Objects from Bradford on Avon Museum
Remnants of War: Civil War Cannonballs Words by Gordon Phillips, volunteer Steward
L
ast month we wrote about the Providence Chapel pulpit, one of the larger objects in the museum. This month’s article is about some of the smaller items in the collection – two Civil War cannonballs.
On entering the museum in Bradford-on-Avon, the visitor is immediately greeted with a cabinet of Roman finds, largely excavated during the dig at St Laurence School. What then catches the visitor’s eye is (almost) inevitably the wonderful chemist’s shop owned by Miss Christopher in Silver Street and later moved to the museum. However, my attention was drawn to two cannonballs nestled away next to a cabinet of fossils. These cast iron objects were made for light field guns, such as those used in the Civil War.
Artefacts in the museum all come from the Bradford Hundred, an administrative district that formed part of the county of Wiltshire. One of the cannonballs was found at Barton Bridge, near the Tithe
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of Bradford on Avon, along the valley. How, therefore, did the cannonballs come to be here, in such a peaceful setting? After all, the Battle of Bradford-on-Avon was in 652, hundreds of years earlier, long before the use of gunpowder and cannonballs.
Barn, while the other, slightly more corroded one, was unearthed in Turleigh, just over a mile west
The area around Bradford did in-fact figure slightly in the Civil War. For example, people from the area were expected to pay for the upkeep of the local parliamentary garrison of up to 200 men and 100 horses at Great Chalfield Manor. We know that payment rates varied, but that 79% of Bradford folk did in-fact pay and that the town supplied hops, cinnamon, nutmeg, soap and sugar. Meanwhile, on the royalist side, Sir Thomas Hall of Bradford accepted a position as commissioner to press local men into the king’s army. Later he was to claim he was pressurised into this by menacing letters from the king and the encouragement of his neighbours, who hoped he would be able to exercise influence over where troops would be quartered free of charge.
Images Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiki Commons
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