NEWTOWN Conservation Trail

The Newtown Area Residents' Association is here to promote our corner of Trowbridge which was designated a Conservation Area in 1985 because of the area's remarkable unity of architectural style, built over a short period of the late 19th Century to house the rapidly growing number of workers and their families, in Trowbridge.

Trowbridge Beyond The River
The Newtown area of Trowbridge was built from about 1800 to 1900, but mostly from 1860 onwards. Small speculative builders provided a compact neighbourhood for a wide mix of social and economic classes, from mill workers to mill managers from clerks and shop assistants to doctors and solicitors - but not, of course, for the housing of motor cars!
Roughly a quarter-mile square, bounded by Newtown, Frome Road, Waterworks Road and Wingfield Road, it has 600 houses. With generous back gardens to mainly terraced houses, the overall density is about 15 to the acre.
The interest for visitors (and the heritage which residents must be keen to conserve) lies in the care lavished by small builders on the architectural finish of their houses, from the simple brick and stone terraces at the Frome Road end to the stately semi-detached villas of the Avenue and Wingfield Road.
The visitor will be pulled up now and then by jarring notes: inappropriate additions, replacement windows and doors and "cladding". But the area as a whole has a distinctive character truly worthy of conservation.
Street Pattern Followed Fields
The area is named from the street now called Newtown but earlier "Pilewell".
Around 1790 a three-storey terrace for mill workers and hand weavers was built on the west side of a lane which ran between a belt of enclosed fields beside the River Biss, directly farmed by leading landowners, and the great open "West Field", originally cultivated in strips by the townsfolk under manorial supervision. The strips here ran roughly north-south. When in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the field was "enclosed" by consolidation of strips into fields bounded by hedges, the hedges followed the direction of the strips. When from about 1860 to 1890 one field after another was developed with suburban housing, the layout of the streets followed the lines of the hedges. So the Newtown area echoes in its layout the strips of the open fields of our forebears of 1000AD!
Owing to the fact that the Bythesea family, who owned the farmland between Newtown and the river, held back the land from development until 1892, the houses on the west side of Newtown, further from the town are 100 years older than the line of terraces on the town side.
As in most of the older streets of Trowbridge the houses are numbered consecutively, up to the 60 on the west side and back to 119 on the newer east side.
This historical and architectural walk through the Newtown area starts in the top right corner of our map, close to the Holy Trinity Church.
The railway cutting, made in 1848, forms an even more positive boundary between the old town and Newtown that the river did.
The route we shall follow offers one possible way of covering the grid of streets with as little retracing of steps as possible, but at each intersection, those with time and energy will find a little extra exploration worthwhile.
The stone-faced terrace, St.George's Terrace, opposite the church, dates from about 1820, and is still in the classic tradition of the Georgian age. Trinity parsonage must have been built a little later than the church, probably 1840, and the stone fronts beyond probably 1850.
Start The Newtown Trail Here
Holy Trinity Church was built in 1838 to serve the growing population beyond the river. It must have seemed extravagant provision for little more at that time than the west side of Newtown and a few houses in Stallard Street and Bradford Road, but the vision of its builders has been proved right.
The architect, A.F.Livesay, from Portsmouth, used the Early English style of Salisbury Cathedral inside, with cast iron pillars and plaster vaulting it echoes the cathedral's eastern chapel.
Stallard Street curves to the left towards Newtown, which strictly begins at the Gloucester Road junction.
Pause here at the former Co-op shop, built in 1906 by the Trowbridge Co-operative Society, to admire the very fine wheatsheaf emblem carved in stone over the door by Palmer and Sheppard of Bristol to a full-size drawing made by the Trowbridge archtiect, Walter. W. Snailum. His carefully detailed low arched over the display windows are at present masked by (hopefully temporary) facia signs. Note the functional contrast of the smaller, rusticated, store room windows.
Opposite is the attractive brick-builte Labout Club, built in 1924 by the same architect.
Look up into Gloucester Road at the new Bethesda Baptist Church, built in 1930 also by W.W. Snailum, which replaced the old chapel of 1823 in Court Street, now a focal point of the Shires shopping development.
Numbers 1 to 12 Newtown were pulled down in the 1930s and replaced by an advertisement hoarding (temporary?) but the single story shops look older.
The first house now existing on the west side of Newtown is No.13, once occupied by a "Victorian" character, the herbalist Eli Gingell. This is one of the original 1790-ish houses, some of which retain the wide weaver's window of the top storey. No.14 was refronted when it was the Rising Sun Inn. From No.22 onwards the houses are of stone. The genuine original rubble front of No.26 is in instructive contrast to the recent cladding of its neighbour. Nos.29 to 31 with shallow relied arches above their windows, are perhaps the oldest houses.
