The background of Claverton Down, Combe Down and Beechen Cliff was created in prehistoric times when deposits of oolitic limestone were lifted up by continental shifts. These deposits, known as Bath stone, were used by the Romans in the first four centuries AD and by generations ever since.
Ancient British settlement is indicated by the names of the two parishes of Widcombe and Lyncombe which derive from the old Celtic words for ‘valley’ and ‘water’. Widcombe is the Wide Valley (or perhaps Withy Valley) and Lyncombe is the Vale of the Lynbrook – or Watery Bottom as it is known locally.
There is some evidence of Roman activity, but little remains of old Lyncombe. A few Anglo-Saxon names are recorded from the 11th century and there is said to have been a Saxon chapel in Church St before 1066. This was rebuilt and dedicated to St Thomas à Becket at the end of the 12th Century. It was rebuilt again in the late 1490s and is one of Bath’s oldest churches. St Mary Magdalen in Holloway, with its famous Judas tree, is another.
The site of a medieval manor has been identified in Lyncombe Vale, but probably the oldest inhabited part of Widcombe is Church St, where 11/12 has remains from 1560 and Widcombe Manor (formerly Widcombe House) is partly 18th century with earlier origins. Horace Vachell, a one time owner, celebrated it in 1937 as ‘The Golden House’ in one of his many novels.
The street continues as Church Lane, the old mule track going south and to what was the Prior of Bath Abbey’s deer park. In the 1720s when Bath was becoming fashionable, the park and the nearby stone quarries were being acquired by the local postmaster and benefactor, Ralph Allen. Prior Park, his Georgian mansion was designed by John Wood the Elder ‘to see all Bath…and for all Bath to see…’
Since 1829 the mansion has been a Roman Catholic school. In its Grade 1 listed landscape garden, owned by the National Trust and open to the public, there is a Palladian bridge from 1755 – one of only four of this design in the world.
More information: from 18th - 20th Century; famous residents; local history pamphlets
