Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

Bristol

Times

TUE

10 SEP 2013

Celebrating our proud history and keeping your memories alive

Page 4 City’s most notorious – and unsolved – murder

The golden age of law and order?

A look at crime figures during National Service

● The medieval crypt of St John on the Wall

Things are looking up as Doors Open Day returns

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HE first of Bristol’s Doors Open Days took place in 1994, with the opening of 28 buildings to the public. “There was much nervousness that no-one would come. In the event, Bristolians turned out in their thousands on the day, and several of the venues were almost overwhelmed,” writes Doors Open Day organiser Penny Mellor in a newly-published book.

One of the organisations which took up the idea most enthusiastically was Bristol United Press (as it was called then), publishers of the Bristol Post and the Western Daily Press. The good folk here thought it was a grand idea to let the public in and show them around.

They were keen to show visitors the old-style hot-metal printing presses which newspapers had been produced on for decades. These were about to be replaced by newfangled systems, and journalists who had

hammered away on typewriters all their lives were now starting to write their copy onto computer screens.

(Some of us still haven’t gotten to grips with this new technology.)

They reckoned a few dozen visitors would show, but they made a small miscalculation.

Penny Mellor, who has been organising Doors Open Day from the start, takes up the story: “They were expecting 30 or 40 visitors at the most, but they got three or four thousand,” she told Bristol Times. “They later said that they even had to draft in the tea ladies to show people around.”

Doors Open Day (DOD) was popular then, and it’s still popular now. In 2012, DOD recorded more than 50,000 visits to all the venues on the programme.

With the benefit of hindsight, there’s no great secret to its success. Most of us are

Turn to page 2

Page 8 Cut your cloth accordingly

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September 14 sees another of Bristol’s annual Doors Open Days, when we all get to go and have a good nose around places which aren’t normally open to the public. This year there are plenty of treats in store, including a few that have never been open before, as well as a brand new book to mark its two decades.

Eugene Byrne reports.

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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Get involved | Bristol Doors Open 2013

New book to mark 20 years behind scenes across Bristol From page 1 curious about those places which we can’t normally get into. If you walk past an interesting-looking building every day – you might even have done it for years – then of course you want to see what’s inside.

This year, DOD marks its two decades with a new book from Redcliffe Press – Inside Bristol: 20 Years of Doors Open Day by Penny Mellor. It tells the story behind the event and profiles 31 of the buildings which have taken part down the years.

The idea originated in the early 1990s. Tessa Jackson, who was then director of the Arnolfini, had come to work in Bristol following a spell in Glasgow helping organise activities when it was European Capital of Culture in 1990. Part of that had involved opening venues to the public.

At the same time, the Council of Europe was encouraging civic organisations across the continent to do something similar. So while Doors Open Dayis going on in Bristol, there are usually ‘Heritage Open Days’ going on across the country, usually on the same weekend (see panel below).

So there you go. Not everything coming out of Europe is a bad idea.

Bristol, though, has always stood slightly aloof from the rest of the country, preferring to keep its own, unique event.

This year there are many of the usual favourites. Among the contemporary buildings there’ll be the ever-popular Aardman Animations HQ and the Bristol Heart Institute. If you’re into all things green, then Horizon House on Deanery Road, close to the Central Library, is supposed to be the state-of-the-art when it comes to environmental buildings.

And while we’re on matters green, don’t forget the sewage works out at

● A behindthe-scenes tour at Bristol Record Office

Avonmouth, where they are making fertiliser from Bristol’s, um, waste matter and using the gases it produces to power the plant.

Still with Avonmouth, you can get coach tours of the Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Docks, but booking for this is essential – call 0906 711 2191 (calls charged at 50p per minute).

Obviously there’s a lot of history here, though what they’ll want you to see is all the modern stuff, and the ways in which they’re trying to create a sustainable port for the 21st century. But this is a great chance to understand just how important the docks are to Bristol and what an

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They are all wonderful, all fascinating in their own different ways and I simply encourage everyone to go to as many as possible

Author Penny Mellor

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amazing success story they have been.

But this is Bristol Times, so let’s stick with the history. Lots of historic buildings are open as usual, and even places which are normally open to the public will be putting on talks and/or behind the scenes tours.

