There is another fine bridge at St.
Neots with a watch-tower in the centre.
The little town of Bradford-on-Avon has managed to preserve almost
more than any other place in England the old features which are fast
vanishing elsewhere. We have already seen that most interesting
untouched specimen of Saxon architecture the little Saxon church,
which we should like to think is the actual church built by St.
Aldhelm, but we are compelled to believe on the authority of experts
that it is not earlier than the tenth century. In all probability a
church was built by St. Aldhelm at Bradford, probably of wood, and was
afterwards rebuilt in stone when the land had rest and the raids of
the Danes had ceased, and King Canute ruled and encouraged the
building of churches, and Bishops Dunstan and AEthelwold of Winchester
were specially prominent in the work. Bradford, too, has its noble
church, parts of which date back to Norman times; its famous
fourteenth-century barn at Barton Farm, which has a fifteenth-century
porch and gatehouse; many fine examples of the humbler specimens of
domestic architecture; and the very interesting Kingston House of the
seventeenth century, built by one of the rich clothiers of Bradford,
when the little town (like Abingdon) "stondeth by clothing," and all
the houses in the place were figuratively "built upon wool-packs.
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