A House, a Street, a Neighbourhood 10-13 Guinea Street 1718-2018
By Lois Mean Madden and Peter Madden
Acknowledgements “I’ve lived in this house all my life. It is full of great memories for me, but I wanted to know all about what happened in our house, street and neighbourhood. I didn’t only want to know about the well-known people who lived here, like Captain Saunders, but the poor and ordinary people too.” Lois Mean Madden This booklet is written for friends, family and neighbours, to celebrate the 300year anniversary of our home. We have used the best sources available and endeavoured to provide references for all content. Because this book was written for fun, and with very limited circulation, we have not been able to track down the copyright or get permissions on the pictures used. (In some cases multiple people are claiming copyright of the same old photograph). We have credited the source where available. A special thanks to Emily Glass for her MA thesis, to Rod Broome for sharing his unpublished manuscript and for the brilliant websites run by Paul Townsend as Brizzle Born and Bred1 and by Radisol2 on St Mary Redcliffe School. Thanks also to our neighbours who contributed photos and documents. We discovered evidence, during the course of writing this booklet that the houses were neither built originally as a single mansion as stated in the books by Ison and Pevsner nor as three separate houses as asserted by Leach, but that they were probably built as two separate dwellings: what is now number 10 being one; and what are now numbers 11 and 12, the other one. The houses were, like many of this period in Bristol, built on the profits of slavery. This part of the city’s history is almost invisible today, so we have tried to tell of the role of slavery in building these houses, this street and this neighbourhood. We have told the story, too, of how this part of Redcliffe has changed over the three centuries. We hope you enjoy reading about this amazing property and learning something new about this fascinating neighbourhood. Professor Peter Madden, OBE and Lois Mean Madden. 12 Guinea Street Redcliffe December 2018
1
https://www.flickr.com/photos/20654194@N07/
2
http://www.radisol.com/st-mary-redcliffe-school-history/index.htm#old-pics
To all the people who have lived in these houses over the past three centuries, and to everyone who is going to live here in the future. And to 10 to 13 Guinea Street, Happy 300th Birthday!
Contents Introduction Chapter 1
The Settlement of Redcliffe
Chapter 2
St Mary Redcliffe Church
Chapter 3
From Lane to Street
Chapter 4
Ernest Saunders Builds the Houses
Chapter 5
Trading, Slavery and Pirates
Chapter 6
A Road of Pubs
Chapter 7
Illness, Charity and Hospitals
Chapter 8
Industry in Redcliffe
Chapter 9
The Blitz and Post-War Planning
Chapter 10
The Houses – Inside and Outside
Chapter 11
One, Two or Three Houses?
Chapter 12
The Houses and Neighbourhood Today Bibliography
Introduction
These houses celebrate their 300-year anniversary in 2018. At the time they were built, the area around was farmland, outside the city walls. A lane ran down to Tryn Mill, on the Malago river, at the bottom of the hill. The houses were built by Captain Ernest Saunders, a merchant who was in charge of 32 slaving voyages and slaved some 3,000 people. 3 He was also a Warden of St Mary Redcliffe Church. Situated a few hundred yards up from the harbour, his house was close enough for him to keep an eye on the ships coming in, and well positioned to be enveloped by the rapidly spreading city. The houses, which were later split into three dwellings, have a rich and varied history. They were home to a notorious slaver, a temporary prison for Spanish pirates, and possibly the site of an early Quaker hospital4. These Guinea Street properties have seen the area around change from quiet fields to bustling port, from dingy industrial area to the friendly and mixed neighbourhood of today. This is the story of the houses, the street, and the neighbourhood.
Britain From Above, Historic England  3
David Richardson, The Bristol Slave Traders, 1985
4
Historic England listing 1977
Chapter 1 The Settlement of Redcliffe Over millions of years, the river Avon wound its way through the landscape here, slowing and widening where the bridge was later built, eroding the red sandstone to form a bluff at Redcliffe, slicing through rocks to carve the Avon Gorge, from where it flowed down to meet the Severn. Bristol started out as a village called ‘Brigg Stow’, which means ‘the meeting place at the bridge ‘ in Old Saxon. By the 10th century Bristol had grown into a town. Because of its location, it was well placed for trade with Somerset and Devon as well as with Wales and Ireland. In 1155 Bristol was given a charter (a document from the monarch confirming certain rights held by the townspeople). Bristol also benefited when Henry II became King in 1154, because he was ruler of part of South West France, as well as England. Huge quantities of wine were imported from there into Bristol, and by the 13th Century wine was the main import into the city. Later on, wine was imported from Spain and Portugal as well as from France. In 1171, after the English conquered Ireland, the people of Bristol were given Dublin as a colony by the king and many Bristolians settled there. Not many people know that Dublin was once a colony of Bristol!
The stone Bristol Bridge replaced the wooden one, and was packed with tall houses.
The settlement at Redcliffe, part of the Manor of Bedminster, was founded by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, in the early 12th Century. The area was originally located in the County of Somerset, until it was later absorbed into the new County of Bristol.5 The relatively deep water alongside the cliffs of red sandstone which gave Redcliffe its name, encouraged the development of wharves. There was a fierce rivalry between the merchants south of the river in Redcliffe and those north of the river in Bristol - a bit like City and Rovers today. Early recorded industries in Redcliffe include weaving, fulling (cleansing woollen cloth) and dyeing. These noxious processes were not welcome within the city walls of Bristol, and so were established here, nearby, but just beyond the boundaries.
Hoefnagle 1581.
In the 13th century Redcliffe and Bristol underwent a rapid expansion. In King Henry III’s reign, there were major works to improve the harbour, including moving the river Frome, providing more space for ships to moor and new quays were built. In the same period a stone bridge, Bristol Bridge, was constructed. "The men of Redcliffe" were told to stump up to help fund these projects by Henry III, even though the big beneficiaries were the Merchants of Bristol on the other side of the river. A hundred years later, in 1373, Redcliffe became part of Bristol to become the City and County of Bristol. The granting of county status was important as it 5
SPD 3 2006.
meant that legal disputes no longer had to be taken all the way to the court Illminster in Somerset or to Gloucester. A journey to Ilmininster would take two days there and two days back, and for those who had property on both sides of the Avon, the situation was particularly irksome 6. The first Mayor of the new City and County of Bristol was William Canynges, a Redclivian, who also made a major contribution to building St Mary Redcliffe. Part of Redcliffe originally lay within the city walls, as can be seen on Hoefnagle’s map of 1581. The Church of St Mary Redcliffe lay outside the wall. Bristol boomed after the 1640s, as new colonies were founded in the West Indies and North America. Bristol was well placed to trade with them because of its position in the West. The establishment of the area around Guinea Street was a result of this mercantile era and the slavery that was part of it. The lane between fields became Guinea Street, gradually lined with houses. The name Guinea Street was first shown on the Roque map of 1743. Roque 1743
6
Bristol Beyond the Bridge.
Chapter 2 St Mary Redcliffe Church One of the most important, and most recognised buildings in Redcliffe is the church of St Mary Redcliffe. In late Medieval times, St. Mary Redcliffe, sitting on a red cliff above the river, was a sign to seafarers, who would pray in it at their departure, and give thanks there on their return. The church was built and beautified by Bristol's wealthy merchants and slavers, who paid to have masses sung for their souls and many of whom are commemorated in the church.
Guinea Street sits within the Parish of St Mary Redcliffe. The church lacked a spire for 400 years.