Across the road, from No.119 to No.95, and again beyond Newtown School, a close look at what at first glance appear uniform terraces will reveal subtle differences of detail - shapes of doors, windows and bays and their arrangement; flat lintels or arches; in some cases carved foliage ornament. These show how several small builders each took a few plots, built a few houses and sold them, then took a few more plots further alongm and so on in a sort of leapfrog. This process began in 1892 and was complete by 1904 (terrace by E. Linzey, with "Tudor" arches, south of Newtown School).
School Plans Show in Paris
Newtown Junior School, opened 1901, in an Edwardian variant of Wren's classical style (architect T.B.Silcock, of Bath) was the latest thing in school design, with classrooms opening off a central hall. The plans were exhibited at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900.
Wesley Church and Road
At the corner of Wesley Road is the Methodist Church built in 1871 (architect W.J.Stent of Warminster). It cost £1400. The stone came from Noah Rogers' quarry at Bradford on Avon. Ancillary buildings were added by Stent. Then in 1933 came the small schoolroom, in which Snailum followed Stent's design even to the use of red mortar. In Wesley Road the Liberals founded the social club in 1899; the road was "adopted" in 1888, 14 frontagers sharing the cost of £194.
The four houses of Wesley Terrace, with small pillars by the doors and heavy arches, were built in 1892 by John Crook, who built over 100 houses before 1914. He was proud of having always paid cash for his materials. Similar houses by him are in Wingfield and Avenue Roads, etc.
Next, Pilewell Terrace of 16 houses with remarkably long front gardens dates from about 1840. The corner into Frome Road is turned by more of Crook's houses. He himself lived in one of them for a time. Maps up to 1860 show no houses on this side of Frome Road, but some look older.
At the corner of Park Street (names from Park Farm opposite), the school in a bare Gothic style, 1873, is by Richard Gane junior, Trowbridge-born architect of Abbey Mill, Bradford on Avon, and of a superb church at Canning Town in London's Dockland.
Look up into Park Street. Plain brick and stone terraces here and along Frome Road and in Bond Street date from the 1865 "West End Building Society". It owned 6 acres of land in 54 plots, would lend builders £15 towards a £20 plot and three quarters of the £146 cost of building a house on it. Such houses continue beyond Waterworks Road, with the Anchor and Hope Inn in the centre (date stone 1865 over the door). This was opposite the main gate of the Artillery Barracks. For Irish and other Roman Catholic soldiers, Mass was celebrated in the rear upper room of the inn until a church was built on Wingfield Road.
Turn into WATERWORKS ROAD - named after the first Trowbridge Water Company, formed 1864, which failed to get drinkable water from its deep well and pumphouse (site of Henderson Close). Bricks for the works and the houses came from clay in a nearby field; they have an attractive colour and texture.
A Bristol builder named Durke built 54 houses in the 1870s "on the site of the waterworks". The initials J.D. abd the date 1869 are above an attic side window of Nos.2 and 4 (Belmont Villas) whcih have Greek style incised motifs and strange window lintels also to be seen elsewhere in the area. He probably built Beaconsfield Terrace. Turn left into GLADSTONE ROAD whose name keeps up a political flavour. The four houses in a distinctive style - arches round below and pointed above and rusticated windows are an early work (1883) by Edward Linzey, founder of the town's leading firm of builders up to the 1960s. The plainer terraces (1887-89) are by the builders W.R. Moody and T.W. Lyles.
From Waterworks Road turn right into the rear service lane of SURREY PLACE, the first of the three very distinctive terraces runnin at right angles to the streets, their fronts facing long gardens and their backs facing narrow access lanes - a sort of foreshadowing of the "Radburn" layout favoured in the 1960s.
Look right and left at the terraces in BOND STREET, then enter WESLEY ROAD noting at the junction Roses Bakery, built for that family in the 1880s by another local builder, George Moore.
Look right at terraces in PARL STREET, then turn left into what was called in the 1880s "New Park Street". Building began at the Frome Road end.
This section of Park Street was fully built of between about 1883 and 1900. Several local builders were involved. One pair of houses, Nos.77/78, has elaborate stonework, hard to describe, probably designed for John Crook by W.H. Stanley, the town surveyor, who also had a private architectural practice, in 1886.
At the junction with GLOUCESTER ROAD turn left, pausing first to look at "Luxfords" shop and post office (now converted into flats), built about 1890 and opened in 1892 by T.H. Watson. The Conservative Club, opposite corner, was established in about 1907. Follow Gloucester Road to John of Gaunt School gate.
Eight houses between Bond Street and Grosvenor Terrace were built 1887 by Nimrod White; the terrace was earlier.
"Rosebank" (now Rural Music School centre) seems to be by Durke, with a very odd cornice like gear wheels; it was for many years the home of Henry. J. Knee, founder of the town's department store.
The former Girls High School dates from 1932. Gloucester Road, still called in the 1871 Census "Studley Lane", was meant to link with Pitman Avenue but has stayed as a footpath. Return past Avenue Terrace, built 1890 by T.W. Lyles.
