The A-Z of Curious Bristol E-Book

Maurice Fells

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 196

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Bristol's history is packed with peculiar customs and curious characters. This book explains why the vicar in one church goes on an annual trek to peer down a manhole; why captains of industry sing an eighteen-verse song in memory of Queen Elizabeth I; and how the Flower of Bristol got its name. You will meet some unusual contraptions, like the bed with in-built exercise equipment, or the thrashing machine for naughty boys. You will also discover why a public clock still runs to Bristol time. This compendium of the weird and wonderful will surprise even those Bristolians who thought they really knew their city.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title

Introduction

Acknowledgements

The A–Z of Curious Bristol

Copyright

Introduction

Strange and fascinating stories abound in Bristol. Perhaps that’s not so unusual with a city that has a rich and colourful history stretching back 1,000 years. It is a city of famous churches, famous inns and hidden treasures. There are also quirky customs, archaic practices and ceremonies with origins that baffle not only newcomers to the city but even seasoned Bristolians.

Stroll the city’s streets and you may well meet the vicar who once a year goes on a trek to peer down manholes or the girls in red who hold up the city traffic as they pay tribute to a benefactor who survived an attack on his life.

In this book there are also stories from the city’s lesser-known history. You can discover why rubble from buildings bombed during the Bristol Blitz was shipped to New York and why a public clock still tells Bristol Time long after Greenwich Mean Time came into common usage.

Then there are the curious and extraordinary characters like the woman who tricked people into believing that she was a princess from an exotic Eastern island, the teacher who invented a thrashing machine to punish errant schoolboys, the ‘demon barber’ who went over the Niagara Falls in a custom-made beer barrel and the man who joined a tiger in his cage as part of a sales gimmick. Needless to say, neither of the latter lived to tell the tale.

But it’s not just human beings who walk through the pages of this book. There’s also a Jack Russell terrier that became a worldwide landmark. And then there’s the cat who sat next to the church organist during services. You just couldn’t make up stories like these, could you?

Maurice Fells, 2014

Acknowledgements

Much of the information for this book has been collected by me over a number of years as a broadcast and print journalist with a passion for the colourful history of my native city. Old newspaper cuttings and press releases that I have kept have been put to good use in the pages of this book.

But there have been forays into the archives of Bristol Reference Library and Bristol Records Office. I am grateful to the staff of both organisations for the remarkable tolerance and patience they have showed in dealing with my numerous enquiries.

Thanks are due also to Mildred and Francis Ford for the use of postcards from their private collection. Grateful thanks are extended to Declan Flynn of The History Press for his support and guidance.

Last, but definitely not least, I express sincere thanks to Janet and Trevor Naylor, who spent much time strolling around the streets of Bristol to capture the many photographic shots that enhance the quality of this book. I owe a big debt of gratitude to Janet for her encouragement and enthusiasm, which pushed me to complete this book.

ALE CONNORS’ TASTY TASK

In the sixteenth century the council employed two people to do a job that many a beer-lover would envy today. The work of the Ale Connors, as they were officially titled, involved visiting the growing number of breweries in the town.

Their task was to taste the ale that was being brewed to make sure it was wholesome for sale. For this they were paid £213s a year. The Ale Connors were required to tell the council about any ‘knavish brewers’ so that action could be taken against them.

It is not known for certain when brewing started in the town. However, one of the earliest breweries was owned by Sir John Hawkins, Mayor of Bristol, in 1701. The following year he brewed a celebration ale to mark the visit of Queen Anne to the city.

The best known of the breweries was Georges & Co., founded in the 1770s. When the firm decided to become a public company a century later, it caused much excitement in the city. The directors, issuing the prospectus for Bristol Brewery, Georges & Co., intended to keep the subscription list open for a week. But to their astonishment the £400,000 they asked for was oversubscribed on the first day. Within hours the public had offered a staggering £6,300,000.