There isn’t enough room here to mention everything, so instead let us make a small number of recommendations and observations.

First, churches. All the usual places are open, along with a few which normally have more restricted opening hours. And of course the great thing about DOD is that most

● No prizes for guessing which local animation firm’s HQ this is will have some people on hand to tell you some of the building’s background story.

This is an excellent opportunity, for instance, to look around St John’s, aka St John on the Wall, at the end of Broad Street. Famously, it was built, quite literally, into the city walls, and has a fascinating, rather spooky medieval crypt. As you wander around this, bear in mind that this is only one of the many medieval underground spaces and cellars that are actually all over town.

While you’re in the neighbourhood, don’t miss Christ Church, the opulent 18th century church that was one of the favourite places of worship for the High Anglican great and good

back in the day. This is a glorious, bright, richly-adorned place … And then take the short walk to Wesley’s New Room in Broadmead and contrast its stark, Nonconformist austerity. Comparing these two places of worship tells you everything you need to know about the huge gulf in wealth and status which once existed between rich and poor Bristolians.

Still in the same neighbourhood, the one must-see this year is the Guildhall in Small Street. This was built in the mid 19th century as Bristol’s Assize Court and functioned as the Crown Court until a couple of years ago. Now the courts have all been moved across the road and the building is set to become a five-star

Heritage Open Days 2013

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Seen it all before? Then try a heritage open day ● If you’ve been doing Bristol Doors Open Day for all 20 years, or if you’ve seen everything on offer this year, don’t worry. There are plenty of other places opening elsewhere this weekend to satisfy your curiosity.

Heritage Open Days take place from Thursday, September 12 to Sunday, September 15 at locations right across England, with loads of venues across our own region.

There’s at least half a dozen places in Bath, including special tours of the tunnels at the Roman Baths. There’s quite a lot in South

Gloucestershire as well.

One here that will be of great interest to some is the Oldwood Pit at Rangeworthy. On Sat September 14 and Sun September 15 members of the South Gloucestershire Mines Research Group are running tours around the site of the old mine. The history of the site will be explained to visitors, both on guided tours of the site and in a variety of displays of information and artefacts. The tours are all above ground; the ground is uneven and can be muddy, so sensible footwear is

advisable. There will also be refereshments available.

More details are at www.sgmrg.co.uk/oldwood.

Heritage Open Days weekend also offers a rare chance to visit what (in Bristol Times’s opinion anyway) is one of the most intriguing places for miles around, the Banwell Bone Caves.

The Caves are welcoming visitors on Sat, September 14 and Sun, September 15 from 10.30am to 4.30pm, and if you’ve never looked around them it’s well worth considering a visit.

The Caves’ story goes something like this: Over thousands of years, animals living in the area died and decayed, and their bones were washed into caves. This wealth of bones was discovered a few hundred years back and the site was bought by a bishop in Victorian times for turning into a 19th-century religious theme park.

Why? Well obviously, the churchmen reasoned, these were the bones of animals which had perished in the Great Flood of Noah’s Ark fame. My Lord Bishop installed fake pagan artefacts (as

hotel, so this might be your only chance to look inside at the courtroom and (hopefully) the holding cells as well.

Bristol’s former main fire station in Silver Street closed down many years ago, and it’s now a youth centre where all manner of brilliant creative work goes on. You can go inside on DOD, whether to admire all the music, film, art and performance work of the youngsters or look for evidence of its former role, including practice tower and those poles which firemen used to slide down.

Bristol Central Library has been in the news a lot lately over hugely controversial plans to hand part of this Grade I listed building over to the

the non-believers had died for their wickedness), a wood and, at the other end of the estate, a tower. .

The house and land are privately owned and not often open to the public, but this is a chance to go into the caves, see the thousands of accumulated bones, climb the tower and wander the woods.

Admission is free, though donations towards the upkeep of the site are most welcome.

Refreshments will also be available.

Bear in mind, though, that the Heritage Open Days offer plenty of other venues, too. And even if you’re going to spend the Saturday visiting places in Bristol, most of these outside the city are open on the Sunday.

For further information, and a full list of all the other places opening, see www.heritageopendays.org.uk.