Turn left into AVENUE ROAD - highest in the social hierarchy of three streets opening off Wingfield Road: West Street, Westbourne Road, Avenue, known early in this century by the irreverent nicknames of Threepenny, Sixpenny and Shilling Streets!
The field called "Tyning" was for sale as building plots in March 1889, described as "the most eligible site in the town...will be eagerly sought after as houses and villa residences are in great demand". The layout was approved by the council in March 1890 and in May that year Stanley submitted for by-law consent, for the property owner, Clifford Offer, a pair of grand villas with four bedrooms, bathrooms, separate WCs, three reception rooms, etc. Other similar pairs at the lower end of the east side soon followed. Several of these had first floor verandahs.
In the next 14 years the Avenue was fully built up save for a gap where Nos. 14/16 were built in the 1930s. Charcteristic details of most of the local builders can be seen, with T.W. Lyles active higher up on the west side and E. Linzey lower down. Linzey had a distinctive way of turning the corners of his window bays, with two stone quoins showing alternate wide and narrow faces. His houses get grander towards the bottom, with stained glass, etc. Nos. 25 and 27, higher up, stand out with deep keystones carved with low relief foliage. The Bradford builder James Taylor built identical houses in Trowbridge Road there.
WINGFIELD ROAD: EARLY & LATE
At the lower end of Avenue Road, houses by John Crook turn the corners into Wingfield Road: towards Wingfield, the grand semi-detached pair originally known as Atherfield and Sholebroke, with vaguely Gothic details and much stained glass. Atherfield was for some years the home of the builder George Moore. Later named Abney House, it became the Methodist manse. (Abney House, north of London was home to the 18th century hymn-writer Dr. Isaac Watts). These houses were built in 1903. A dispute with the council meant that the old farm hedge stayed in front of them for some time.
Turn left past Sholebroke to the former Boys' High School, designed by W.H. Stanley as a Wesleyan boarding school in a sort of brick and stone Gothic (bold inscription "Anno Domini 1889"). Taken over by the county in 1912, it became part of the John of Gaunt comprehensive school in the 1960s.
The elaborately detailed detached houses opposite, and the groups and single houses as far back as No. 20 were built by Linzeys at intervals from 1890 (No. 62) to 1907 (Nos. 22/20). Some were designed by W. W. Snailum, who lived at No. 46.
The unusually wide unmade road leading to St. Augustine's School was meant to link with Bradford Road as a housing development called Mornington Gardens, which came to nothing.
Skurrayfield, lying back from the road, is older; curiously, the field name "Skurray's Paddock" belonged to a field near St. John's R.C. Church.
The tall house (Redland), east corner of Avenue Road and the hotel adjacent (formerly Sefton House) were built by John Crook in 1891. He may also have built the terrace almost opposite, Nos. 12 to 18, with the same basic design. These four go back to the 1870s and were at first known as Westbourne Grove. Mr. Webb, a mill owner, was furious when in 1876 the council insisted on calling his house 12 Wingfield Road instead of 4 Westbourne Grove. Westbourne Gardens, adjacent, leads to the Westbourne Recreation Ground, a private sports club with tennis courts and bowls green.
Before turning up into Westbourne Road, one must admire the pretty little Victoria Terrace, dates as early as the 1850s, with royal heads over the doors and at the corner of West Street prettily-patterned bricks, carefully restored.
WESTBOURNE ROAD: CO-OP VENTURE
In 1871 Trowbridge Co-operative Society bought a field here and laid it out as building plots. By 1876 it had been given cast iron name plates, one of which was found lying in Mr. Webb's garden.
The earliest houses seem to be those with round-arched doors and windows and much foliage carving, by a builder named George Fluke. (Who, by the way, carved all the pretty leaf capitals in this and many other Trowbridge streets). The larger pairs , with battlemented bays and verandah-like porches (also to be seen in Wingfield and Avenue Roads) were built from 1888 to 1890 by another local builder, R. Henshaw, who lived in one.
Many others in this street were built 1895 to 1898 by T.W. Lyles. At the top turn left into GLOUCESTER ROAD, which was "adopted" by the council in 1873.
The terraced houses opposite Luxfords were built around 1871, on part of a field called "The Tyning" by a Bradford builder, Joseph Culverhouse. Further along, Nos. 43 to 37, with strangely classical pediments, must be by another builder at about the same date. The terraces running from Luxfords towards Newtown were built 1885 onwards by W.R. Moody.
Continue past West Street as far as the archway on the south side, with its delightful sculptured keystone of a craftsman's head with decorator's tools. In the 1870s this was where T.W. Lyles had his yard; later a blacksmith had it.
Turn into WEST STREET, developed from the late 1860s onwards, with many intriguing details hard to date for lack of records between 1872 and 1882. Facing, at the bottom, Alexandra Villas with their odd turrets. Then St. John's Church, 1876 by A.J. Scoles, soon to be enlarged, and its school (1935). Elm Villa (classical doorway), two houses (1903) by Snailum, and Westview Terrace (early 1870s) end this trail.