (Private Godfrey from Dad’s Army)17.

The Second World War

The next phase of Bear Flat’s development was ushered in by the terror of the Nazi air raids on Bath during April 194218. Commonly referred to as the Baedeker raids, these attacks comprised low-level bombing with high explosives and incendiaries, and the raking of the population with machine-gun fire. Considerable damage was done to Bath and many casualties were inflicted generally but especially to the areas around Oldfield Park, Holloway and Bear Flat. The old Bear Inn and Brewery were so badly damaged that they had to be demolished and rebuilt. Houses across Poets Corner were hit, with three people killed in Shakespeare Avenue. Holloway and Beechen Cliff Road were severely damaged. In Bloomfield Avenue houses were severely damaged and number 12 was completely destroyed. Hayes Place was badly damaged. You can still see the shrapnel pock marks around the side door of the chemist and, if you look up to first-floor level, you can see the very obvious rebuilt sections of wall above Nino’s barbers, the radio repair shop and the Bear Pad cafe.

Photograph reproduced with kind permission of “Bath in Time”

Then and now: Bear Flat was heavily bombed during the Baedeker raids - Hayes Place April 1942

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Turning around to face the shops on the other side of Hayes Place, the decorative features around the upper floor windows and the divided roof line seen over Rolfey’s Antiques are missing above Andrews Estate Agents and the Co-op, as this had to be completely rebuilt following direct hits on and destruction of what was then the bank.

Several houses in the middle of Devonshire Buildings were also destroyed. One of the Auxiliary Fire Service men fighting the fires on Bear Flat was Harry Patch, the first world war veteran who died in 2009 at the age of 111. He likened the horror of the raids to his experience of Ypres in 1917.

Following the raids, Bath received a visit from King George VI and Queen Elizabeth who visited Oldfield Park to see the destruction at first hand and viewed Bath from Beechen Cliff. There is a place on Beechen Cliff path called the viewpoint, reached by the small walkway from Beechen Cliff Road running between Shirley Cottage and Stanley House. Here is a large, undated plaque showing an outline of Bath and its various landmarks. The newcomer to this plaque will scratch her head a little in trying to figure out some of the sights because, having been donated by Alderman Cyril Chivers in 1926, this is a view of pre-war Bath. Thus for example, St Andrews’s church, shown rising up behind the Royal Crescent, no longer exists, having been demolished following the Baedeker bombings.

Post War

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw great changes to Bath with the large-scale demolishing of many older buildings to make way for modern housing. Bear Flat largely escaped the wrecker’s ball (despite plans for a major redevelopment of the area around the Bear Inn) but the changes were drastic on Holloway, where the workers’ houses on the lower slopes of Beechen Cliff were cleared away for the Carlton Gardens development. The delightful woodland path that runs just above Carlton Gardens is a walk through recent history, with the foundations of demolished cottages scattered around and where the eagle-eyed will find an old Anderson shelter, a remnant from the Second World War.

The shopping centre has long been the heart of Bear Flat and has changed with the economic and market winds over the years. Long-time residents will recall the Flat in the 1980s, featured in the BBC Domesday project, whose website states “because of the wide variety of shops it is hardly necessary to go into town”19. These included a fish and chip shop, two butchers shops (Holloway & Sons and Dewhursts) and two greengrocers (Strickland’s and Bugler’s) as well as Brian’s toy shop and a pet shop. Hayes Place held a hardware shop (Francis DIY, now in Moorland Road) and a wool shop. The current Co-op was the local bank, Majestic Wine and Carphone Warehouse was a BMW car showroom, now on the Lower Bristol Road, and around the corner towards town was Sumsion’s garage, now demolished and replaced by the new office block that houses the Royal Photographic Society. Although changing hands on a number of occasions, the delicatessen at the corner of Wells Road and Shakespeare Avenue has remained in much the same use over these last 30 years, as has the chemist on the Wells Road corner of Hayes Place. And new development continues, most recently the new housing at the top of Bruton Avenue on an area that was, for many years, a shanty town of garages and lock-ups.

