Formerly, the village was more closely associated with the River Avon than today, and it was not until the two were separated by the Great Western Railway viaduct in the mid-19th century that Twerton began to lose its alternative name of ‘Twiverton’. According to Eckwall, these names are derivations from the Old English ‘Two-ford-town’ (as in Tiverton in Devon), an interpretation supported by recent archaeological research. Not only is it now thought that the so-called ‘Jurassic Way’, a prehistoric route which ran along the edge of the Cotswolds, crossed the River Avon into Twerton, but that the eastern boundary of the parish itself may well have originated as a branch of the Roman Fosse Way. (The postal address, ‘Twerton-on-Avon’, which came into use about 1876, is thought to have been introduced to avoid confusion with Tiverton.)
The Bristol road through Twerton, taken from the Bath Turnpike Trust map of 1786 by C. Harcourt Masters.
In Saxon times Twerton/Twiverton consisted of two manors (presumably giving rise to the ‘dual’ title), both of which can be traced as land estates from the Domesday survey through to the early 19th century. Although these manors were superseded by a single unified parish during the Middle Ages, the physical division of the village into two core areas was still apparent until recent times. The smaller of these estates was centred around its Farm at the western end of the village (here referred to as the ‘western farm’) in the region of the church and the ‘lower’ (downstream) corn mill by the river. The larger, eastern, manor was centred at the other end of the High Street, around its own (‘eastern’) Farm overlooking the ‘upper’ mill. Together, their lands covered a wide area extending in a rough triangle from the Victoria Bridge on the Avon up to the Burnt House on Odd Down and back to the river following the Patley and Newton Brooks. However, the lords of manor were never resident here, a factor which no doubt accelerated the process of enclosure and the disappearance of manorial tenure that was already well advanced throughout this region by the end of the 17th century.
Twerton village in 1807, taken from the map of the parish by Jeremiah Cruse.
Although there was no administrative connection between Bath and Twerton until the 20th century (Twerton belonged in the County Hundred of Wellow), the growth of the Georgian City in the early 18th century had a substantial economic influence on the parish. In 1707 the main Bristol road came under the jurisdiction of the newly authorised Bath Turnpike Trust, and in 1727 the river was made navigable between Bristol and Bath by the Avon Navigation Company. The village mills, which had already been employed in the 16th century for fulling cloth manufactured at Bath, now found new wealth in the manufacture of fine fabrics and ‘fancy goods’ (at the upper mill), writing paper and dressed leather (at the lower mill), or (on the opposite side of the river) brass products for the Bristol trade. The land itself also became valuable, and by the end of the century, Twerton came to be the subject of much property speculation from local developers and the new city banks. This however did not result, as elsewhere, in the construction of set-piece Georgian housing (except perhaps, Charlton Buildings on the Lower Bristol Road), but rather in the development of further service industries for the city. A group of large malthouses made their appearance on the edge of the village, and considerable investment (and bankruptcy) was undertaken in cloth production, involving important technical innovations and new factory methods. Nevertheless, although at the forefront of the industrial revolution, Twerton was still regarded as an essentially rural and picturesque village. A favourite recreation for visitors to Bath like Jane Austen (who took a ‘very pleasant’ walk to Twerton in April 1805) was to take an airing along the riverside meadows to view the curious machinery in operation at the mills.
The outlines shown on the 1807 parish map, superimposed onto modern detail.
Of greater significance for the village in the future was the proposal in the 1790s for an extension of the Kennet & Avon Canal to Bristol which would have passed through the parish at high level. Initially there was vigorous opposition in the region to this scheme, but in 1809 a new low-level route (to link up with the recently completed Bristol Floating Harbour) was planned, which would have run through the village between the river and the High Street. Although this plan received Royal Assent in 1811 and land in the village was purchased for the purpose, the need for a canal immediately disappeared in the following year when a proper towpath was started building along the river by the Avon Navigation Company. However, the land in Twerton (mostly around the Lower Mill) was retained, later to be sold to the Great Western Railway Company who built the present viaduct along its course instead.
Extract from the K&A deposited plan of 1810, showing the line of the proposed canal extension to Bristol running between Twerton High Street and the river Avon.
By the time the railway was built in 1840 however, there had been a dramatic expansion of all the mills (on both sides of the river) into large-scale cloth factories, together with the resulting growth in the village population and new housing. A key figure in this was the cloth manufacturer, Charles Wilkins, who by this time had not only gained a monopoly of the all the factories, but had also become the principal landowner in the village. Although the eastern manorial estate had already started to break up in the 17th century, it was not until 1833 that an Act of Parliament authorised the sale of the entailed western estate, most of which was purchased by Wilkins. Both Wilkins and the then Rector of Twerton were prominent members of the Bath & West Society with as much interest in the modernisation of agriculture as in industry. Wilkins himself built a fine mansion house by Twerton Wood (Wood House), and removed the western farm to a more convenient site nearby, leaving space for the enlargement of the churchyard. Beyond the village, he also sank a coalmine (closed in 1874) and opened up a large limestone quarry and limeworks nearby which remained in existence up to WWII. As a leader of the community (he was Captain of the Bath Militia) he also promoted improvements in public works, such as the parish roads, the church, and other social amenities. In 1847 the entire Wilkins estate, including most of the factories, was purchased the Carr family who continued to run village affairs with very little change for the next hundred years.
Extract from Brunel’s deposited plan of 1833 showing the line of the proposed Great Western Railway through Twerton village.
However, land on the eastern boundary of Twerton (roughly, the present ‘Oldfield Park’ area) was also being developed into an ‘overspill’ area for Bath, consisting mainly in the construction of mass by-law housing (not to mention the new city gaol), a process accelerated by the construction of the Somerset and Dorset Railway through the area in 1874. This was accompanied by various ‘unwanted’ service industries which by the 20th century included a tannery, the city scavenger’s (refuse) yard, gas holders for the gasworks, and the city sewage pumping station. More respectable industries followed, such as the Pitman print-works and the Bath cabinet making firms.
Twerton village in 1840, copied from the parish tithe map.
In 1911 the parish itself was eventually incorporated into the city, and after WWI housing development, including Council house estates, continued to expand into the southern part of the parish. During WWII a number of houses in and around the High Street were destroyed by bombing (usually from random attacks on the railway line during the Bristol raids), but most of the damage during the Bath ‘blitz’ of 1942 was restricted to the eastern end of the parish. However, by the end of WWII, the village itself was ripe for development, following the sale in 1951 of the Carr estate to the city council and the imminent closure and demolition of the cloth mills. This enabled new post-war ‘model’ council house estates to be built on the remaining open land around the village as far as the western boundary of the parish. As elsewhere in Bath, most of the historic buildings in the village disappeared from this time onward, although remnants of agricultural land still remain above the village (used for the community farm) and at the western end of Twerton Wood.
