more than any other place in England the old features which are fast
vanishing elsewhere. We have already seen that most interesting
untouched specimen of Saxon architecture the little Saxon church,
which we should like to think is the actual church built by St.
Aldhelm, but we are compelled to believe on the authority of experts
that it is not earlier than the tenth century. In all probability a
church was built by St. Aldhelm at Bradford, probably of wood, and was
afterwards rebuilt in stone when the land had rest and the raids of
the Danes had ceased, and King Canute ruled and encouraged the
building of churches, and Bishops Dunstan and Æthelwold of Winchester
were specially prominent in the work. Bradford, too, has its noble
church, parts of which date back to Norman times; its famous
fourteenth-century barn at Barton Farm, which has a fifteenth-century
porch and gatehouse; many fine examples of the humbler specimens of
domestic architecture; and the very interesting Kingston House of the
seventeenth century, built by one of the rich clothiers of Bradford,
when the little town (like Abingdon) "stondeth by clothing," and all
the houses in the place were figuratively "built upon wool-packs." But
we are thinking of bridges, and Bradford has two, the earlier one
being a little footbridge by the abbey grange, now called Barton Farm.
Miss Alice Dryden tells the story of the town bridge in her _Memorials
of Old Wiltshire_. It was originally only wide enough for a string of
packhorses to pass along it. The ribbed portions of the southernmost
arches and the piers for the chapel are early fourteenth century, the
other arches were built later. Bradford became so prosperous, and the
stream of traffic so much increased, and wains took the place of
packhorses, that the narrow bridge was not sufficient for it; so the
good clothiers built in the time of James I a second bridge alongside
the first. Orders were issued in 1617 and 1621 for "the repair of the
very fair bridge consisting of many goodly arches of freestone,"