Frome in Wessex
A Walking Tour of Frome Old Town
Abstract
Contents Updated: Thursday, 26 October 2006
Frome—A Walk around the Old Town
Frome cannot be explored by car. Many of the streets are narrow and best suited to pedestrians but there is also no need to use a car since the centre is so compact. The sensible tourist arriving by car will therefore park in the Old Cattle Market car park and will walk. Guides are available at the Tourist Office, the Round Tower, near the car park which is illustrated on another page. It was originally an eighteenth century drying stove used to dry dyed cloth. The car park is on the site of the former cattle market which in 1990 moved to a purpose built site three miles out of town at Standerwick. Mini-buses run a shuttle to the new market on market days which are Wednesdays. Frome has had a market since before the Domesday Book, so the loss of it (or partial loss of it, even if Standerwick is thought of as near enough to Frome) is a sad break with tradition.
Overlooking the car park was the large and rather ugly edifice of the Singer factory. This company cast the statue of Boadicea on the Embankment in London and also the statue of Justice blindfolded atop the Old Bailey court house, yet its founder, John Webb Singer was actually a watchmaker who realised that cast ornaments were getting fashionable in the nineteenth century. What remains of the company has moved to a site on the Marston Industrial Estate and housing is being built overlooking the river. It will improve the look of the centre but a great opportunity to extend the centre along the river with cafés and shops has been lost—the local authorities browbeaten and outthought by commerce as they usually are.
Leave the car park walking away from it towards the Old Frome Bridge. The rear of the Black Swan will be passed on the right. It was a public house originally as its name betrays but now is an arts centre and café serving whole foods, administered by Scoffs of Bath. At the exit from the car park is a tall Italianate building on a sharp corner site like the prow of a large steamship. It is the Frome Museum, home of the Frome Literary and Scientific Institute. Quite recent, it was built in 1859. The long straight hill to the right of its entrance, as you go in, is North Parade built in 1797, and since then the main exit route to Bath. The old route to Bath went to the left of the Museum along Bridge Street, probably the route since the time of Aldhelm’s monks. The old five-arched bridge was reported by John Leland, the king’s antiquary, about 1540 AD.
The Frome Bridge, besides the best example of Pulteney Bridge in Bath, is one of only two in Britain, the other being in Lincoln, having multi-storied shops built actually on the bridge. Most people are familiar with the Old London Bridge which was similarly built like a shopping mall, but it is unusual to see such a structure, even on Frome’s small scale. In the picture to the right you will be crossing it from right to left. This bridge was built in 1821 but it was the fourth Frome Bridge in that position.
The picture is taken from Willow Vale which runs along the river bank and has some attractive Queen Anne houses and elegant porches, if you have time to wander. The trail along the river Frome eventually comes out at Wallbridge which is itself medieval but backed by a redundant carpet factory now used as small units and warehousing. Coloroll, owned by Mrs Thatcher’s one-time favourite businessman used to manufacture here in the 80s until the Thatcher “revolution” closed Coloroll too.
Crossing the bridge, to the left is The Blue House built in 1721 as an odd combination of boys grammar school and home for elderly women. The central part was a bluecoat school, so called because the boys wore blue jackets giving the building its name, none of it being blue except the clock face. It cost £1401 8/9d to build, four times more than the cost of the Rook Lane Chapel, built at about the same time, local historian Michael McGarvie tells us. Now it still houses old people, but not just women, though the boys went in 1921.
In fact an almshouse was built on the site in 1465 AD when William Liversedge, of the family who were then lords of the manor of Frome Selwood, endowed the original almshouse with 12 chambers, a chapel and a hall. His brother is supposed to have recovered from the plague having had a near death experience in which he saw heaven and hell. The beneficiaries were to have been twelve of the poor of Frome but later outlying villagers also became eligible. A mention in 1621 of “the late erected almshouses” tells us that they must have been rebuilt just before. Perhaps the buildings had been neglected because that is what happened to the buildings written of in 1621. Thus it was that an appeal led to the financing of the present building as an almshouse and a charity school. The figures on the front are said to be Nancy Guy and Billy Ball according to the erudite Mr McGarvie. Don’t walk by without donating to the Blue House Appeal. The building needs re-roofing and £185,000 has just been raised in record time but old buildings are demanding.