The church was built between 1292 and 1370. The patrons included Simon de Burton, Mayor of Bristol, and William Canynges, a merchant, five times Mayor of Bristol and three-times MP. In the 15th century Canynges' grandson, the great merchant William Canynges II, (also five times Mayor and three-times MP), assumed responsibility for bringing the work of the interior to completion and filling the windows with stained glass. The church was transformed from a small Norman chapel - an outlier of the Bedminster Parish church, to the ‘Pride of Bristowe and the Western Land’ that we know today. In 1446 much of this work was damaged when the spire was struck by lightning, and fell, damaging the interior. This didn’t deter Canynges, who redoubled his efforts and moved in a workforce of over 100 people to get on with it. Eventually, the church was completed in 1480, although the spire was not put back up until 400 years later.
Elizabeth 1st declared St Mary Redcliffe Church to be “In all respects the finest parochial church in all England.�7 This magnificent church, the size of a small cathedral, gives an idea of the wealth of the merchants of Redcliffe.
Above, a statue of Elizabeth I in St Mary Redcliffe Church (Lois Mean Madden); Below, the visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 1956.
7
Bristol Beyond the Bridge
The Visit of Queen Elizabeth I When Elizabeth visited the city in 1574, Bristol spared no effort. The roads were sanded and repaired, burgesses were given new uniforms and preparations were made for a great spectacle, a mock battle to be held on the Addercliffe (now Redcliffe Parade) and below at Treen Mills. (Bristol Beyond the Bridge) A viewing platform was built across the river by the Marsh (now Queen Square) and over a three-day period a war was waged with such ferocity that several of the participants were injured. Five people were killed, and ten burnt, when the gunpowder for the battle, being kept in the Pelican Inn ignited. ‘About as many men were likewise burned by misfortune with gunpowder at Treene Mills’ In the battle, a fort representing the Spanish was attacked and demolished. In later years when there was a real threat of invasion by the Spanish, Addercliffe was used to muster able bodied men to fight off the Armada. Elizabeth I rode into Bristol on a white horse. Some 400 years later, Elizabeth II drove into Bristol in a motor cavalcade and saw the Church her namesake had deemed: The fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England.’
St Mary Redcliffe in 1904
St Mary Redcliffe is one of the largest parish churches in England. The upper part of the spire, missing since being struck by lightning in 1446, was reconstructed in 1872 to a height of 292 ft (89 m) The spire is the third tallest among parish churches in the country, and for 150 years was the tallest building in Bristol. (There are now proposals to allow tall buildings to be built in sight of the Church).
The church owned lots of land in the parish, including, in the 19th Century, the notorious ‘Vermin Farm’ a haunt of thieves, prostitutes and other ne’er do wells. A rather more salubrious holding was the plot housing a large and handsome vicarage off Guinea Street, where the Holland House Hotel car park now sits. This Saint Mary Redcliffe Vicarage was demolished in 1939 to make way for expansion of the school. The vicarage was was accessed from Guinea Street. It was built c.1872 to replace the original vicarage, which had been torn down to build the rail tunnel from the harbourside.
This handsome Victorian vicarage (above) was demolished in 1939 to make way for the expanding Redcliff Endowed Boys’ School school (below).
St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School The school was first founded by Royal Charter in 1571, and was called Queen Elizabeth's Free Grammar and Writing School. It was located in the Churchyard of St Mary Redcliffe, near the south porch. The school has moved around the parish over the centuries, to its current site. The school became Redcliff Endowed Schools (for girls and boys) in 1856. It was built on land owned by the Church previously used by the adjacent, first, Vicarage which was sited near the tunnel carpark on Guinea Street. The school was located in an area bounded by Redcliffe Hill, Redcliffe Parade, Jubilee Street and Guinea Street. The main entrance was on Redcliffe Parade. A department for older pupils was added in 1877, and charged a fee of 6d a week. The girls then moved out and the school's name was changed in 1879 to Redcliff Endowed Boys' School. As the school grew, the second, Victorian vicarage was demolished in 1939 for a school playground - the playground where a bomb fell in World War II. After the War, the school changed its name to St Mary Redcliffe Secondary School. The School finally merged with Temple Colston Girls’ School in 1967, and the co-educational St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School was created, as a comprehensive, school and moved to its current site. The school today educates 1670 pupils and is rated ‘outstanding’.
The school motto, introduced by Headmaster J T Francombe in the 1870s.
Chapter 3 From Lane to Street Four hundred years ago, a windmill’s sails turned lazily on the lane that was later to become Guinea Street. Hens pecked, pigs snuffled, and cows grazed, on the land on which the houses now stand. The lane appears on the 1673 Millerd map of Bristol as the major thoroughfare linking Redcliffe with the Trin Mill area of the riverside. On Millerd’s map it is named as “Trine Mill Lane”, and runs between fields or gardens. Archaeological evidence from excavations carried out in 2012 on the General Hospital Site by Cotswold Archaeology suggest that this land was mainly in agricultural use during the early 1700s.
James Millerd’s map, 1673
Tryn Mill (variously spelt Tryn, Trin, Trine and Treen) lay at at the bottom of the hill, with a mill pond fed by the Malago river which rises on the north side of Dundry Hill. This was a tidal mill, the wheel turned by the rise and fall of the Avon’s tides. Each autumn, the Mayor and Corporation led by trumpeters would proceed in their finery to the Treen pool to take part in the annual sport of duck-hunting. The pool is now covered by the Bathurst Basin and ducks and still swim there.
The street changed its name from Tryn Mill Lane to Guinea Street sometime in the early 1700s, and is first shown as Guinea Street on the 1742 Rocque map . The street is named after the gold coin called a guinea, which took its name from a country on the West African gold coast, which was an important part of the slave trade. There was also an elephant and a castle on some of these coins. These symbols came from the badge of the Royal African Company, the only British company allowed to trade in Africa before 1698. They traded in slaves, and delivered gold obtained from the West African coast to the Mint where it was turned into coins. Bristol also produced brass pots and pans called ‘guinea pots’ especially for the African slave trade, or the ‘Guinea Trade’ as the merchants called it. The Golden Guinea pub that stands on the street marks this history, although it didn’t get that name until the mid-1970s, having previously been called the Victoria.
Bening, 1780
Benings map of 1780, shows the floating Dock - where ships were built including Brunel’s SS Great Western. Launched in 1838, the Great Western was an oak-hulled paddle-wheel steamship, purpose-built for crossing the Atlantic. She was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1837 to 1839. French Yard lay off Guinea Street opposite Burton Street, later to become Barossa Place and Jubilee Place.
Guinea Street was built by private speculators in the years between 1718 and 1750. An early reference to the street is listed in the 1750 poor rate book for St Mary Redcliffe.8 Numbers 18 and 19 Guinea street are contemporary with Captain Saunders mansion and exhibit some identical features such as the moulded string-course, but are generally of a plainer design.9 In September 1740 Joseph Thomas, a tiler and plasterer who worked for the architect Isaac Ware at Clifton Hill House undertook a Corporation lease. He was to pull down an old tenement in Guinea Street and erect three new ones with uniform frontage, as numbers 5, 6 and 7. Number 5 was for his own occupation and he decorated the ceilings in his own fine Roccoco style.10 These buildings were demolished in the 1950s after suffering bomb damage in the Second World War. (See Chapter 9). By 1828 the New Cut had been dug to the south, and Guinea Street is lined on both sides with densely packed dwellings on narrow plots of land.
Plumley and Ashmead 1828  8
BRO-Info Box 32/63.
