Wider Parish 1920s and 30s All photos and postcards courtesy John Brooke Flashman July 2025
One of the oldest and most recognised parts of Box, the Market Place in 1950s but the signs are different to now. The Fish and Chip shop occupied the site of the present parish council offices, Dunlop Store advertised Ossie Butt's cycle shop, and the fireworks and hardware store was run by Mrs Tranter at Frogmore House, the Market Place.
One of the most alluring features of Box is also its oldest, the valley in which the settlement nestles. Surrounded by hills, the viallge is concentrated along the valley bottom and stretching the line of residences along a road running parrallel to the Box By Brook.
Above, the original cemetery bottom left pictured before the new lancet-shaped cemetery opened. Also visible are Middlehill Tunnel, Box Church, and in the foreground the fields up to Quarry Hill.
The hillsides around Box Valley offer some of the most remarkable views of the village and glimpses of its most memorable buildings including Box Tunnal. Above, the village seen from Kingsdown.
Visitors to Box from Bath and the west come across the centre of the settlement suddenly and dramatically with the prominent War Memorial, sited to give maximum impact to travellers. Above the memorial pictured after the Second World War but before traffic lights were installed outside Ther Hermitage.
|
Individual Properties We often assume that attractive buildings have always been used for the same purpose, often private residences. But the story of individual buildings is often more interesting and varied than details of their occupants. Seen right is Coleridge House, which has been used as a shop premises much longer than a private residence. The property dates from the late 1700s and is reputed to have been named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who stayed there about 1814 when it was a grocer's shop storing gunpowder below his lodgings. It was still in use as a grocer's when the Bence family moved into the area in 1894 and ran it as a shop whilst building a new store on the corner of the Markey Place opposite the Chequers pub. By the 1920s it was operated as a chemist shop by John Brooke's son Douglas until his tragic death in a motor-cycle accident in 1930. |
Coleridge House was once a pharmacy run by Douglas Brooke.
|
Above: Some properties, such as the council houses in The Ley, seem unexceptional to us today but were startlingly new when they were built in 1938, a decade after John Brooke moved to central Box in 1926. They offered bath rooms, indoor toilets and back boilers in the fireplace to heat water. All this and electric lights were superior to the facilities in most Box houses.
Below: The Dirty Arch and Quarry Hill seem little changed but there are differences. The Arch has undergone more sunstantial repair work to support the stone structure. Quarry Hill can be seen with a black chimney used for rubber manufacturing.
Below: The Dirty Arch and Quarry Hill seem little changed but there are differences. The Arch has undergone more sunstantial repair work to support the stone structure. Quarry Hill can be seen with a black chimney used for rubber manufacturing.
|
|
Access by Foot
|
|
In the absence of private motor cars in the 1920s and 30s, pedestrian access was easier and the most common form of local movement. Residents dressed appropriately with stout shoes and socks to enjoy village walks and to walking along unmade roads and tracks.
Although many tracks have been restored and made tame and rather subdued, we still have walks along the By Brook to enjoy. Seen here in the 1930s, we can still see sluice gates between fields and the embankment to retain water for the meadows which encouraged the growth of water reeds, sedges and rushes.
|
Fashion Changes Men in walking gear has been little changed over the last century but this is not true of women's outdoor clothes, particularly respectable Methodist ladies like Virgina Brooke with heavy foot-length dresses, bodices, underskirts and neck-length tops. |