The brewing industry had gained such a reputation by 1793 that an entry in Matthews’ Bristol Directory stated that ‘the breweries are numerous and extensive, and their malt liquors are cheaper, finer and better here than in most other towns’. The writer went on say that ‘good ale is universally sold for three pence a quart and Burton, a strong beer, for four pence. There is a large porter-brewery in Bath Street which succeeds well in rivalling London porter and meets with great encouragement.’

Eighty years later the directory listed more than two dozen breweries, supplying 1,008 ‘public houses and beer houses’. The list started with the Adam & Eve on Hope Chapel Hill, Hotwells, which was first registered in 1775, although it was probably dispensing ale long before that. The pub is still trading today and, unlike many others, it seems that it has never changed its name.

In a passageway leading off Corn Street is the only inn remaining from the fourteen that the city fathers authorised in 1606. However, the history of The Rummer goes back much further. An inn has stood on the same site in All Saints Lane since 1241 when it went by the name of the Greene Lattis, after the lattice work that decorated its exterior.

Alcohol was not only available in pubs, alehouses, taverns, or call them what you will. In the seventeenth century the gaoler at Newgate Prison – the Galleries shopping centre now stands on the site – was ordered by the city fathers to keep a stock of beer on the premises for the consumption of prisoners and their visitors. Any inmate who got drunk was fined £2.

A local paper reported that an ‘expert tapster’ was wanted by the prison. He would be under the ‘protection of The Keeper from all harms and insults’. The prison’s tap house was said to be profitable as prisoners and their visitors were allowed to drink as much as they could pay for. It was said that before an execution the prison was crowded with ‘bibulous sympathisers’.

ARSONIST WHO TRIED TO BURN BRISTOL DOWN

The man who was wandering around the centre of Bristol late on a cold winter’s night in 1777 had the most bizarre and improbable scheme on his mind. James Hill was intent on burning down the town, starting with the docks.

Hill, who had been a highwayman complete with pistols and mask before arriving in Bristol, started to put his plan into action at midnight. He began by spreading turpentine, resin and pitch on the ship Savannah la Mar which was being loaded for a journey to Jamaica. The vessel caught alight fairly quickly and Hill then set fire to La Fame and Hibernia, which were berthed nearby.

The next morning Hill, also known as James Hind, James Aitken but more commonly as Jack the Painter, had the gall to mingle with people looking at the destruction and damage he had caused. The Savannah was badly burnt but the fires on the other two ships were spotted quickly and put out.

Hill, who was 25 years old, was back at the quayside again that night, trying to set alight barrels of oil, but this time his attempts at arson fizzled out. He then turned his attention to destroying warehouses near his lodgings in The Pithay. Being of timber construction, the buildings quickly caught alight. In one night, six premises in Bell Lane were destroyed.

A big search for Hill, who had quickly left town, was soon underway. Bristol Corporation offered a £500 reward for information leading to his arrest. The government put up a further £1,000 reward. A description of Hill appeared on hoardings and he was eventually arrested at Dover after breaking into a shop.

He was taken to Winchester Gaol, where over the next three days he dictated a confession to the Keeper of Prison. In it he admitted fire-raising at dockyards in Chatham, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Bristol.

Less than two months later, his trial on charges of arson took place in the castle at Winchester before two judges, the Honourable Sir William Ashurst and Sir Beaumont Hotham. The court heard that Hill wanted to destroy English commerce.

In passing sentence, the judges ordered that he should be hanged. So it was that a couple of days later that a mizzenmast was taken down from a ship at Portsmouth Dockyard and set up inside Victory Gate. Hill was hanged from this at a height of 60ft. Many thousands of people gathered outside the gate to watch Hill’s last moments of life.

ASHTON COURT IMPOSTOR

The stranger who called at Ashton Court Mansion was unceremoniously bundled out of the entrance hall by a servant and dumped in the drive after he claimed to be the long-lost heir to the Smyth family and their estates.