Ahead is the Market Place which was divided into an upper and a lower market—buildings extending from the present Lloyd’s Bank across the site of the Boyle Cross, a stone cross (regrettably vandalised awhile back but now restored)—before the centre was gentrified into the Georgian style when Bath Street was built at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The ground slopes upwards away from the river so it is plain which end of the Market Place was upper and which lower. The lower portion used to be subject to flooding when the river was swollen but not now that the channel has been cut deeper. Nevertheless, flooding does still occur occasionally at Wallbridge.
The buildings in the Market Place are mostly recent, which is to say, nineteenth century. The four public houses (bars) are however older. The George is the site of the oldest of them, George not referring originally to the German kings but to St George, England’s Patron Saint. Doubtless, the St part was dropped in honour of the Hanoverians. Evidently old is the Angel, with its coaching house appearance and its wide yard at the back. This tavern, not strictly in the Market Place but at the entrance to King Street (called Angel Lane in medieval times but renamed after George III in 1809) goes back before 1530 AD, a time when Angel was a popular name for hostelries. The other two pubs, the Crown and the Blue Boar are from the late 1600s. In its prime in 1774 Frome had 43 taverns. Sixteen of them are still trading and about eight more still exist but no longer trade as bars.
The Market Place is still a market. The main market day is Wednesday when stalls are put up where Cheap Street joins Market Place, and when a larger group of stalls are opened on part of the Old Cattle Market car park. Saturday too sees stalls in the Market Place but, until recently, not in the car park. Now there are full markets on both days and with the old Cheese and Grain Shed renovated, there is also usually a covered section to it, often antiques but also a monthly farmer’s market and others.
Walking away from the bridge up the slope brings you to the end of Cheap Street flanked by Lloyds Bank and the old Midland Bank (HKSB) and characterised by a rivulet running in a gutter down the centre. Cheap Street was the original shopping street of Frome, leading up from the Market Places to the Church. The word is that found in London at Cheapside and refers to the Saxon name for barter—ceap—whence the surname Chapman meaning a trader or merchant. Cheping was a Saxon word for market. Cheap Street, spelt Chip Street, is mentioned in 1500. Note that some of the shops are half-timbered in the Tudor style. Others are too but have been rendered, hiding the features. At number 11 is the oldest house in Frome, a Tudor house with overhanging jetties and massive beams carved with rosettes. To the rear of Cheap Street is a curious unpretentious little alley called Apple Alley, that gives a real feel of the medieval street and often a truer idea of the age of the buildings which to the front have been altered on their ground floors to accomodate modern picture windows. It has been neglected but now has been renovated.
At the top, diagonally across to the right is St John the Baptist’s Church, founded originally by St Aldhelm—the Parish Church. We shall come to the front of it shortly but look at this fascinating side gate, to the left of which is a well supplying the water to the Cheap Street gutter. Above is a Gothic arched canopy covering the old holy spring. The outlet was a lion’s head. It was adorned with lines from the Benedicite: “O ye wells, bless ye the lord,” but the words have eroded off. James Rattue in some fascinating pages on wells at Bath University’s site says that Frome’s forgotten and unregarded (Ethelbert Horne’s 1922 monograph of Somerset’s most notable wells, ignored it) Holy Well is one of the “most spectacular” in the West Country. The spring at the foot of the mound on which the church stood must have been one of the reasons for Aldhelm’s choice, and the spring’s water remained important to the growth of the town. In the 1530s, John Leland visited Frome and mentioned “the ryghte fayre springe in the Churche yarde that by pipes and trenches is conveyde to dyvers partes of the towne”
The steps up from this entrance are a processional stairway, with incredible relief sculptures of the stations of the cross on the left. The gate will be locked but the reliefs can be seen from more steps to the right which lead up to the church forecourt and thence to Gentle Street. These church steps are mentioned as ealy as 1300. The Rev William Bennett, formerly the incumbent at St Barnabas’s, Pimlico in London, arrived as vicar in the 1850s. A well-known Ritualist, he had been driven out of his church in the anti-Catholic riots of 1850 and sent to Frome. Bennett began to rebuild his new church according to his Anglo-Catholic principles, and he it was who added this “Via Dolorosa,” up the steep incline of the graveyard. The well water still runs through Cheap Street in its “pipes and trenches” as Leland reported. The Holy Well is one of the most splendid of those restored in the High Church revival of the last century.
Return to the top of Cheap Street and turn sharp right down an alley called Eagle Lane. This tiny lane, which now serves only to allow cars to get out of King Street, once had three taverns along its short extent, including, of course, The Eagle. It is mentioned as early as 1392 when it was also known as Cox Street (Cokkestret) and Back Lane. Tax returns of 1327 show that a Walter de Cok was a Frome resident. In the BBC Wales production of Drovers’ Gold, Eagle Lane was chosen to represent a London back alley in a cholera epidemic and was wonderfully mocked up as such by BBC carpenters.
