IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Leslie Rise, BRADFORD-ON-AVON, BA15 2BW

A few minutes before sunrise on a very cold morning.

The Post Office and stores in Bobbin Lane. Village Stores

The village has had a hall here for community use for around a century.

A little sun-faded but still a priority box. This and others in the village have a personalised message from the grateful populace: 'Thank you for keeping us connected'.

A small village is Westwood, no need for a large supermarket.

A children's play area is currently 'verboten' during the third lockdown.

This old Bath stone quarry has enjoyed a multitude of other uses from pre-war mushroom farming to a WW2 depository for British Museum art treasures. Part of the quarry was converted into a shadow factory for the manufacture of gun sights by Royal Enfield who remained after the war to manufacture motor cycles until the early 1970's. During 1950/1 scientists from Porton Down carried out the biological warfare "Westwood Trials", spraying aerosols containing live pathogens into the space occupied by the art depository. Allegedly workers in the Royal Enfield factory were unwittingly exposed to the materials. Source: http://www.nr23.net/govt/spray.htm The quarry was still in use as an engineering workshop until the 1990's. Stone is still occasionally extracted but the former secure areas are now used for document storage. The brick pillar in the picture has since collapsed. Access is not possible.

Tether your reindeer to the post provided.

The building to the right is the former Particular Baptist chapel, dating back to the nineteenth century. Local friends met in various houses in the early 1800s, before sufficient money was raised to found this in 1865. Further on to the left is the hall and former Sunday school. The church and education were closely combined initially: a Sunday class was established in the chapel in 1871, but when the opportunity arose the new hall and school was built in 1885. Later, the school welcomed infants on a more regular basis but was succeeded after WWII. The chapel was sold off and later became a studio in 1978.

Hardly anyone visits Westwood except when passing through trying to find Avoncliff. But it is an attractive stone village with many newer buildings, like the one on the right, blending in with the older parts.