The Little History of Bristol

Maurice Fells

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780750993357
• eBook ISBN: 9780750995870
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia británica

No one knows for certain when Bristol was founded. What we do know is that for more than 1, 000 years it has been at the centre of national and international history.

From its earliest days Bristol's prosperity was linked to its port, with the importation of wine and tobacco and its involvement with the slave trade. In those days, explorers sailed from Bristol on epic voyages and discovered new lands. In more recent times its economy has been built on creative media and the aerospace industry, including the construction of Concorde, the world's first supersonic aircraft.

From the Avon Gorge's formation, Iron Age settlers and Norman castle construction, to civil war, riots and bus boycotts, The Little History of Bristol is guaranteed to enthral both residents and visitors alike.

1

A ROYAL CITY AND COUNTY

The growth in Bristol’s wealth and its significance as a thriving trading centre has long been underlined by the number of royal visits the city has hosted over the centuries. In the early days one of the principal royal visitors was King John, who was recorded as having made nineteen visits. Most of them would have been to carry out business at the castle. Henry II spent four years here as a boy, under the care of his uncle, Earl Robert of Gloucester, who provided him with a tutor. Later he held a council in Bristol and granted a charter to the burgesses, allowing them to choose a Mayor from among themselves.

Henry III held his first council at Bristol Castle, while Edward I twice spent Christmas here. Records show that there were more than fifty visits made by members of the royal family between 1200 and 1900.

When King Henry VII was in Bristol he imposed a most unusual levy on the city’s menfolk. He ordered everyone who was worth £20 to pay him 20s because ‘their wives were sumptuously apparelled’. The King obtained a total of £500 in levies.

Putting out the Red Carpet

No expense seems to have been spared when Queen Elizabeth I spent a week in Bristol in 1574 on one of her royal progresses around her realm. She was most lavishly and loyally entertained by the city dignitaries. The Queen entered Bristol riding side saddle on a white horse through one of the gateways in the medieval boundary wall. To ensure that she had a smooth ride, the rough roads had been specially covered in sand to provide a level surface. The blue velvet saddle cloth that the Queen used is now in the care of the Society of Merchant Venturers at the Merchants’ Hall in Clifton, where it is kept in a glass case.

Her Majesty was greeted by the Mayor and other civic leaders as well as 400 infantrymen, including 100 pike men in white armour, all wearing new uniforms. A tour of the city started with a visit to the High Cross, where boys from the grammar school recited verses to Her Majesty. The highlight of the week was a mock sea battle between an English ship and a Turkish vessel staged at Trin Mills, now Bathurst Basin. Records describe it as being ‘verie costlie and chargeable, especially in ‘gonne-poudre’. Indeed, some £200 was spent on gunpowder alone for the guns that provided the royal salute. Unfortunately, shortly before Her Majesty arrived a store of gunpowder kept at the Pelican Inn on Victoria Street exploded. Ten men were killed and five others injured, with the pub being destroyed in the explosion.

During her stay, Elizabeth is reputed to have described St Mary Redcliffe church as ‘the fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England’. But strangely no documentary evidence has ever been found – not even a single line in the church records – to support this remark. It seems curious that if the Queen had visited the church no one saw fit to make a note of it for posterity. Arguably, St Mary Redcliffe would not have been looking its architectural best as at the time about a third of its cloud-piercing spire was missing. It had been struck down in a storm in 1446 and was not replaced for another 426 years. When the spire was restored the Mayor, Councillor William Proctor Baker, laid its capstone, which was nearly 300ft above street level. He certainly had a head for heights, being hoisted part of the way up the spire in a makeshift lift consisting of boards, rope and cloth, and then climbing the rest of the way.

Queen Elizabeth and her large entourage of courtiers and maids were hosted by John Young at his Great House, which stood on what is now the site of the city’s largest concert venue, the Colston Hall. John Young, who had laid on a banquet for the Queen, was later ‘thanked’ for his hospitality with a knighthood. But the royal visit still cost Bristol Corporation £1,053 14s 11d. Apart from paying for sand to cover the streets, there was a bill to pay for painting and gilding the High Cross that amounted to £66 13s.

As a souvenir of her visit, the Recorder of Bristol gave the Queen a purse containing £100 in gold.

It seems that mock sea battles were something of a set piece in Bristol’s programme for entertaining royalty. When Anne of Denmark, the Queen of James I, visited Bristol in 1613 she too was entertained with such a spectacle. Afterwards she told the Mayor that she never knew she was Queen until her visit to Bristol.