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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

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● Where the folk of Bedminster used to keep clean before inside plumbing came along. The Slipper Baths at Bristol South Pool

● How the other half lives it up; the dining room at Merchants’ Hall, the home of the Society of Merchant Venturers, on the Promenade, Clifton For more on the Underfall Yard see the big article in last week’s Bristol Times.

If you’re in that general direction, don’t forget Bristol Record Office, which is offering behind-the-scenes tours. The BRO has miles of shelving with archives and documents dating back to the middle ages, some of them absolutely priceless. Note, though, that these have to be pre-booked. Call 0117 922 4224 or email bro@bristol. gov.uk.

Down in Dean Lane in Bedminster at the Bristol South Baths is a fascinating historic hangover, and

something which you won’t see very often anywhere any more. Next to the swimming pool is a corridor of slipper baths which haven’t been used, or much seen, in years. These date back to the times when most people didn’t have baths in their homes and so went to public baths every so often to have a proper wash. These “slipper” baths – so called because you slip into them – were once very common in Britain’s towns and cities but fell into disuse once most people got indoor plumbing.

The ones at Dean Lane date back to the 1930s when the Bristol South

Bathing establishment was built for the ever-expanding community around. They were built on the site of a former colliery owned by the Smyth family of Ashton Court, and were part of the same bequest of land to the council as Dame Emily (as in Dame Emily Smyth) Park.

The slipper baths were last used in the 1960s, but are still there in a corridor alongside the pool building.

They were open to the public on last year’s DOD, but as this happened at the last minute, they didn’t have a lot of publicity. Nonetheless, they did get some visitors. Sara Wex of the Friends of Bristol South Swimming Pool, who organised the opening, told Bristol Times: “We have had so many wonderful – and moving – stories already. One from a lady who had her, today we would say ‘hen do’, in the slipper baths. Then there was the husband and wife who described to me that the pool used to be boarded over with wooden boards in winter for rollerskating and that the wife used to remove splinters from her husband’s (then boyfriend’s) bottom!

“I’m sure there must be dozens more stories to be told, we would love to hear them.”

If you’re on Facebook, search for the Friends of Bristol South Swimming Pool or follow @aqua_chat on Twitter.

There’s a tendency for some folk to think that DOD is mostly about places in the middle of town, but of course there are loads of interesting things further out, and which, frankly, are easier to drive to.

The Glenside Hospital Museum of the Mind is one of the most remarkable museums in the whole region, and as it’s normally only open for a

couple of days each week, this is a good opportunity to go and take a look. It’s housed in the former chapel of what was once Bristol’s main psychiatric hospital, and traces the history, some of it quite disturbing, of treatment of mental disorder in Bristol from the times when it was known as a “lunatic asylum” through to more recent times. During the First World War it became a hospital for wounded soldiers and the artist Stanley Spencer worked here for a while.

Kings Weston House is also on the outskirts and is privately owned, although it’s being restored so some of it can be used for weddings, meetings etc. DOD is a good opportunity to see this impressive 18th century mansion and learn a little more about the fascinating stories of the folk who used to live there. There are extensive grounds to wander as well. The Kings Weston Action Group is a very energetic community group dedicated to uncovering the site’s history and preserving it.

Penny Mellor diplomatically refuses to be drawn on which are her own personal favourite places.

“They are all wonderful, all fascinating in their own different ways and I simply encourage everyone to go to as many as possible.”

Bristol Doors Open Day is on Saturday, September 14, from 10am to 4pm, admission is free. Leaflets detailing which buildings are open are available from local libraries and other public buildings. Or see www.bristoldoorsopenday.org. ● Inside Bristol: 20 Years of Doors Open Day be Penny Mellor is published by Redcliffe Press at £10. All the pictures in this article are taken from the book.

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Cathedral School for its new primary school. On DOD the Library will be offering behind-the-scenes tours (about 90 minutes a time, lots of stairs, so not suitable for people with mobility problems) which will include the chance to look at the remarkable ‘Bristol Room’ which includes fittings – including an 18th century fireplace by the great Grinling Gibbons – which came from Bristol’s former library.

This year is also the 400th anniversary of the opening of Bristol’s first public library. Bristol has one of the oldest public library services in the world.