9
Gomme et al 1979
10
Mowl, 1991
Chapter 4 Ernest Saunders Builds the Houses At the end of the 1600s, building in Bristol was much as it had been in the Middle Ages. Timber framing was still the main construction method; the streets were twisting and narrow. Houses were crowded together blocking out both light and air.11 At the beginning of the 1700s, this was starting to change. After the Great Fire of London, in 1666, houses in the capital began to be built in stone and brick, set further apart, without overhanging bays. The earliest brick-built house in Bristol was constructed in 1701. With the beginnings of town planning, the Council minutes of 1699 agreed that plots should be leased for ‘the uniform building of houses’. This led to the construction of over a dozen open spaces and squares being laid out over the course of the Century. One of the most notable is Queen Square, just across the river from Guinea Street. This leasing during the expansion of the city allowed the Corporation to take advantage of the new wealth being generated. This was the Age of Prosperity, the beginning of the grand tour on the continent, where the wealthy were exposed to classical architecture. This influenced construction in England. By 1718, Vanbrugh’s building works at Kings Weston House had ended. This had employed 20 craftsmen from Bristol, and they now came back into the city looking for other work. The ideas and skills spilled over in the city and began an era of quality building for Bristol12 .
Kings Weston House
11
Dening 1923
12
Gomme et al 1979
In 1702, an enclosed area of land containing some four acres was leased to Elizabeth Gibbs by the Corporation. This land was bounded by a lane commonly called Trin Mill Lane, bounded to the north by a meadow called Katherine Mead. The close of ground was used as a garden and pasture. Captain Ernest Saunders inherited this lease from the city spinster Elizabeth Gibbs upon her death for the yearly rent of 30 pounds. It was noted in 1724 that wall works had lately been erected by Captain Saunders on the land. This most likely included the Guinea Street mansion, constructed in 171813. Edmund Saunders began his mercantile career in 1700 as an apprentice seaman, just after Bristol was legally allowed to enter the Slave trade. He graduated to the level of Captain and managed over 30 voyages to theAmericas and West Indies in his career14. In 1705 the ‘Berkeley Galley’ was launched for the Bristol merchant Robert Berkeley. The ship was a large 200-ton slave ship with a capacity for 350 people. Edmund Saunders joined the crew.
Captain Edmund Saunders: Origins Edmund Saunders was born around 1685 on the small family estate in Carlyon, Monmouthshire, where he was raised until he was 14. His father, Will Saunders, died during Edmund’s childhood. His family used their connections to get him an apprenticeship in Bristol. In 1699, Edmund Saunders travelled to Bristol to serve as an apprentice to a linen merchant called John Webley. He was obligated to work for him for seven years, until his twenty-first birthday. He was assigned to a ship carrying Webley’s linen, and learned his trade as a sailor and merchant. He completed his apprenticeship in 1707, when he was free to work for himself. He later captained his own ships. [Source: unpublished manuscript on life of Captain Edmund Saunders, R.Broome.]
In 1708, the Berkeley Galley and the William sailed together from Bristol, bound for Africa. The two ships were attacked by French privateers. The William was taken but the Berkeley Galley got away, and later bought 340 slaves and delivered them to Jamaica.15
13
BRO-Info Box 6/44
14
Damer Powell 1930
15
BRS 1986
The following year Captain Ernest Saunders was commissioned with ‘Letters of Marque’ and became a privateer with the Berkeley Galley. 16 A privateer was a kind of licensed pirate, able to capture foreign vessels as prizes during wartime. Sir Francis Drake is one of the most famous British privateers. In 1718 (the year the house was completed) Captain Saunders and the Berkeley Galley left Bristol and delivered 200 slaves to Jamaica. The ship was then loaded up with sugar, rum and provisions for the return journey. According to Captain Charles Johnson in his 1724 ‘General history of the Pirate’ the ship was attacked in the West Indies by Captain John Martel, a pirate, in a sloop of eight guns and 80 men. Captain Saunders and his men were plundered of valuables and provisions and £1,000.17 Martel took several ships that year and soon traded up to a bigger boat and captained a growing fleet, forcing captured sailors to serve on his ships. Despite being pursued by the Royal Navy, and having his flotilla taken, Martel himself was never captured.
Captain John Martel. ‘Never caught, never found’.
The keystone on 12 Guinea Street
Captain Saunders held this land for some Nme before a new lease was granted to him in 1725, wherein the lease described Guinea Street as ‘new built’. The mansion would originally have stood alone at the top of the hill. The staircase at number 12 had a huge picture window looking down to the harbour. As Bristol grew, other houses were soon added to the street, and what is now number 13 wrapped around the end of number 12, blocking the picture window. Captain Edmund Saunders lived in what are now numbers 11, 12 and part of 13, renNng what is now number 10 to Captain Joseph Smith.18
16
BRS 1986
17
Damer Powell 1930
18
Leach, 1997
Captain Saunders and others swiSly constructed houses along the whole street. Between voyages Saunders acted as a church warden for St Mary Redcliffe Church. He is recorded in the vestry minute books of 1726 and 1727 in entries relaNng to the acquisiNon of funds to build the great church organ.19 The last voyage of the Berkeley Galley was in 1740 and it was soon aSer this that Captain Saunders was declared bankrupt.20 In 1743 as part of his estate, eleven houses in Guinea Street were offered for sale and were described as ‘lately built’. The property was sold in 1746 and the contemporary description reads as follows: ‘“four vault cellars, two kitchens a large handsome hall, dining room and withdrawing room, each neatly wainscotted and painted, with a marble chimney piece in each. Three parlours, two of them with marble chimney pieces, all neatly wainscotted and one of them with fear and mahogany and highly finished. A very neat mahogany staircase, handsomely painted, three chambers wainscotted and a marble chimney piece in each. The chambers contain convenient presses for cloths and three closets. Six upper lodgingrooms and two closets etc.’”21
19
Ison 1952
20
BR-AC/JS 53, 62 and AC/WO 18
21
Ison 1952
Chapter 5 Trading, Slavery and Pirates Bristol’s early prosperity was built on wool, and the trade with France, Portugal and Spain in wine. When Spain annexed the Southern Hemisphere, Bristol sailors, who were already visiting Iceland, ventured farther afield in search of a way to the Orient. In 1497, John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland and encountered, not spices and riches, but more cod and a damp and misty land. In the 18th century Bristol grew rapidly. The population was probably about 25,000 in 1700. It rose to 68,000 by 1801, Many new streets were laid out. Queen Square was built in 1702 to commemorate the visit of Queen Anne to Bristol. Prince Street followed it. The houses lining Guinea Street were part of this expansion. Merchants and ships’ officers lived in the houses and drank in the many pubs on Guinea Street. The area was thick with sailors, privateers and pirates. Legend has it that Blackbeard’s mother was a cook in the Saunders house. There is no evidence to support this. We do know that Edward Teach the notorious pirate was born in Redcliffe in the 1680s, and pirate tours do sometimes stop outside the house and point to the keystone of a bearded man on number 12. This is probably due to the fact that it is one of the only remaining houses of this vintage in Redcliffe.
Blackbeard, probably the most famous Redclivian.
