Upper Bath Road
On the website we are using the name of Upper Bath Road to refer to that section of the road currently known as Rock Street leading from its junction with Chapel Street to the old railway station. At various times, this section of road was called many names including: 'Ragland Road' and 'Raglan Castle'. The photograph is taken standing on the corner of Chapel Street where the Independent Chapel (now the United Reformed Church) is.
We have discovered that the houses in this area were built on a close of land called the Paddock. We have written about the history of this plot from the early 1700's and how it was broken up into smaller sections and used as building plots. Click here to read the early history.
South Gloucestershire Council has allowed us access to the files on all the houses acquired and demolished by Thornbury Rural District Council for the major redevelopment scheme in the 1960s. This has given us a detailed picture of almost all the houses in this area and we are very grateful for the help we were given at the Council Offices in Castle Street. Please click here to see the 1840 Tithe Map with our notes on the owners and occupiers.
The plan on the left is dated 1880. We have superimposed the house numbers which were adopted in the early 1950's. All the houses on the west side of this road (which were numbered from 2 - 16 heading from Chapel Street to the Station) have long been demolished and replaced by the Council flats shown on the right in the above photo.
The only houses still surviving are those in the little cul-de-sac now called 'Upper Bath Road'. These were allocated house numbers, 3 - 9, although number 3 is now derelict and numbers 7 and 9 have been combined into one house. We never knew what happened to number 1, although several electoral registers did suggest that this number was linked to the house we have called number 3.
In 1911, the Town Market was transferred from The Plain to the area of orchard opposite numbers 2 - 8. The last livestock market was held there in 1996, and all the buildings removed and replaced by the new community building called Turnberrie's which was opened in 2006 and the new flats built in 2008 which are shown on the left in the above photo and which are painted in shades of cream and blue at present.
The Station Master's house was situated off the plan on the other side of the railway lines. We hope to add a brief history of that house in due course.
This page was last updated: 09/12/2011