Although the centuries of the Middle Ages saw much religious activity with, at different times the building of a monastery, it was the founding by St. Aldhelm of the church of St. Laurence which attracts visitors today. It survives, remarkably, as the most complete Saxon church in England having been used as a house and a school before it was rescued in Victorian times. And before that it was a charnel known as the Skull House because of all the bones deposited there. When used as a domestic house the Chancel Arch was pulled down... but fortunately the stones had been used to build a fireplace and were later recovered when the interior was restored to its former and proper use.

It was in 1858 that Canon Jones, Vicar of Bradford and a keen archaeologist, looking down from his own church at the roofs below noticed a form unlike those of the surrounding buildings. His researches there and then, and later at the Bodleian Library Oxford, revealed that William of Malmesbury wrote in his Gesta Pontificum "Et est ad hunc diem eo loco Ecclesiola quam ad nomen beatissimi Laurentii fecisse prredicatur Aldhelmus," translated being, "To this day at that place there exists a little Church which Aldhelm is said to have built to the name of the most blessed Laurence." There has been conjecture (there always is with these things) but it seems that such a building was founded by St. Aldhelm in the name of St. Laurence around 750 years before.

What sets the church apart is that it appears to have been errected at one time without any changes such as widening of the Chancel Arch or additional windows being made at a later date... apart from the non-ecclesiastical changes made in the 18th century. Another mention must be made of the Chancel Arch which at just under 10' high and 3'-6" wide is probably the smallest in the country.

The real prosperity of the town began in the 14th century... it's wealth based on the cloth industry. In 1540 Leyland described Bradford-on-Avon as being "made all of stone"... a reflection of the wealth created by its manufacturers and merchants. Consequently many more houses had to be built on the surrounding hillsides during the 17th and 18th centuries for weavers from the town’s mills.

The mills themselves were numerous... thirty of them making cloth at the height of the wool trade. Although none have been involved in that industry for some time, weaving and finishing having moved to Yorkshire, what is still there today represents one of the best preserved industrial townscapes in England. For visitors the prospect of the old bridge (main photo) and assorted buildings rising up the hillside behind is as good as that seen in any Wiltshire town.

Two of the bridge's nine arches date from the 13th century, the others from the 17th... but it’s most noticeable feature is the "blind house" or lock-up perched on the cutwater. John Aubrey noted on his travels that, "Here is a strong and handsome bridge in the middest of which there is a little chapel..." It would have originally been a chapel... travellers often requiring words of prayer for their journeys in such difficult times. Later it became a lock-up for the miscreants of the town. However, it is unusual in having two cells to keep the sexes or argumentative types apart for the duration of their confinement! Surmounting the weathervane on the lock-up's finial is a fish (known as the Bradford Gudgeon) which was an early Christian symbol. It also led to the saying that any Bradford man who had been kept inside there had been "under the fish and over the water."