If not the home of Blackbeard, 11-13 Guinea Street did provide a temporary jail for pirates and privateers, and also, perhaps, an escape route for prisoners from the adjoining French’s yard. In 1740, the ‘Vernon’ privateer captured several prizes off the Canaries along with some Spaniards of note. These gentlemen were imprisoned at Captain Saunders’ in Guinea Street.22 22
Bristol Past and Present Vol lll
In the 18th Century, Britain was involved in a number of wars in Continental Europe. In order to house prisoners, a Mr French’s one-acre yard to the back of 10-14 Guinea Street was used. (French’s Lane is now the entrance to the underground carpark of The General). Records indicate that his yard was connected by a tunnel to the caves, although this cannot be found today. Records state that Spanish prisoners were kept in this passage in 1741 and it was again used for French prisoners in 1744.23 French’s yard was was bounded by a nine-foot high wall, but security was lax. In 1745 a number of men attempted to escape by scaling a wall in Guinea Street, one being shot dead by the sentinel, the others retreated to their prison in the rock.24 The yard continued in use for prisoners until a typhus outbreak in 1780, when prisoners were transferred to a less crowded spot in Knowle. In this century Bristol was heavily involved in the slave trade. Captain Edmund Saunders managed 32 slaving trips between 1723 and 1739. 25 He would have slaved some 3,000 souls, in apalling conditions, to the new world. The Guinea Street houses were built on the profits of this trade. Manufactured goods from Bristol such as woollen cloth and brass and iron goods were given to the Africans in return for slaves. The slaves were then transported to the West Indies of North America and sold. The ships then took tobacco, sugar and rum back to Bristol. So the trade formed a triangle.
Humans treated as cargo
Conditions on board the slaving ships were abominable. The men were packed together below deck and were secured by leg irons. The space was so cramped that they were forced to crouch or lie down. Women and children were kept separately, sometimes on deck, allowing them limited freedom of movement, but this also exposed them to violence and sexual abuse from the crew.
23
JC Whiniing Redcliffe Caves, unpublished manuscript
24
Nicholls and Taylor 1882
25
Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century, Kenneth Morgan, Cambridge University Press 1973
The air in the hold was foul and putrid. Seasickness was common and the heat was oppressive. The lack of sanitation and suffocating conditions meant there was a constant threat of disease. Epidemics of fever, dysentery and smallpox were frequent. Captives endured these conditions for about two months, sometimes longer. The combination of disease, inadequate food, rebellion and punishment took a heavy toll. Records suggest that until the 1750s one in five Africans on board ship perished. Those who died were thrown overboard. Tobacco and sugar were two of the most important imports and shaped the economy and society of Bristol. In 1797 a sugar house was set up on the corner of Lower Guinea Street. There were many other sugar houses nearby, processing sugar from the plantations. Rankin’s Sugar House is depicted on Ashmead’s 1828 map of Bristol. The tobacco industry started in Redcliffe and was particularly important in the South of the city. Also in the 18th century timber was imported into Bristol from Scandinavia, mainly for shipbuilding. Timber wharves continued to stretch from Baltic Wharf to the M-Shed till the second half of the 20th Century. (An original timber barn is still visible next to the Cottage Pub. It is now home to dinghies that sail in the harbour.) A handful of slaves were brought back as servants to Bristol. A local sea Captain named Joseph Holbrook lived on Guinea Street street. In 1759 he put out an advert that offered a reward for information that would help him capture his slave who had run away. The advert described the slave as: ‘a negro man, named Thomas, a native of the island of Jamaica… 5′ 6” high, speaks good English and wears a brown wig.’ No-one knows if Thomas was ever captured.
A sugar house
Chapter 6 A Road of Pubs Walk down Guinea Street today, and you’ll only find two pubs, the Golden Guinea and the Ostrich, along with two new restaurants, both of them Michelinstarred. Previously, there would have been as many as a dozen pubs on the road, serving the thirsty sailors, craftsmen and dockers. In those times, ale constituted a large part of people’s diet. Not only was ale safer to drink than water, it was also more nutritious. Some one fifths of the nation’s dietary requirements were supplied through the consumption of ale, and during the 18th Century 800 pints per head were consumed each year. The drinking started early. Defoe found that the taverns were crowded by 7am, with ‘Bristol Milk’ (Spanish sherry) being plentifully drunk.26 One opportunity for heavy drinking was the annual perambulation of the city boundaries and the duck hunt. One day in autumn, the aldermen, heralded by the bells of St Mary Redcliffe, would grandly proceed to Treen Mills, where they would be greeted by the city’s trumpeters. When everyone was assembled, the ducks would be released onto the mill pond, and to the delight of everyone, trained dogs would be set upon them. In 1742, the last recorded duck hunt, 19 birds were purchased for the spectacle. Excessive drinking accompanied the event and this culminated in a rowdy walk along the city’s boundary.27
The Ostrich in 1925 26
Bristol beyond the Bridge
27
Bristol beyond the Bridge
We cannot be certain of the actual date when the Ostrich was built. The first recording of a victualler (one Jonathan Man) holding the pub was in 1775, though the pub is probably older. In 1793 the inn was listed as the Ostrich, ‘Trimm Mills’. The Guinea Street ferry – one of eight which once crossed the Floating Harbour – ran from The Grove (by what’s now the River Station restaurant) to a slipway (which is still there) near the Ostrich. Bathurst basin, where the clear waters of the Malago discharged into a millpond was known as Oyster Reach, and the pub’s name may have been a corruption of that.28 Sea farers and dock workers were the clientele. Later, when in 1897 Bristol Harbour Railway cut its way through Redcliffe, the drinkers were also rail workers. The inn then became the haunt of foreign sailors. In 1950, a Polish seaman was stabbed to death during a bar quarrel and the pub became notorious. It was known as the Ostrich Cider House, and its licensee Elsie Cremins kept no beer. Until the 1960s, the Ostrich was rough and semi-derelict, furnished with bus seats and with footprints painted on the ceiling. 29 Today you can enjoy a pint in the sunshine on the quay outside.
The Victoria Tavern in the 1960s, 28
James MAcveigh, Bristol Pubs, 2017
29
Old Inns of Bristol, Denning/Fells 1943/2005
Further up the street, the Golden Guinea was probably originally a private house, then a grocers, then a pub. Up until 1975 the pub was known as the Victoria, a name that must have gone back at least till the monarch’s reign, It was listed in 1861 as a ‘beer shop and eating house’. The building itself would have been constructed a century earlier than that.30
The Old Arm Chair 1964. It was a licensed premises, between 1863 - 74, the original landlord was Samuel Webb who also made a living making chairs.
All of the other pubs that once lined the street have now gone. One of the most notable was the ‘Old Arm Chair’ which once sat on the corner of Guinea Street and Alfred Place, diagonally opposite 10-13 Guinea Street. It’s name is probably unique amongst pubs – and it had a wooden armchair stuck on the outside outside on the first floor. Later on it was an off license and then also a grocery, until it shut.31 . The 18th Century building is now home to students. Until the 1870s when much of Guinea Street was demolished for the General hospital and harbour railway, the many pubs that dotted the street often had nautically themed names. They including a Jolly Sailor, Two Anchors (recorded in 1820), a Bell Inn (recorded in 1889), and Sailor’s Return.32 The Talbot sat on the corner of Redcliffe Hill and Guinea Street from 1732 until 1911.