Ashton Court Mansion (Trevor Naylor)

Undeterred, the visitor, who called himself Sir Richard Smyth, pressed on with his claim and took the family to court. The story that unfolded at Gloucester Assize was one of the most bizarre ever to be heard in a court of law.

Mr Justice Coleridge, sitting with a special jury, heard the claimant’s extraordinary tale. He insisted that his father was Sir Hugh Smyth, a former owner of Ashton Court who had died about thirty years previously. His mother, he said, was the daughter of a count and had been married to his father at a secret ceremony in Ireland. As a child he had been given to a labouring family in Warminster, Wiltshire, to be brought up.

The claimant also alleged that another member of the Smyth family, Sir Greville Smyth, had privately acknowledged his claim as heir but died suddenly the day afterwards from the shock of it all.

There was a dramatic turn in the court proceedings when a witness identified the would-be-heir to Ashton Court from various marks on his face and hands as Tom Provis, a convicted horse thief.

Provis faced another setback when a telegram arrived at court from a jeweller who had read a report of the previous day’s proceedings in The Times. The jeweller said that some items of jewellery that Provis claimed to be family heirlooms had been engraved by him just a few months earlier.

Provis also tripped up when, in his ignorance, he misquoted the Smyth family motto. There was also a little discrepancy regarding a date which he could not explain to the court.

After hearing all the evidence, the court decided that Provis’ claim to the Smyth estate was false. On Mr Justice Coleridge’s warrant he was immediately committed to another court to face a charge of perjury. A further charge of forgery was subsequently added. Provis, still claiming to be Sir Richard Smyth, was convicted on both charges and sentenced to twenty years’ transportation. He died in Dartmoor Prison less than two years later, while waiting to be transported.

People living in various parts of the world were gripped by the details of the two court cases. The Herald and Telegram in New Zealand told its readers that the case was based on ‘a tissue of falsehoods and forgeries sustained by Provis in the witness box’. In England some newspapers even produced supplements about the court hearings.

The Smyth family had lived at Ashton Court, in Long Ashton parish, on the southern edge of Bristol since 1545 when the house was bought by John Smyth. He was one-time mayor of the city and a wealthy merchant engaged in trade with Spain and France, exporting various items including cloth and lead from the Mendip mines in return for wine and dyestuffs.

Various generations of the family added cottages and large estates in Long Ashton to the Smyth property portfolio, either through purchase or marriage. By the time of Provis’ claim the Smyth family was collecting about £30,000 a year in rental income from tenants; a small fortune in Victorian times.

The Dovecote, which for more than 150 years traded as the Smyth Arms and was part of the Ashton Court estate (Trevor Naylor)

Down the centuries the family altered and extended the mansion so that it is almost impossible to work out the original plans, although a house on the site can be traced back to 1282. Today, the most notable feature of the house is the long façade of the south front built in two different styles.

When Esme Smyth, the last of the family, died in 1946, there were death duties of nearly £1 million to pay. More than 2,000 acres of the greater estate were sold off including farms, cottages and two pubs, The Angel and the Smyth Arms. Both are still trading today, although the Smyth Arms is now called The Dovecote.

The Smyth Arms dates back to 1578, when it was known as the Coach and Horses. Pints of ale were pulled seven days a week until Sir Greville Smyth was abused while making his way to church by some customers the worse for drink. He used his powers as a Justice of the Peace and revoked the pub’s licence. Sir Greville restored it on condition that in future the pub didn’t open on Sundays.

About this time its name was changed to honour the Smyth family. When Esme Smyth died, the pub was sold to George’s Bristol Brewery, still with its six-day licence.

Mrs Smyth’s heir was her grandson, 19-year-old Greville Adrian Cavendish, who was serving in the navy. He decided that taking over the house would be impracticable for him. Ashton Court Mansion and 840 acres of woodland, undulating parkland and ornamental gardens fell into dereliction until it was acquired by Bristol City Council in 1960 at a cost of £103,200.

