The old warehouse at Bowbridge wharf is revealed

I re-surfaced slowly today to face up to desk work and sorting through the building projects I am involved with. When I went to the shops to get a few special supplies for Woodpeckers Tuscan bean soup, which I can now smell cooking, I detoured to Bowbridge. The bridge is now rather hidden, as the modern roads since the 17th century have been constructed over the old bowed single track bridge which originally crossed the river allowing access up the old road to Michinhampton via the commons above.

Today, the area's industrial past is virtually gone, except for an old mill building above the bridge and sitting beside the river Frome. In former centuries there was thriving industrial zone hereabouts, associated with the water power derived from the river and then the transport facility provided by the building of the canal soon after 1790. The railway came in the 1840s and lead to the demise of the canal's role and by the twentieth century the canal was virtually dead as a transport system. Buildings built for the canal became obsolete unless they could be used for other industrial uses.

The railway lies only about thirty yards on the far side of this building, behind an artificial embankment constructed for the modern era of motor vehicles. This old warehouse has ben getting progressively derelict ever since this elongated site between the embanked road and the canal and river was bought for housing development probably twenty years ago, When the developers started to prepare the ground the embankment started to slip and the development halted, until now.

The warehouse and all the land around it had reverted to scrubland with large trees growing up and even through the walls and roof of the building, which you can still see here. The surrounding ground has been cleared and the trees felled and very soon the houses will come. All the scrub and ivy and other plants growing on the building have been cleared leaving just this old rather odd jaded structure to face the future. I don't know what will happen to it, but i assume it was listed and the developers failed to let it fall down. Watch this space and I will record what happens.