In the Bridge Tea Rooms in Bradford on Avon, smiling waitresses in mop caps and frilly aprons serve scones with jam and clotted cream in the cosiest of dining rooms, overspilling with trinkets. Sit down for a cup of tea in this former blacksmith’s cottage, whose bowed and listing walls date from 1502, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’ve slipped back to a bygone age.
In fact, every street of this small stone-built Wiltshire town brims with history. The Saxons drove their carts across the ‘broad ford’ that gave the town its name. In medieval times it was under the control of