In more modern times royal visitors carried out public duties. For example, the Prince of Wales opened Knowle Racecourse in 1873. The Prince, who was staying at Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, visited the course on each of the three days of the opening meeting. The race card included steeple chasing and flat racing over a course of a mile and three-quarters. It was estimated that there were more than 200,000 spectators over the three days. No doubt the attendance figures were boosted by the presence of the Prince. In 1891 the Duke of Edinburgh was in Bristol to be granted the Freedom of the City. After receiving the honour, the Duke officially opened a newly completed wing of Bristol General Hospital.

Nearly 400 years after Elizabeth I visited St Mary Redcliffe, Queen Elizabeth II followed in her footsteps in April 1956. The police estimated that 20,000 people had flocked to the church grounds and surrounding streets waiting to see the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, enter and leave the church. The royal couple had been given a private tour of the parish church, which with all its grace and spaciousness is often mistaken by visitors for a cathedral. The church visit was the first of several engagements the Queen had in Bristol that day. It was her first official visit to the city since being crowned three years earlier.

After leaving the church, the Queen officially opened the city council’s new administrative headquarters on College Green. It replaced a Georgian building on Corn Street, which for 125 years had served the needs of the council staff.

In her speech to civic dignitaries, council members and staff at the opening ceremony, the Queen acknowledged Bristol’s long history, which she said was linked with the River Avon. ‘For centuries men of Bristol have sailed down the river to voyages of discovery and in the pursuit of trade upon which your fortunes have been founded. Bristol has flourished by the enterprise of merchants and the skill and craftsmanship displayed through the materials they had brought back.’

In 1995, Elizabeth II returned to St Mary Redcliffe church, this time to attend a service for charity workers. As she signed the visitors’ book, Her Majesty was asked by the Rev. Tony Whatmough if she remembered her first visit. The Queen replied that St Mary Redcliffe was not the kind of church that you forgot once you had visited it.

A Royal Round-Up

Royal Charters are generally granted by the monarch on advice from the Privy Council to establish significant organisations such as municipal boroughs, universities and schools. Over the years the monarchy has granted more than a thousand charters. Bristol has probably had more than its fair share of these.

One of the earliest charters granted to Bristol was given by Henry II in 1171. The charter granted the men of Bristol the right to live in the city of Dublin ‘ad inhabitanda’. It was a reward for the part the wealthy merchants had played in the invasion of Ireland.

In the charter the King stipulates that Bristolians can live in Dublin ‘with all the liberties and free customs which the men of Bristol have at Bristol and throughout all my land’.

The charter, which measures 5in by 6½in, is on parchment with a fragment of the seal remaining in green wax. It is written right through, leaving no room for additions: a measure taken in those days to prevent fraud. This charter is the oldest document in the Dublin City Library and Archives and is kept in a purpose-made case in the strongroom.

It is also thought to be the earliest law to confer the rights of people in either Britain or Ireland to live in each other’s countries. It is a law that has never been repealed.

One of the earliest-known church schools was attached to St Mary Redcliffe church. In 1571 church officials paid £65 7s 9d for Letters Patent from Queen Elizabeth I to set up a free Grammar and Literature School in the parish. It began teaching children in the Chantry Chapel then standing in the south churchyard. The school moved in 1762 into the church’s Lady Chapel. From these humble beginnings the school has evolved through various incarnations into the present St Mary Redcliffe and Temple Church of England School, built in Somerset Square behind the church in 1967.

A charter granted to Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital (QEH) by Elizabeth I in 1590 comes out of the safe each March to go on show as part of the school’s Charter Day celebrations. Written in Latin, the charter states that the school ‘shall be everlasting’ and always be named after the Queen. One of the school’s benefactors was John Carr, who became a wealthy man by making soap at his factories in Bristol and London. He left instructions that the school should be modelled on Christ’s Hospital, London, which was set up for fatherless children and for those from poor homes.

Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital opened with just twelve boys but as the number of pupils grew it eventually moved from the centre of the city to its present site on Brandon Hill Park. For many years the boarders wore traditional dress of long gown, yellow stockings and buckle shoes.

Peaches Golding belongs to one of the most exclusive clubs in the land. There are only ninety-eight members and all have the title of Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant. It is an office steeped in history and tradition, having been created in 1546 by King Henry VIII to take over the military duties of the sheriff.

As the present Lord Lieutenant for Bristol, Peaches Golding is no longer tasked with the training of local men to lead against domestic insurrection and foreign invaders. But as the Queen’s representative for the County of Bristol she carries out a range of civic duties on behalf of the Queen.

Peaches Golding is a native of South Carolina, but has lived in Bristol for thirty-five years. She is believed to be the first black woman to have been appointed a Lord Lieutenant in England and was appointed by the Queen in 2017.