30
James MacVeigh Bristol Pubs 2017
31
CFW Dening. Old Inns of Bristol. 1943
32
James MAcveigh, Bristol Pubs, 2017)
Chapter 7 Illness, Charity and Hospitals ‘Hospitals’ in Medieval times were not really hospitals as we know them today. Their name indicated their primary function; it was derived from the Latin word hospitalis, meaning being concerned with hospites, or guests - any persons who needed shelter. Many of the hospitals were erected for the use of pilgrims and other travellers; others were really almshouses for the poor and the aged. The Hospital of St John, sited in Redcliffe Pit, near where Quaker Burial Ground is today, served travellers and and cared for the poor. Founded by the Berkeleys in the late 12th Century for the aid of the sick and dying, it was a small establishment with a hall, cloisters, and a fountain fed by the Redcliffe Pipe from the Knowle spring. The City gates closed from dusk till dawn, if you arrived late or were starting off early, you might pass the night there. Although it was just across the road from St Mary Redcliffe, the Church was in the diocese of Salisbury, while St John’s Hospital came under the Bishop of Wells. They had little to do with each other and had a strict agreement that they should not poach each other’s clientele.33 Filth was a fact of life for everyone in the Middle Ages. Cities were filthy, the streets were open sewers; there was no running water and knowledge of hygiene was nonexistent. Dung, garbage and animal carcasses were thrown into rivers and ditches, poisoning the water. Fleas, rats and mice flourished - it was the perfect environment for the spread of infectious disease.
33
G Parker The History of the hospital of St John the Baptist, 1926.
The Plague, which swept across Britain, took early hold in the trading port of Bristol. A contemporary account by Hidden said that very few people in Bristol survived, and Geoffrey the Baker said that less than a tenth of the adult population were spared. The disease would have hit Redcliffe hard. Fields were chosen for the internment of the dead, because the churchyards were overflowing. Although it was hard hit, Bristol recovered more strongly and quickly than many other cities.34 As Bristol expanded over the following centuries, medical provision remained poor. And seeing a doctor did not necessarily help if you were ill. With the rapid growth of the city and concentration of people in unsanitary conditions, disease was rife. Waves of tuberculosis, sweating sickness, smallpox and cholera took their toll. By the 1830s the deadly cholera epidemics were causing political unrest, and helped fuel the Bristol Riots of 1831. On just one day at the peak of the cholera epidemic of 1831, 31 victims of the disease were ferried across the river and buried in Temple churchyard. Since the numbers were so high, a macabre rumour spread that paupers were being buried alive to get rid of them. A mob surged across the bridge to the churchyard, and dug up some of the recently buried to check that they were really dead. 35
‘Vermin Farm’, a red-light district at the base of St Mary Redcliffe, on land owned by the church
The Southern Parishes turned into a human warren of dirty rotten sheds, and because of the anonymity they offered it was rumoured they were a haven for criminals. Little attention was given to sanitation. Typical was Nelson Place, a row of 16 tiny hovels behind Redcliffe Parade, which was without drainage. The 34
The Black Death in Bristol, By C. E. Boucher, 1938
35
Bristol beyond the Bridge.
privies at the rear of the houses were emptied only every three of four years, the contents being dumped in a hole in the small front garden. Some of the most notorious dwellings were squashed around the base of St Mary Redcliffe forming a notorious red-light district, known to the authorities as Vermin Farm. (Because of the sailors there was plenty of demand for prostitutes.) Here it was common for eight or ten people to sleep in one room. Many of these slum dwellings were owned by the church which had let out the properties to unscrupulous landlords. Hospitals as we know them today, that apply scientific methods to cure the sick grew up in Britain in the 1800s. An early one was set up in Redcliffe in 1832, with 20 beds in a modest house in Guinea Street. This was said to have been in what are now numbers 11 and 1236.
General Hospital Loxton
The new facilities were the initiative of a group of local Quakers, appalled at the lack of health provision for the growing industrial poor of Bedminster and Redcliffe. In the early days only local residents were allowed access to treatment, in what must have been a very small and crowded hospital.
The original buildings of this little hospital were quickly outgrown and in 1853-1855 a purpose-built hospital was constructed at the lower end of the street, next to Bathurst Basin. Bristol General Hospital first opened its doors on the site in 1858, making a grand statement with its Italianate stonework and French Renaissance rooftops. The new hospital cost £28,000, with much of the funding coming from local residents and workers, who gave a penny a week towards building and running costs. The original building began as two four-storey blocks joined by a central tower with one block facing Bathurst Basin and the other the New Cut. In 36
Historic England listing of the General Hospital, 1977
1873 the northern block was extended and in 1886 a new nurses’ home was wrapped around the corner to Guinea Street.
A ward in 1900
The nurses’ home was subsequently extended again in 1907. These four phases largely represent the work of W.B Gingell, a local architect known for his elegant warehouses and churches, Henry Crisp, another local man, and his protégé, George Herbert Oatley, Bristol’s most renowned architect. The building had wharves underneath to earn funds to pay for the hospital. Bathurst Basin 1940s
During World War II, the Hospital suffered severe bomb damage which all but destroyed the mansard roof and the structure over the octagonal tower in the south west corner. The roof and top floor including that of the octagonal tower was subsequently removed and the building covered with a flat roof. The Bristol General Hospital finally closed its doors in 2012 when the South Bristol Community Hospital opened and the services were transferred. City & Country acquired the site in June 2012. And have now redeveloped the hospital as ‘The General’, with luxury apartments and two Michelin starred restaurants.
‘The General’ today
The development “offers residents all the charm and striking character of both a listed property coupled with contemporary and modern accommodation within an architect designed collection of new buildings.” When complete The General will be home to 205 one-to-four bedroom new and converted apartments and houses.
Chapter 8 Industry in Redcliffe In Medieval Redcliffe, leather was tanned, wool was woven and dyed, then exported. Other exports from Bristol included rope and sailcloth and lead. In Redcliffe there were also the same craftsmen found in any town such as blacksmiths, brewers, and bakers, and cooks, coopers and carpenters,.
Glass chimney in Redcliffe
In Georgian Bristol, there was a thriving glass industry. Sandstone dug from the Redcliffe Caves was particularly good for making heavy bottle glass. Glassmaking cones dotted Redcliffe. The largest one was built in 1780, and the base still remains today, on Prewett Street. The upper part was removed in 1936 as unsafe. The base survives as ‘The Kiln’ restaurant in the Hilton Hotel. When Horace Walpole visited Bristol in 1766 he described the city as ‘the dirtiest great shop I ever saw’. In the 18th century coal was mined across Bedminster. The largest of the mines, Dean Lane, closed in 1906 with the loss of 400 jobs; South Liberty Lane pit in Ashton Vale was the last Bristol coal mine in the area to shut, in 1925. Old pit-heads still dot Bedminster and Southville, and you can find pubs called the Miners Arms, Jolly Colliers, and Miners Rest across South Bristol. Shipbuilding, and all the associated trades, also thrived. Many people were employed in Redcliffe in the provision and maintenance of Bristol’s expanding
fleet of boats. There were shipbuilders, sail chain, and rope-makers along with coopers providing kegs and barrels for long journeys. There was a floating dock nearby, in the area where today we find Merchant’s Landing and the eastern end of the M-Shed. Ships built here included Brunel’s SS Great Western, which was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1837 to 1839. The last great ship built in the neighbourhood was the Matthew, a replica of the boat on which John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland. She was built on Redcliffe Wharf by the Bristol Classic Boat Company, and launched in 1996. The sugar industry, important for Bristol, was disliked by many residents because it created both fumes and fire risk. The raw sugar, which was boiled in large copper vats, was heated to such high temperatures that it tended to ignite. This was not very welcome when much of the city was built of wood. Finzels Sugar Refinery, constructed in 1870 in Redcliffe, was, at the time, the largest in Britain. Rankin’s Sugar House was at the lower end of Guinea Street near Bathhurst Basin. The archealogical works for the development of The General found the sandstone wall footings and brick-built drainage structures. Acraman’s iron works was also at Bathurst Basin. The Hospital was continually complaining about the nearby noise and pollution. You can still see the name ‘Acramans’ on manhole covers and on ironmongery around the city.