The estate is probably now best known for hosting the annual Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, which attracts around half a million balloonists and spectators from around the world.

BANKING CRASH

As Bristol grew in international importance as a major port and commercial centre, banks in the city flourished too. The first one opened in Corn Street in 1750, where it issued its own notes. It was the first banking house outside London, except for a Jewish-run bank in Derby. By 1900 Bristolians were spoilt for choice, with thirty-five different banks offering them financial services.

One of the biggest was the West of England and South Wales Bank, which had its main office in The Exchange, Corn Street, and forty-seven branches in the two regions.

As business grew the bank needed larger premises and bought the old Bush Inn opposite The Exchange. It was at the Bush that Mr Winkle took up his quarters in his ‘love-lorn quest’ for the missing Arabella Allen in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers.

The bank paid £10,000 for the inn, which was demolished, and new headquarters were promptly built on the site. No expense seems to have been spared. The building was designed in an opulent Venetian style, copying St Mark’s Library, Venice. An intricate frieze was carved along the length of its façade, representing various commercial activities including the printing of bank notes. The new headquarters opened in 1857.

Towards the end of 1878 rumours were circulating that the bank was unstable. Its directors refuted all the allegations saying that their accounts were in good order. They did say they were hoping to restructure the business. The rumours were not without foundation, for a couple of weeks before Christmas, the directors suspended all payments.

A liquidator was appointed and his report revealed that when the bank crashed, all its paid up capital and a reserve fund of £156,000 had ‘entirely disappeared’. Against liabilities of about £350,000, there was a further deficiency of assets exceeding £300,000. The bank’s failure was attributed to ‘imprudent advances’ made over the years to iron firms in South Wales.

Early in 1879, the Home Secretary ordered a prosecution against the bank’s chairman Jerome Murch, a former Mayor of Bristol. Sitting alongside him in the dock at the Assize Courts were five of his directors. At the end of their trial the jury acquitted all the defendants.

Lloyds Bank took over the building, which it occupied until January 2014, when it moved the branch to Cabot Circus. As a listed building, the Corn Street site cannot be demolished or have its architectural style changed.

BODYSNATCHERS AT WORK

The body of a young man who was taken to the gallows nearly 200 years ago for killing his girlfriend played a major part in early medical research at Bristol Infirmary.

The infirmary was founded after seventy-eight eminent citizens promised charitable services ‘for the benefit of the poor sick’. They pledged between two and six guineas each. However, the generosity of some supporters far exceeded that. One William Clarke donated ten guineas at the original subscription meeting, while the Earl of Hopetoun promised £400 over twenty-five years. Various trade groups from bakers to innkeepers were also approached for financial support.

Their donations meant that a disused brewery building on Lower Maudlin Street could be converted into an infirmary. It treated its first outpatients in May 1737 and in December of that year inpatients were admitted for the first time. It was then that an official opening ceremony for the infirmary was held, followed by a church service. Afterwards one of the surgeons wrote: ‘We finished the day amidst the smoke of tobacco and emptying and replenishing of mugs of Bristol ale.’

Initially operations took place in the wards, until the infirmary’s first dedicated theatre opened in 1755. Almost 100 years later, Queen Victoria granted the infirmary the right to call itself ‘Royal’.

In the early part of the nineteenth century there was a demand from surgeons for bodies for dissection so that knowledge of anatomy could be passed on to their students.

Richard Smith, who was the infirmary’s senior surgeon from 1796 until his death in 1843, acquired the body of the first person to be hanged at the city’s New Gaol. He had the skin of John Horwood tanned and dressed, and used it to bind a book that contains details of his court trial and information about the dissection. The cover of the book is inscribed in Latin with the words ‘Cutis vera Johannus Horwood’. Translated, this means ‘the actual skin of John Horwood’. What may be seen as a rather macabre book is now in the care of Bristol Records Office.