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This is a brief history of a modern community built on ancient foundations. We hope that it serves to stimulate interest in the area and perhaps see Bear Flat through new eyes.

1 See Cotterell’s Maps of Bath 1852-1853, City of Bath Map 33

2 For a description and photo, visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/tollhouses/2127404262/

3 A webpage showing historic detail of the Bath Turnpike Trust can be found at http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/Somerset%20-%20Bath.htm

4 There are various sources that describe the derivation of the name “Bear Flat”. See for example Bath by John Haddon, BT Batsford Ltd, 1973, page 41 that also discusses some other Bath name derivations.

5 A very extensive paper on the medieval Barrack Farm has been published in Volume VIII of Bath History (Bath Archaeological Trust in association with Millstream Books, 2000): ‘Barrack(s) Farm, Wellsway, Bath: The Estate and its Holders’ by A J Keevil.

6 This map is sketched from Cotterell’s Maps of Bath 1852-1853, City of Bath Maps 32 and 35, Ordnance Survey 1885 XIV_5_23 and Google satellite view of Bear Flat.

7 Information for this article on Devonshire Buildings and Place has been taken from unpublished research contained within the notes of Mrs C Smith entitled ‘Devonshire Buildings and Devonshire Place’ reproduced on the Bear Flat History Group website.

8 Information for this article on the houses of Beechen Cliff Road has been taken from the book Beechen Cliff Road 2000/2001 published by the people who live on the road. Christopher Pound wrote a very eloquent introduction to the book, some of which has been used to inform the following paragraph.

9 Some images and a short discussion on the Bear Inn and Brewery can be found in Kegs and Ale: Bath and the Public House p70, by Bath Industrial Heritage Centre, Millstream Books, 1991. The Bear Flat History Group website also has a short article on the Bear Brewery and Pub.

10 For a detailed paper on the visits of Walter Sickert to Bath, see ‘Walter Richard Sickert (1860 – 1942): Painter of the Bath Scene’ by Philippa Bishop in Volume IX of Bath History (Bath Archaeological Trust in association with Millstream Books, 2002). A short article can be found on the Bear Flat History Group website, together with a full colour reproduction of Sickert’s painting.

11 See Bath by John Haddon, BT Batsford Ltd, 1973

12 An article on the Holloway Farm Bath and West Show has been written by Colin Johnston of the Bath Record Office, Guildhall: ‘The Royal Bath and West Centenary Show 1877’ published in The Survey of Bath and District no 26, 2011.

13 For a dramatic account of the bridge and the tragedy, see Chapter 6 of Stories of Bath – a selective history in eleven episodes by Diana White, Millstream Books 2006.

14 Various pamphlets on the history of St Lukes are available at the church

15 The history of the Roundhouse has been researched by John Toplis. See ‘Devonshire Place “Temple” and the grounds in which it stands’, August 2004 published on the Bear Flat History Group website.

16 The tramway was single track with periodic passing places where one tram would wait for another to pass. 131 Wellsway faced one such passing place and the owners speculate that the house might have been used as a comfort

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stop for the tram drivers, thus giving rise to the view that the house and tram company were linked. Again, there is no solid evidence for this but it makes an interesting theory. There are many pictures of Bath trams on the Bath in Time website and also in Bath Tramways by Peter Davey and Paul Welland, Middleton Press 1996. These old black and white photos suggest rather dull vehicles but their livery was actually blue and gold!

17 There is a good history of Beechen Cliff School on wiki, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechen_Cliff_School

18 The information used here on the Blitz has been taken from The Bombing of Bath by Niall Rothnie, Follie Books, republished 2010 and Bath in the Blitz, Then and Now by Dan Brown and Cathryn Spence, The History Press 2012.

19 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-372000-162000/page/15

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