Acraman’s iron works.
Lead shot was manufactured in Redcliffe. The lead that had been mined in the Mendips since Roman times had given rise to a small lead smelting industry. In 1782, William Watt converted his house, opposite St Mary Redcliffe, into the world's first shot tower, to make lead shot by his innovative tower process, dropping blobs of lead from height, so they formed a sphere, to be cooled by dropping into water. Prior to Watt’s innovation, lead shot had been laboriously cast in moulds. The Redcliffe Shot Tower remained a well-known feature until 1968, when it was demolished for road improvements, and shot manufacture transferred to the concrete Cheese Lane Shot Tower. At this time, Redcliffe was as industrialised as anywhere in the country. With a large brewing industry, paper, cotton, tobacco alongside glass, sugar and iron.
Watt’s Shot Tower, left Braikenbridge drawing, and right a 1906 photo BMC. The Tower would have stood in front of what is now the Colosseum Pub, on Redcliffe Hill.
Mathews’ street directory of 1871 lists the inhabitants of Guinea Street and their occupations, amongst which could be found craftsmen, publicans, bakers, grocers, builders, carpenters, and a doctor. Some of the houses and the industrial premises gradually disappeared as the General Hospital continued to expand up Guinea Street and as the railway was cut through the north side of the street, connecting the riverside wharves with Temple Meads railway station.
Redcliffe Rail Tunnel was started in 1868 and opened in 1870. The Tunnel is 282 yards long and carried two tracks. It's ‘cut and cover’ construction involved the demolition of the original Vicarage and the removal and re-internment of St Mary Redcliffe's graveyard to a site, still used today, opposite Arnos Vale cemetery. The last train ran in 1964. The area at this time was very densely inhabited, there were sheds and narrow lanes behind 10-12 Guinea Street.
Narrow lanes behind 10-12 Guinea Street, Loxton.
Tobacco was the most important industry across South Bristol in the 19th and 20th Centuries. WD & HO Wills, built their factory in Redcliffe Street in 1869 and became a household name. As the company grew, the factory moved to Bedminster. Wills Factory No 1, as it was known, opened in 1886 on a site that was previously a tannery and before that a medieval hospital, and is now partially occupied by ASDA. Designed by Sir Frank Wills, it was built using red brick, limestone and slate and was described as “the finest and most complete tobacco factory in the United Kingdom”. Construction on the site continued through to the early 20th century and in 1908 came Regent House, a headquarters for Imperial Tobacco Company, which amalgamated Wills with 12 other tobacco companies. At its peak some 13,000 people were directly employed by the tobacco trade Bedminster, and many other related businesses and their employees benefitted indirectly from tobacco manufacturing.37 When tobacco workers poured out of the towering red-brick factory buildings – remnants of which survive on East Street and North Street – they spent money in pubs, shops and cafes.
Up in smoke: Tracing the rise and fall of Bristol’s tobacco industry as seen through its buildings, Mark Gee, 2017 37
The Wills factory, with the arches of the new cut visible at the top of the photo.
Most of the Wills buildings in East Street were demolished in 1986 leaving only the facade of the 1884 Number 1 Factory, as well as some later structures.38 Tobacco production moved from Bedminster, first south to Hartcliffe and then East to Poland. In the 20th Century the docks in Redcliffe and across Bristol went into decline. Freight moved out to Avonmouth and later Royal Portbury Dock. Bristol’s greatest industries became aircraft and other transport manufacture in the north of the City. In Redcliffe, the chimneys stopped smoking, the hammers ceased clanging, and the factories fell silent.  
38
Ibid
Chapter 9 The Blitz and Post-War Planning The Decline of Redcliffe and the dock area was accelerated by Hitler. The Luftwaffe, followed the rivers Severn and Avon and targeted Bristol’s factories and warehouses for special attention. On Sunday November 26, 1940, in one of the most damaging air raids of the war, Redcliffe, along with much of the city centre, was blitzed. Commercial and industrial buildings were destroyed along with historic landmarks. Bombs fell on Redcliffe Hill and blasted pieces of tramline into the air. One length of track plunged into the graveyard of St Mary Redcliffe Church, where it can still be seen today and is said to go twice as deep as the part visible above ground.39 The church itself was saved by parishioners, and the vicar, doing shifts on the roof to kick off the incendiary devices. Tram-line in the Churchyard. Lois Mean Madden
39
James McVeigh Secret Bristol
The worst raid to hit Redcliffe was the Good Friday Raid of 11 April 1941. 153 German planes dropped 193 tons of high explosives and 36,888 incendiaries; five bombers were shot down and 180 people killed. One of the bombs from that raid fell in the playground of Redcliffe School. The blast penetrated down into the caves where people sheltered from the bombing. A pupil tells of the aftermath: “On the Monday after the raid, as usual I went to school. When I walked through the doorway a huge bomb crater confronted me. The gymnasium roof was gone, and every window shattered into the art centre. Anyway we went into assembly and the headmaster Mr Cecil Fryer told us that as the place was rather a mess with shattered glass all over, school was abandoned. He advised all the pupils who came from wherever to look for schooling nearer home”. 40
After the bomb in the school playground. Below, Guinea Street From Barossa Place 1951
40
BBC, WW2 People’s War
During the Second World War 1,299 people in Bristol were killed by German bombing. About 3,000 buildings were destroyed and 90,000 were damaged. The bombing devastated Guinea Street and much of the surrounding area. The damage suffered by Guinea Street was noted in minutes of the Planning and Reconstruction Committee 22/111944 to 23/10/1946. An application was submitted by the owners of numbers 1-7 for the use of Treasury Direction under the War Damage Act, that stated that if a a building was of special architectural or historical interest, payment could be made to secure the preservation or character of the building.
6-7 Guinea Street, before and after the bombing.
The Ministry of Works judged that these buildings, built by the noted plasterer Joseph Thomas in 1740, were of sufficient architectural interest to qualify for payment. However, with the enormous reconstruction bills after the War, the Government’s coffers were empty. It was resolved that only a minimum should be spent to prevent further dilapidation, and the Ministry informed that the Committee did not consider the properties should be preserved.41 The buildings were not repaired and were demolished in the 1950s to make way for the Underdown House flats. Much of the fabric of Redcliffe perished in this way, and to road-building in the 1950s and 1960s. The highway up Redcliffe Hill was initially planned to go round Watt’s shot tower, but in the end the road ploughed through it, and the building was lost. The Ordnance Survey map of 1947 shows houses still standing along the south side of the street, with a Parish Room - which served as a venue for many clubs in the following years, - opposite. Behind were tennis courts, and two pubs
41
(BRO-M/BCC/PREC1/2)
are visible the BH (Beer House) for the Victoria - now the Golden Guinea - and PH for what is now the Velindra.
The latter public house was named after a steamer, the Velindra, run by the Cardiff Steam Navigation Company, which sailed daily to South Wales along the New Cut. The Velindra was a gay pub in the late 1970s and 1980s and according to one customer, the landlady, Shirley, “held after hours drinking sessions for those in the fold. There was quite a collection of elderly old queens who used to sit around the pub.” 42 The map was to change dramatically. After the war the city council needed to build new housing for key workers. Architects created their models, and other buildings that had survived the bombs were demolished to make way for wider roads and high-rise blocks of flats. The demolition began and hundreds of years of history were flattened. Waring, Francombe and Underdown houses, which form a U shape with a courtyard behind, have 187 flats in total, and were built for “key workers” (including staff at the hospital). This was part of a wave of modernist projects which also included the Barton Hill flats and Dove Street in Kingsdown.