Horwood’s skeleton hung in a cupboard at the University of Bristol’s medical school until recently, when it was claimed by his descendants who organised a funeral for him.

As the demand for bodies for research grew, so did the activities of ‘grave robbers’ (or ‘body resurrectionists’, as they were called). In February 1828 a local paper reported that ‘two grave robbers’ were caught trying to open a tomb in Brislington churchyard. Doctors Wallis and Riley were each fined £6. However, Dr Wallis’s appearance before the magistrates does not seem to have hampered his career prospects at the infirmary. A few weeks after his court case, the same magistrates proposed that he should be elected to the post of physician at the hospital.

On another occasion it was reported that several doctors were found in Bedminster churchyard, about to begin their ‘nefarious work of plundering a grave’ where a body had been interred a few days earlier. The medical men were about to raise the body when the local constable on beat duty caught them in the act. They too, had an appointment with the magistrates.

Following a similar incident at St Augustine’s Abbey, which later evolved into Bristol Cathedral, the churchwarden made a special announcement. He offered a reward of fifty guineas for information ‘leading to the conviction of the person or persons who removed the corpse of a female interred in the churchyard the previous day’.

The Bristol Royal Infirmary was the first hospital outside of London to be supported by voluntary contributions. For many years the hospital had to find different ways of raising funds to enable its doctors to give their services free of charge to the poor.

Under the presidency of Sir George White, the sum of £7,500 was raised by a week-long carnival in 1905 at the Zoological Gardens in Clifton. On the last day of the event Sir George, a prominent local stockbroker, industrialist and philanthropist, added the sum of £7,500 from his own pocket, wiping out the infirmary’s debt of £15,000.

The infirmary continues to treat the sick, search for cures for diseases, and teach medical students.

BRIDGING THE GAP

When he died in 1754 Alderman William Vick, a wealthy wine merchant, left £1,000 in his will towards the cost of building a bridge to span the Avon Gorge, linking Leigh Woods on the Somerset side with Clifton on the Bristol side. Vick left instructions that the money should be invested until it had reached £10,000, a sum that he thought would be enough to carry out his wish. In the event, the bridge cost almost ten times that amount and the extra money needed was raised in shares.

In his will Vick also said that on his bridge ‘the passage was to be free from toll’. This request was enshrined in a Clifton Suspension Bridge Act of Parliament, but it seems to have been forgotten long ago. It’s now more unlikely than ever that the tolls motorists pay to cross the bridge will be dropped, because of the rising costs of its upkeep.

Looking down the River Avon to the Clifton Suspension Bridge (Trevor Naylor)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the bridge, described it as ‘my first child, my darling’. His original plan included two giant sphinxes on the top of the towers at each end of the bridge, but the cost was prohibitive.

Although construction work started in 1831, it was dogged by financial problems and the bridge was not finished until 1864. Just seven years after starting work the contractors became bankrupt and everything came to a halt. Another firm was found to take over but in 1843 funds ran out and work temporarily stopped again. The time allowed by an Act of Parliament for the bridge completion expired in May 1853. A new firm, the Clifton Suspension Bridge Company, was formed and another Act of Parliament obtained. Eventually the bridge was completed as a memorial to Brunel who, unfortunately, had died five years before its opening.

There was much excitement in the city when the bridge was officially opened amidst much pomp and ceremony on 8 December 1864. Bristol had never seen anything like it. A mile-long procession of tradesmen carrying banners and flags made its way from the city centre to Clifton. The city’s great and good were joined on a specially built grandstand by Members of Parliament, as well as civic dignitaries from Somerset who were there as part of the bridge stands in their county. Church bells rang, bands played and guns fired salutes as the Lords Lieutenant of Gloucestershire and Somerset officially declared the bridge open.

The first member of the public to cross the bridge was 21-year-old Mary Griffiths, of Hanham. She ran across the 702ft span to make sure no one beat her.