Leave Eagle Lane and turn into into Bath Street. Proceed from there left to the forecourt of St John the Baptist Church on the left through an arch designed by Sir Geoffrey Wyatville. The present space before the church and the entrance arch were built when Bath Street was built in 1810 according to the ideas of Thomas Bunn. Before then the church had fronted on to Gentle Street and the whole area had been a warren of twisting lanes, traces of which remain as Gentle Street itself, Rook Lane, by the chapel further up the hill, and Eagle Lane which you came along to the church. The basis of the church is Norman but the many Victorian additions disguise it. There are even older pre-Norman carvings. In the yard is the tomb of Bishop Ken and inside a wrought iron screen worked by Singer’s in 1863.
One might have thought that Bath Street led towards Bath but it is on the side of the Market Square away from Bath. The reason is that it does not mean “The Street to Bath” as you might expect but “Lord Bath’s Street”, because the land upon which it was built belonged to Lord Bath. There is no doubt that the elegant, gently curving road was built with troop movements in mind but, Napoleon was defeated and Frome was left with a magnificent, wide (for the time) access road from the south. The new shops on Bath Street included a pharmacy called Butler and Langford who set up small scale printing to print the labels for their medicines. It developed into Butler and Tanner, a principal business in Frome for many a year.
Frome’s decline as a textile centre had been hidden by the economics of war and the market area was remodelled in the Regency style, everyone doubtless expecting a blissful future. But woollen and especially choice worsteds were made more cheaply in Yorkshire and Frome’s cloth industry had had its day. In 1823 no less than twelve cloth makers went bankrupt, the Poor Rate increased and the population began to decline as people moved north with the trade or to London to try their luck.
In the churchyard is an underground, windowless room called the Blind House—it was the jail—and at the back of the church is Vicarage Street with several old houses and, should you be interested in old furniture, the local auctioneer—auctions held every fortnight.
The front of the church is decorated with four images of the saints, identifiable from the images sculpted with them. Everything obvious is however Victorian, the church having been restored in the modern style in Victoria’s time, leaving little to be seen of earlier work.
From the forecourt, to the right as you face the church entrance is Gentle Street, named after a family which lived at number 7 in the 1500s but first identified by that name in 1698. This used to be the main access to Frome from the south before Bath Street was built, so you can get a good idea of how narrow medieval streets really were. It is cobbled and has many original dwellings, both Georgian and medieval and bits of both when older houses have been updated. The old inn, The Waggon and Horses, which was an inn from 1568 until 1960, can be seen up Gentle Street but today it is a private house. The London stage coach would leave the Waggon and Horses every Monday. The route out from the Market Place was via Stony Street which runs into the Upper Market Place and from there, along Palmer Street, called Acot Street in 1571 and thence into Rook Lane and along Hunger Lane, now the forecourt of the church, into Gentle Street. There are several more fine houses in Gentle Street.
Turn right at the top of Gentle Street. The large multi-story building you just passed is an old brewery. Standing at the top of Bath Street you are looking down Christchurch Street West, the old Top o’Town or Behind Town. The slope up to your left is past Gore Hedge, so-called because of the blood spilt there in the Orange Rebellion. Beyond it is the ancient settlement of Keyford, older even than Frome and little Keyford too, still a pretty hamlet but now completely buit in. Veering to the right before Keyford, at the modern fire station the road leads out to Shepton Mallett and Wells, initially going along The Butts, the medieval archery range. Slightly down Bath Street across the road is the Rook Lane Chapel, not named after “rooks” but “rocks,” possibly the setts paving the route, and a short row of cottages fronted by lawns and a large Cedar of Lebanon tree. These buildings are all that remains of Rook Lane which was largely replaced by Bath Street.
Behind you is Christchurch Street East which runs into Portway, doubtless named from the Latin word portare meaning to carry. It was a route which connected market towns and along which goods were carried from one centre to another.
Cross the road and walk up Christchurch Street West. This road was built to allow coaches from Bath and Bristol to Southampton and London to miss the steep descent into the town. Christ Church on the left dates from 1817. Park Road on the left leads up to… yes, the park—Victoria Park—and the local hospital. On the right is the Pack Horse Inn from about 1730 and further along, at the top of Catherine Street, is the Ship Inn, dating from before 1600 AD but now pandering to the “culture” of youth.
