Rode in the Industrial Age

Abstract

This compact A5-sized guide is ostensibly for the industrial archaeologist but should also prove useful to local historians and interested members of a small Somerset parish. It packs in information about Rode, which is right on the border with Wiltshire and is often overlooked since it is avoided by today’s main roads. The first section introduces the parish, parts of which were once in Wiltshire. Rode lies between the two larger textiles towns of Frome and Trowbridge, and saw major changes in 1790–1820, after which decline set in. It is bounded on the west by the River Frome which supported at least five water-powered sites, notably fulling, weaving and dyeworks for the woollen industry. The main body of the book provides a guided circular tour by roads and footpaths, pausing along the way to describe the sites of interest. It is a delight to find the attractive village centre is dominated by the Cross Keys Brewery of the Fussell family which once employed 200 but ceased in 1962. Brewhouses, with two chimneys, and a boiler house survive, now converted to accommodation. Nearby, the Corner House is the former pump room for Rode’s medicinal waters of the early 1700s, when it was even advertised in the more famous Bath. Tucked in beside the brewery is the Methodist church of 1809. Clothiers’ houses include Southfield House of Jonathan Noad who owned two textile mills. At Townsend a factory or workshop is recognisable, now residential. Beyond the village and just outside the parish is Shawford Mill (no public access), a woollen mill and dyeworks once run by Noad, whose other mill was at Rockabella. Here are also the Black Dock Turnpike Trust’s four-arched Shawford Bridge and a tollhouse, with a nearby WWII pill-box. The walk passes the site of Scutts Bridge Mill, another water-powered woollen mill which an old photograph shows to have been quite substantial. Local tradition has it that the Royal Blue colour was developed here. Scutts Bridge, approached by holloways, appears to be a widened packhorse bridge. The Rockabella Mill and house survive as overgrown ruins, but at Rode Bridge is Rode Mill, a good survivor of a water-powered woollen mill, now converted to a pub and restaurant. The road over the bridge climbs Rode Hill, the line of a turnpike, where there is a cast-iron milepost opposite the Anglican Christ Church of 1824, ‘an amazing exercise in spiky Gothic’. Further stops include the site of a brickworks and Church Row, on the edge of the parish. Good use is made of selected extracts from historic Tithe and Ordnance Survey maps showing the layout of those sites where much has changed or vanished. The pocket guide format enables these to be referred to on the spot. This handy book is fully illustrated in colour, with good references and an index, and is a model for future publications of this type.