42
ourstoriesbristol.org The Velindra
Underdown House (the smaller block on the right in the photo) opened in 1960. The flats went for 64 shillings and 4 pence to rent (roughly £3.20) per week including hot water, laundry and heating.
A four line highway was driven up Redcliffe Hill, as part of the inner ring road. At the bottom, motorists could turn left, over the bridge and drive, diagonally, right through the middle of Queen Square. Turning right they cut across the front of St Mary Redcliffe Church, whose setting was now adorned with a roundabout, dual carriageway and ‘temporary’ car parks. These ‘temporary’ car parks have occupied this prime location on Redcliffe Way for half a century.
The subway under Redcliffe Hill in the 1960s
Aerial view, 1965.
In the aerial photograph above The flats have been built, the school premises have been demolished and the Phoenix insurance building has yet to be constructed. The parish hall still stands, 10-12 Guinea Street are just visible, with the building that is now NOMA architects, painted white.
Living in Underdown House Di and Wendy Rowlands moved in with their Mum, in 1980, Di to be close to her job as a secretary for a trade union, and they live on the first floor of Underdown House. ‘We moved here in 1980, from Withywood, and have been here for nearly 40 years. We loved being at the heart of everything. The place has changed a lot. It was much quieter then. There was less security needed. There were more elderly people. And there were certainly fewer cars. There’s completely different people living here. There’s 17 languages spoken here now’. We love the children’s festival, but some of our favourites memories are of the filming here. Casualty was filmed many times, but best of all was Doctor Who: we all watched the Tardis down below.” Many people who lived here in the early years worked at the General Hospital down the road. Today, residents are employed as builders, taxi drivers, and office workers. Children play out in the playground, to be called up for their tea from the balconies. There is a games court in the courtyard, where football matches can be heard echoing in the early evening. There’s a festival each year with food and music, and always a fireworks display around bonfire night, when rockets streak up past the balconies and windows before exploding in the sky above.
Chapter 10 The Houses – Inside and Outside The houses are considered by architectural historians as good examples of Late Queen Anne to Early Georgian style domestic housing. The three houses are listed, Number 10 at Grade II* and 11 and 12 at Grade II. They are all within the western part of the Redcliffe Conservation Area, which was designated in 1976.
Pevsner’s City guide to Bristol describes them thus: “On the south side, Nos 10-12, built as one house in 1718 for Edmund Saunders, a slave trader, merchant and churchwarden at St Mary Redcliffe. No 10 has the original entrance, with a mid-C18 Gothick door, and an ogee gable, perhaps added slightly after 1718. The house was divided into three before 1832, with the addition of cramped doorways. Wavy arises in gauged and rubbed brick to the upper windows, and twelve grotesque window keystones, the best such group in the city. The original plan must have been a through-corridor from the door, then at right angles to it a hall running E-W to the staircase, with two rooms in front and two behind.”
Pevsner continues: “At No 12, a good original staircase, with expected early C18 features. Over it, a fine stucco ceiling, probably by a local craftsman. A frame of fruit in high relief contains a delightful bas-relief of hunting scenes in a rural landscape. In the cellar, a stone cistern on an odd teardrop plan, just possibly an early plunge bath.‘”43
Walter Ison, in his book Georgian Buildings of Bristol, describes 10-12 Guinea Street as follows: "Built in 1718 and now divided into three houses: doors to 11 & 12 are obviously later insertions; door to no 10 is original although possibly in changed position”44 To Ison’s account various observations are added by Leech. “The sale in 1746 must have followed on from Saunders’ bankruptcy and the conveyance to his creditors in 1740 of the ‘new built capital messuage or mansion house where Edmund Saunders now lives in late Trim Mill Lane now Guinea Street’.45 Unfortunately, no records have been found which reference either the architect or craftsmen involved in the construction of Captain Saunder’s mansion. The interior of Number 10 is the best preserved. The English Heritage listing describes: “Brick with limestone dressings and a pantile gabled roof. Doubledepth plan. Early Georgian style. 2 storeys, basement and attic; 2-window range. Brick pilasters, moulded strings at each floor, and a moulded coping to a Dutch gable with an acorn finial. Right-hand doorway has scrolled timber brackets to a deep pediment, a rectangular doorframe beneath a semicircular overlight with curly top and plate glass, and a mid C18 door with 6 Gothick panels. Rubbedbrick flat arches, with wavy arrisses on the second floor, have keys carrying various motifs including grotesque faces, fish, birds, fruit and a harp, to 6/6pane sashes; a smaller, possibly later sash in the gable. Rear ground-floor 9/9pane sash with thick glazing bars....A fine and remarkably complete house.” 43
Pevsner City Guide, Bristol. Andrew Foyle. Yale University Press 2004
44
Ison, W, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol
45
Leach R, The Townhouse in Medieval and Early Modern Bristol
No.10 Guinea Street, chimneypiece in front parlour (NMR BB/9801114); Guinea Street, no 10, fully panelled entrance hall, photograph of 1998 (NMR BB98/01105)
The window keystones, ‘the best such group in the city’, bear emblems which may relate to Captain Saunders. Keystones of this period are normally plain and it is unusual for them to be decorated in this way. It is possible they symbolise a mixture of European trade and classical details.46
Six of the keystones, “the best such group in the city”.
The Oldest Bath in Bristol? The Pevsner guide writes “The cellars of number 12 contain a teardrop-shaped stone plunge bath, with plug hole at the bottom, partially overlain with modern floor work”. These kind of simple plunge baths were introduced to the homes of the more hygiene-conscious during the second half of the 18th Century (Parissien 1995). According to Pevsner, this may make this either a later addition to 12 Guinea Street or one of the earliest domestic baths still surviving in the city. A similar example of a tear-drop-shaped plunge bath is contained within the Georgian House museum in Bristol, which was built 70 years later.
46
Emily Glass, Historic Building investigation and Recording on 10-12 Guinea Street, 2008.
Chapter 11 One, Two or Three Houses? Ison and Pevsner both assert that the three houses, were originally built as one mansion and later divided into three.47 In his publication The Townhouse in Medieval and Early Modern Bristol, Professor Leach of Southampton University disputes the ‘urban myth’ that they were originally one house which was then subdivided, and suggests that the houses were probably built as three separate properties. Contrariwise, Professor Leach wrote in his a report on 10 – 12 Guinea Street in 1997 that “the uniform facade was for the row of houses, rather than a single large mansion. The separate vaulted cellars, other internal walls and the three separate hipped roofs all point to an initial intention to build three separate houses on this site each c20ft in width. Further evidence for this intention is that within no 10 there are no indications of any blocked openings or circulation routes into nos 11-12”.48 He continues that “these three houses formed part of a larger mansion may be no more than an urban myth. The conveyance of Saunders’ property to his creditors in 1740 was of the ‘new built capital messuage or mansion where Edmund Saunders now lives’ together with six other messuages, some lying near or adjoining, of Joseph Wilson, Thomas Holmes, John Shelton, Capt. Thomas Rowe (no 8), Edward Moore (no 9) and William Barnsdale (no 10) as undertenants to Edmund Saunders. Through its architecture Saunders’ row of houses appeared from the exterior to be a large mansion, but from the architectural and documentary evidence it appears always to have been three or more separate houses; Saunders appears to have lived in no 11”.49
Our research, however, suggests that these were not built as one single mansion as Ison suggests, nor three separate buildings as Leech suggests. Instead, that they were built as two separate properties. What is now Number 10 as one property, and what are now 11 and 12 as another separate property. As Leach states, there was no route between what is now number 10 and what is now number 11, because they were separate houses. What are now numbers 11 and 12 were recorded as one dwelling from at least 1775 through to the late 1800s when it was split into two, and both Pevsner and Glass state that one East-West corridor ran between these two houses. The staircase in what is now number 12 is very grand and out of proportion for a single narrow dwelling. Nor, would such a narrow doorway and entrance have been built if the house was originally designed as a single dwelling.