2

EARLIER TIMES

Most historians agree that Bristol’s history goes back a thousand years or so. Beyond that little seems to have been recorded in any kind of documentary form. However, we do know that the Saxons, Romans and Iron Age man trod the soil that is now part of the area often referred to as Greater Bristol. Most of the knowledge that we do have of those people comes mainly from archaeological excavations. There is evidence, for example, of settlements going back to the Palaeolithic era with 60,000-year-old archaeological finds at what are now the suburbs of Shirehampton and St Anne’s. Stone tools made from flint, stone and quartzite have been found in terraces of the River Avon especially around Shirehampton.

Myths and Legends of Old Bristol

The vacuum of documentary information from times past has probably led to the creation of the many myths and legends about the foundation of Bristol. One legend credits two mythical Roman soldiers, Brennus and Belinus, with being its founders. They are said to have led an army to sack Rome in 391 BC before founding Bristol.

St John’s Arch with the statues of Brennus and Belinus

Indeed, such was the belief in this story that in the fourteenth century stone statues of the couple were installed on either side of St John’s Gateway in Broad Street, one of the portcullised archways that led through the city wall in the Middle Ages. Astride the arch sits the church of St John the Baptist, which once stood on the quayside of the River Frome, now culverted underneath the roads of the city centre.

The weather-beaten statues which are tucked into niches of the gateway still look down on passing pedestrians and traffic as they have done for more than 700 years. No one knows who carved the statues or who placed them there or when. Brennus is supposed to have brought wealth to the city and helped it grow. He and Belinus were said to have reigned as Kings of Britain. However, there is no evidence to suggest that either of these people existed. Sceptics of this tale point out that the seated statues of Brennus and Belinus depict them carrying crucifixes, though the brothers are supposed to have lived long before Christ.

A rather romantic tale about the creation of the Avon Gorge, one of Bristol’s most spectacular tourist attractions, has been handed down from generation to generation. It features another pair of supposed brothers, Goram and Vincent, who were giants living on Clifton Down. They are both said to have fallen in love with Avona, a girl from Wiltshire. She is supposed to have instructed them to drain a lake that stretched from Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire to Bristol.

Goram is said to have started work on this mammoth task by digging a brook on the nearby Blaise Castle estate. Legend has it that he consumed too much beer and fell asleep. Meanwhile, Vincent dug the Avon Gorge and drained the lake, thereby winning the affection of Avona. Upon waking, Goram is said to have stamped his foot and thrown himself into the Bristol Channel. It is said that he turned into stone and left his head and shoulders above water as the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm, which lie between Weston-super-Mare and Cardiff. His body is now Brean Down, a promontory of the coast of Somerset.

One of many versions of this myth has it that the brothers were working together cutting through the carboniferous limestone of the Avon Gorge sharing just one pick and shovel, when Goram fell asleep. On waking he was accidentally killed by his brother’s pickaxe. Apparently, Vincent did his share of the work in the morning and, when he finished his stint, threw the tools to his brother when the accident happened. Vincent is commemorated by St Vincent’s Rocks in the Avon Gorge. The story goes that the Avon Gorge was named after Avona.

The reality of the creation of the Avon Gorge is less fanciful than any legend. It was probably formed during the last Ice Age, which ended 10,000 years ago, by the River Avon carving its way through the limestone. The river flows from Bristol to the Severn Estuary through the Avon Gorge, a distance of about 7 miles. The gorge itself though is only 1½ miles long. Today it forms the boundaries of the unitary authorities of North Somerset and Bristol, with the boundary line running along the south bank.

Legend has it that the garden of an early Georgian Manor House was the setting for a deadly duel involving two men competing for the hand in marriage of a beautiful young woman.

The woman, who lived at Bishopsworth Manor House, was courted on a daily basis by her two suitors. However, she rejected the offer of both men and never left her home. However, the men could see her through the wrought iron garden gates as she strolled amongst the rose bushes.

Eventually she succumbed to the advances of one of her admirers and welcomed him into her home. He is said to have left his horse and spurs at the garden gate where they were seen by his rival, who then challenged him to a duel. This was a fight with swords that resulted in one of the men dying from a neck wound and the other being found lying on the terrace bleeding to death. It is said that the lady in question never married.

Bishopsworth Manor

Bishopsworth ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• 1 A Royal City and County
• 2 Earlier Times
• 3 From the Saxons to the Normans
• 4 Creating a City and County
• 5 Shipshape and Bristol Fashion
• 6 Events from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries
• 7 Springs and Spas
• 8 A Triangular Trade
• 9 The Victorian Years
• 10 A Time for Celebration
• 11 Bristol Signs Up
• 12 Post-War Bristol
• 13 A Town in the West
• 14 The 1960s to the 1990s
• 15 Moving into the Twenty-First Century
• Selected Bibliography