Sloping away gently is Catherine Street leading into steeper Catherine Hill, another cobbled street named after a local shrine to St Catherine of unknown location, where each August a medieval fair is held—a sort of community fancy dress. Catherine seems to be popular in the area and perhaps it is to do with the ancient business of spinning—associated with a wheel.
Walk across the top, past the shops and Castle Street on the right, an area called Badcox from words meaning a field used for dumping, cocc meaning a heap. A little further up the slope is Selwood Street on the right, the entrance to Frome New Town. Old and New are however relative and this New Town is new only relative to what is medieval—it was only new in about 1700 AD. This is the area called Trinity, possibly the first leasehold development. After a quarter of a millennium the whole area was condemned in the 1960s and was partly, fortunately only partly, rebuilt as awful council houses. Fortunately you’ll be saved the horror of them because they have been demolished already after only 30 years and replaced by much more tasteful substitutes.
Along Selwood Street will be noticed a very large, elegant but empty multi-storied factory built in the Byzantine style in 1876. It is the Sewood Printing Works, the earlier home of Butler and Tanner, the printers, and has just been tastefully converted into flats and dwellings. Turn right here, just glancing left up to the Holy Trinity Church of 1838 designed by H E Goodrich with its simple interior and its Morris & Co windows inspired by Burne-Jones, at the end of the street and proceed to the Lamb and Fountain, a 300 year old public house, known today as “Mother’s” after Frieda Searle, the landlady for over a quarter of a century. A large development to the side of the old pub is on the site of what was known as The Piggeries. It is a tasteful and imaginative development, which adds to the charm of the area.
Head down the hill from the Lamb and Fountain and at the bottom turn right. All of the housing to your left as you walked down is new—replacing the 1960s dross recently demolished. You are now in Whittox Lane which is full of 300 year old buildings many of which have been conserved in the last few years. Look for example at Sun Street as you pass by and inspect the interesting but recent (1888) Zion Chapel. Look also at Melrose Lodge with its originally transomed and mullioned seventeenth century windows, now blocked off facing the street. The windows on the side are Queen Anne style with shutters. Whittox Lane leads back into Catherine Hill and you can follow the cobbles down to Stony Street and thence to the Market Place to end your tour of Frome. On your right is an arch with a few steps ascending beneath it to Sheppard’s Barton, an 18th century street of woollen workers’ cottages, remarkably preserved. Instead of descending Catherine Hill directly into town, you can walk along the High Pavement which gently veers right into Palmer Street and back to St John’s Church.
If you returned to the church you will have a chance to do a little shopping in Cheap Street or the Kingsway, go for a Somerset tea in the Settle, or explore a bit more down King Street which leads back to the Market Place at the Angel.
If you still have time wander up Cork Street where you will find, perhaps surprisingly in a small town, a cinema. Here is another house, Monmouth Chambers, dating from around 1600 and associated with the orange rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, pretender to the throne of England as the illigitimate son of Charles II by Lucy Walter. After landing at Lyme Regis and being proclaimed king at Taunton, Monmouth stayed there on his way to defeat by John Churchill, the ancestor of Winston Churchill, at Sedgemoor and was subsequent beheaded in July 1685.
More prosaically, should you wish to make any purchases here is the side entrance to the Westway shopping centre which has been renovated from a boring 60s look to a vibrant neo-Georgian look. Have another tea and a vegetarian snack in the Black Swan, take a look round the Tourist Office at the Round House.
Here we have concentrated on the old buildings of Frome, but there is more yet, though slightly further afield. Frome has a good High School called Frome College, an outdoor theatre and a fine theatre called the Merlin which is a local resource and also puts on commercial theatre. But Frome also has a Memorial Theatre, built as a memorial to the dead of the Great War. The Memorial Theatre supports amateur productions as well as occasional other attractions. Besides these, Frome is only 25 minutes by car from Bath and about 45 minutes by car from Bristol. It has hourly bus links and a railway connection to these towns too but trains are unfortunately infrequent, though the last train from Bath allows a theatre-goer to get back to Frome by about midnight.
Incidentally the railway station built in 1850 is the work of the school of Isambard Kingdom Brunel better known for the Menai Bridge and the doomed luxury liner, the Great Eastern. Though it is one of his less imposing works, for the trained eye it has several important features such as an overall roof.
If you do want to visit Frome you might want to miss or to come on one of the annual occasions like Carnival Day, the Medieval Street Fair Day or the day of The Cheese Show. Contact the Tourist Office 01373 467271 for details.
