The day that the wall came down.
In an ancient town half built on a hillside, collapsing walls are a hazard – and the fallout can be unexpectedly contentious, as Geoff Andrews recalls.
Until 1971 there were two seats of power in Bradford on Avon, and they were barely a hundred metres apart as the crow flew (no doubt in yards in those days). They co-existed comfortably and co-operatively – almost all the time.
But there were a few weeks in the autumn of 1958 that tested that relationship seriously. It was all my fault, and it was embarrassing for the three people caught up in it.
The two seats of power were Bradford Urban District Council, with its offices in Westbury House, and the Bradford and Melksham Rural District Council, just across the river in Abbey House, Church Street.
The UDC dealt with everything Bradford, essentially the old parishes of Trinity and Christ churches. The RDC area stretched from Hilperton and Monkton Farleigh to Freshford.
The three people were the chairman of the RDC, Mr A R Gifford, to a lesser extent my father W J (Bill) Andrews, a UDC councillor, and me, as the apprentice WiltshireTimes reporter given the job of covering whatever news happened in Bradford (not much).
There are a couple of surveyors in the mix as well, only as walk-on parts, but it was they who started it all.
The contention began with the surveyor of the UDC noticing that the Grade II listed retaining wall of the RDC office, fronting on to Church Street, was bulging, and writing to his opposite number to advise him of this and ask if they had noticed and what they planned to do about it.
It would at this stage be helpful to refer to the files of the Wiltshire Times as an aide memoire because I believe I wrote about it this early in the saga. But the bound volumes for 1958 and 1959 seem to have been lost from the Wiltshire Archives so, short of a visit to the British Library master archive in Lincolnshire, my word is the best you can expect.
The first sign of strain appeared with the RDC surveyor’s reply, to the effect that there was nothing wrong with the wall, that the bulge was imaginary, and that they intended to do nothing.
The wall today
Stalemate.
Two weeks later, on a Tuesday morning, I had been doing my rounds of the town, picking up fag ends of news, and as I was walking along Church Street, I found the road partly blocked by a significant part of the listed wall and many tons of the garden that it had been retaining. It had happened very recently.
My story of the collapse, after the initial exchange of views, was supposed to be satirical and dripping with irony. It is perhaps fortunate that those volumes were lost because it was probably just unfunny and would embarrass me to see it now.
Back then it was getting embarrassing for everyone involved.
Mr Gifford was one of the nicest people I have ever met. He had become a family friend since my father established the Friends of Winsley Chest Hospital in about 1952, having seen the conditions at the hospital – then a TB sanatorium – when taking patients there as an ambulance driver. Mr Gifford was a great supporter, partly because his son had been treated at the hospital. Together they were working with others to raise enough money to build a hall and theatre at the hospital, an effort that won them plaudits from Lord Beveridge and Ian McLeod, then Health Secretary.
The catalyst, I believe was the Clerk of the RDC (what would now be the chief executive) who was deeply affronted by my story. There was no politics in the RDC; there didn’t need to be because everyone was a shade of blue, including the officers (chosen by the Clerk), and herewasthisleftypip-squeakof18pokingfunatthem in the local paper that all their supporters would have read (the Wiltshire Times had nearly saturation sales in the area in those days).
So the councillors ganged up on Mr Gifford, insisting that he should give me a dressing down in public at the next meeting, and, from the sound of it, probably wrote the words he was to say.
At the next meeting of the council the issue of the wall was prominent on the agenda. I had no warning that when they reached that item, as chairman, Mr Gifford said that it had been decided that the Wiltshire Times reporter would take down and print, verbatim, the following statement, which went on to reel off the excuses why they had no reason to doubt the integrity of the wall; that freak rainfall was the real cause, and so on and on. Mr Gifford and I did not make eye contact throughout.
My colleagues on the Bath Chronicle and the Bristol Evening World pointedly put down their pencils, and the meeting ended.
Needless to say the Wiltshire Times did print the statement. I have forgotten whether anything was published to balance their statement. Life went on.
Through my father, Mr Gifford said that he was deeply sorry and embarrassed to have had to read the statement, but explained that he had no choice, as the democratically elected leader of the council, but to reflect their views.
In January, the month my indentures ended, I left Bradford for a job on another local paper, in Stevenage new town - a place where absolutely no-one knew me.
Bliss.
