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‘Bideford Legends’ – 5.
Providence House and Pimlico Place, Bideford. Providence House. Peter Christie, then Mayor of Bideford, unveils the commemorative plaque. __________________________________________________
Good news for Bideford Town Band.
Bideford Town Band Qualifies for the 2025 National Brass Band Championships! The band is pictured after the awards ceremony at Torquay’s Riviera Centre on Saturday 8th March. In 2022 the band put Bideford on the National brass banding map by … Continue reading
“LaunchBideford” project.
Torridge District Council has teamed up with SaveTheHighStreet.org and Bideford Town Council to launch an exciting competition designed to reward and elevate new or expanding entrepreneurs. The project, known as LaunchBideford, is offering at least two businesses the chance to … Continue reading
Posted in Local Business, Local People
Tagged Bideford, LaunchBideford, regeneration, Torridge District Council
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One Hundred Years Ago – March 1925.
A collection of articles from the ‘Bideford Gazette’ during March 1925, kindly selected by Bideford Community Archive. The coasts all round Devon and Cornwall suffered badly by the gales. Roads at Weare Gifford were impassable to wheeled traffic for a … Continue reading
One Hundred Years ago – February 1925.
A collection of articles from the ‘Bideford Gazette’ during February 1925, kindly selected by Bideford Community Archive. Births – at King’s Arms, The Quay, Bideford, to Mr and Mrs Manning, a son; to Mr and Mrs R H Morrow, a … Continue reading
Posted in History, Local People
Tagged Bideford, Bideford community archive, Bideford Gazette, One Humdred Years ago
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“Bideford Legends” – 3.
The Hamlyn property. A fine listed building once the property of the Hamlyn family, who were noted decorators of the time. (Interior photos courtesy of Rightmove). * * * * * * The railway shed in Kingsley Road. Another … Continue reading
Posted in Environment, History
Tagged Bideford, Bideford and Westward Ho! railway, Bideford Legends
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The ‘Way of the Wharves’ project.
‘Way of the Wharves’. The Torridge Estuary and Bideford have a long and fascinating maritime history with boat building documented back to Elizabethan times. On the east bank of the Torridge, opposite Bideford town, East-the-Water was an industrial and transport … Continue reading
Posted in Books, History, Local People
Tagged Bideford, East the Water, river Torridge, Way of the Wharves
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The “Freshspring” project.
Steamship ‘Freshspring’ celebrates four years in Bideford. During the Second World War, a fleet of freshwater-carrying steam ships was commissioned by the Royal Navy to deliver water to warships. These became the ‘Fresh’ class of ships and the last one … Continue reading
Posted in History, Local People, Shipping
Tagged Bideford, maritime history, SS Freshspring, volunteers
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Clothes for a heat wave?
Fashions change constantly – especially for women. In early Victorian England fashionable women were wearing yards of usually black cloth with their bodies crushed inside spring steel and whalebone corsets. This particular combination severely constrained their movement, and clearly without … Continue reading
Bideford’s Nat West Bank.
An iconic building in Bideford, Nat West Bank (formerly National Provincial) closed on 29th May 2018. Peter Christie looks back on its history, and Gerald Waldron remembers his time as a bank employee. End of an era. The closure of … Continue reading
Posted in History, Local People
Tagged Bideford, Nat West Bank Bideford, National Provincial Bank
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Bideford Art School: a brief history.
Bideford Art School (now Bideford Arts Centre), a listed building on the Pill, has an interesting history. It started life in 1896 as a technical college, a result of ‘self help’ Victorian values. Our photo above shows the plaque on … Continue reading
Posted in History, Local People
Tagged Bideford, Bideford Art School, Bideford Arts Centre, Harry Juniper, John Butller
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Freezing.
In this age of man-made global warming it is unlikely that we will see a repetition of what occurred in Bideford in 1894-5 and 1963. Simply put, this was the freezing over of the River Torridge around the Bridge. Both … Continue reading
Bideford’s ‘prefabs’.
During the Second World War huge numbers of houses were destroyed by enemy action, and as early as 1944 Winston Churchill announced an EFM (Emergency Factory Made) housing programme. In 1945 the new prime minister Clement Atlee began implementing the … Continue reading
Posted in History
Tagged Bideford, Bowden Green, EFM housing, Grenville estate, Peter Christie, Prefabs
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Rope Walk – “The Battle of the Posts”.
Rope Walk today is a narrow but well used roadway running parallel to the Pill. Its name obviously records the presence of the ropemaking industry which was once so important to the ship-owning merchants of Bideford – but how many … Continue reading
All the fun of the Fair!
Fairs have been visiting Bideford for one hundred and fifty years at least and even though today they face huge competition from computer games and local attractions the travelling show people still come. The history of the fair in Bideford … Continue reading