47
The Georgian Biuidlings of Bristol, Ison; Pevsners’ City Guide: Bristol, Foyle
48
The Town House in Medieval and Early Modern Bristol, Professor Roger H Leech
49
Ibid.
Sir Donald Insall sketch, 1954, showing 8-13 Guinea Street.
A report by NOMA architects states that: ‘The original door into no 11 / 12 is believed to be inside the property attached to No 12, which is now number 13’. 50 There is certainly the remains of an old door frame, visible, and there was a very large picture window, facing westward, on the stairs of number 12. A study of the houses in 2008 records how the doorways between the cellar vaults that run between the two houses have been blocked, and that a through passage ran east-to-west, between the houses, with diagonal pattern stone floor.51
The occupancy of two of the three houses can be traced from the 1720s through to the first street directory of 1775 (where 11 and 12 are a single dwelling - number 11). On Plumley and Ashmead’s map of 1828 only no 10 is specifically identified. Nos 11 and 12 are shown as a single house, Professor Leach writes: “Tracing the occupancy of the three houses back from the first street directory of 1775 through the lamp and scavenging rates for the parish of St Mary Redcliff provides the following lists of occupants: No 10: entries commence 1723 Capt Joseph Smith, 1735 late Capt Smith void, 1740 Capt Barnsdale, 1750 --- Shebear, 1752-62 Capt Holbrook No 11: entries commence 1723 Capt Edmund Saunders, 1742 void, 1745 Capt Saunders and yard void, 1749 William Jones or occupier, 1757-62 Dr Dominicetti, 1763 Rice Charleton, 1772 William Weare No 12: 1742 widow Maddin, 1745 William Jones attorney, 1751-62 William Jones, 1766 widow Jones
Number 12, as is clear from the map records (Ashmead 1855 and 1874) was originally the number of a house sited further down the road. These houses were likely to have been constructed later than the Saunders houses, number 10 and 11, hence not appearing in the Parish records until 1742. According to Wright’s Street Directory, What is the current Number 12, was not numbered as number 12 until sometime around 1900.
50
NOMA, (2017) 10 Guinea Street, Redcliffe, Bristol BS1 6SX,
51
Glass, E. Op.cit.
All the evidence suggests that they were originally built as two separate houses, not one, or three, with Captain Saunders residing at No. 11 (what is. currently 11, 12 and part of 13). The Ashmead map of 1855 shows number 10 as a separate property, and what now numbers 11 and 12 as one single property. (A house with the number 12 is still, then, on the other side of French Yard).


Ashmead 1855 (above); 1879 Town Plan (below)
The 1879 Town Plan has 11 and what is now number 12 as individual dwellings.
Wright’s Bristol Directory suggest that Number 11 was divided into two by 1882, but the second house wasn’t numbered as 12 until the early 20th Century. By 1900 what is now number 12 has been separated from number 11. The 1900 map does not have house numbers, but 10, 11 & 12 are shown as three separate properties from this point. Matthews Bristol Directory, and the later Wright’s Directory, record these houses as separate.
Sketches drawn by Sir Donald Insall, 1954, showing front and rear of 8–13 Guinea Street
Chapter 12 The Houses and Street Today Today, in 2018, three hundred years after the houses were built, Guinea Street is part of a vibrant and mixed neighbourhood. Commercial and residential buildings line the street. Flats housing Bristolians and refugees escaping from conflict in Syria and Somalia - at one end, and luxury apartments housing refugees escaping from London house prices at the other. The echoes of the mercantile past remain, with the Golden Guinea and the Ostrich, Brunel’s tunnel under the street, and the remaining Georgian dwellings at numbers 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18 and 40. So, much has been lost. St Mary Redcliffe School and the Chapel/Church Hall (home to a variety of clubs) are now a hotel car park. The Georgian houses of numbers 7-9, with their ornate plasterwork, have been replaced by the modernist bulk of Underdown House, which rises above the eastern end of the street. The blocks of Underdown and Waring House, are built where once stood a small school and many retailers, including a faggot shop which was famous across Bristol. The 1960s concrete brutalism of the Phoenix Insurance building has been transformed into the Mercure Holland House Hotel, its spa on Guinea Street in the shell of some of the original Georgian buildings, promises ‘the perfect place to escape the stresses of modern life.’ The train-track is a carpark, with the tunnel blocked up. The General development has transformed the General Hospital, with fresh new stone work and some 220 new dwellings. There are two Michelin starred restaurants on the ground floor of The General, overlooking Bathurst Basin, and one of them Casamia - has recently been anointed the best restaurant in the whole country by Harden’s. The neighbourhood continues to be transformed. The Future of Redcliffe Supplementary Planning Document has a vision of: “A sustainable neighbourhood of compact, mixed-use development that is human-scale, accessible to all and respectful of the area’s history and character.” And plans are afoot for Redcliffe Way, Temple Meads and the surrounding area. The Redcliffe Residents Action Group & Neighbourhood Forum has been developing a Neighbourhood Development Plan which sets out the community’s vision for how Redcliffe should develop over the coming years. The Plan aims to stitch back together North and South Redcliffe - which is currently severed in two by a 4-lane highway - and will tackle inequality in the heart of our city by creating a major mixed-use development, led by affordable housing and excellent design. Instead of a carpark and highways, Redcliffe Way will become a human-scale street again, with over 140 new homes, and small
shops and businesses, and public spaces running along it. It will become a place for living, lingering and urban delight, where North, South, East and West Bristol meet, and a fitting setting for St Mary Redcliffe Church. Numbers 10, 11, 12 and 13 Guinea Street are still inhabited today. From being homes for a sailmaker, cider merchant, carpenter, draper, and physiognomist in the previous two centuries, professions today include, a professor, arts curator, administrator, architect and speech therapist. The houses are still lived in and loved, and, with luck and care, will stand for another 300 years.
Bibliography Aughton, P (2000) Bristol: A People’s History Bristol Record Society Publications (BRS) 1986. Bristol, Africa and the 18th Century Slave Trade to America, Volume 1: the years of Expansion 1698 to 1729. Damer Powell, Commander JW (1930) Bristol Privateers and Ships of War Dening CFW (1923) the 18th Century Architecture of Bristol Glass, E, (2008) Historic Building Investigation and Reporting on 10 to 12 Guinea Street, Bristol. Foyle, A (2004) Bristol: Pevsner City Guide Gomme A, Jenner M and Little, B (1979) Bristol: An Architectural History. Ison W, (1952) The Georgian Buildings of Bristol Leach, R, The Townhouse in Medieval and Early Modern Bristol. Macveigh, James, (2017) Bristol Pubs Manson, Michael (1988) Bristol beyond the Bridge. Mowl T (1991), To build the Second City. Architects and Craftsmen of Georgian Bristol. Parissien S (1995) The Georgian Books Group of the Georgian House. Richardson, D (1985 ) The Bristol Slave Traders.