We’re assuming that you have long since visited the Redcliffe Caves on a previous Doors Open Day, though if you haven’t now’s your chance. This is probably the single most popular DOD attraction, with hundreds of visitors wanting to see these old mine workings.

Further along Harbourside is the Underfall Yard, which this year is exhibiting plans for the future of the site. This will involve taking over buildings which are currently empty or being used by the council, which no longer needs them.

The idea is then to create a larger working area where there will be offices and workshops, most of them involved with boat-making and associated trades. So they don’t just want to preserve an important part of Bristol’s port heritage, but also ensure that people will still be working with ships and boats, and the docks don’t just become a parking place for houseboats and pleasure craft (or “white plastic gin palaces” as one grizzled old dock denizen once described them to me).

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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Officially unsolved | Odeon scene of 1946 crime

Cinema manager was murdered in bungled robbery, or so we believe...

● The Odeon and Union Street in the 1930s. The street would have looked different in 1946, with a lot of bomb damage

Bristol’s Odeon cinema has just celebrated its 75th birthday, but besides being one of Bristol’s best-loved cinemas, it’s also the site of possibly the city’s most notorious murder of the 20th century. Eugene Byrne reports on a case which, officially at least, remains unsolved to this day

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HE Light That Failed is not one of Rudyard Kipling’s most famous stories, but it was well liked in its day, and was filmed twice. It’s the story of an artist, Dick Heldar, who is losing his eyesight as a result of an injury sustained in one of Britain’s long-forgotten Victorian wars in Africa. He is struggling to complete his masterpiece, a portrait of a girl, before he goes completely blind.

A film version was made in Hollywood in 1939 starring Ronald Colman and Ida Lupino. It was well received by the critics, but it didn’t appear on British cinema screens until 1946.

Film distributors considered it too depressing for wartime Britain. But when it played Bristol’s Odeon cinema in 1946, it pulled in decent-sized audiences.

On the evening of Wednesday, May 29, it was showing to a full house – around 2,000 people.

The Odeon was much bigger in those days; what is nowadays the H&M store was then the cinema foyer.

As well as a huge single auditorium, it also had a restaurant.

The film started showing at 6.25pm.

Early on in the film, the gunshots which would blind Dick Heldar rang out on the screen.

And it’s passed into local legend that the shots in the film masked the

sound of real gunshots in the cinema manager’s office. The earliest reference to this is a newspaper report that there were five shots on the soundtrack followed by a sixth in the office. Though in fact two bullets were fired.

Between 6.40pm and 6.45pm, the supervisor of the cinema’s cafeteria entered the office of the manager, Robert Parrington Jackson, to ask him if he was ready for his tea.

She went into shock as she found him lying on the office floor groaning, and bleeding from a wound in the head.

The police were called and detectives came running from Bridewell station.

Two uniformed constables guarded the office door, but the screening continued. Aside from a message flashed up on the screen asking if there was a doctor in the house, the audience knew nothing until they came out of the show.

Robert Parrington Jackson died at the BRI the following morning of a gunshot wound to the head. He had not regained consciousness.

He was 33 years old, and quite a glamorous figure. In his time he had tried his hand at acting, car racing and had briefly been a radio presenter. He had taken over the running of the Odeon in 1939, but almost immediately had left for wartime service in the Royal Navy.

He had only been back in his old job

for a few weeks when he died. He was married with a wife and four-year-old son.

Superintendent Fred Carter of Bristol Constabulary took charge of the case and started looking for a motive.

Shortly before being shot, Jackson had put the takings from two shows into the office safe. In total, this was about £800, a huge sum in 1946, the equivalent of several tens of thousands today.

Yet the keys to the safe were still in

Jackson’s pocket, and the money in the safe was untouched.

Police also ruled out any possibility of suicide almost immediately.

Aside from the fact that there was no gun beside his body, he had been laughing and joking with the staff

National Service

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A golden age of law and order? ● NOWADAYS there is a folk-memory of the 1940s and 50s being a time when Britain was largely crime-free, when people went to bed without locking their doors.

Yet whatever nostalgic ideas we might have, crime shot up during the war; rationing and the blackout offered ample opportunities for the criminally-minded.

There was a rise in youth crime. At the time people observed that this was surely because boys were deprived of fathers and other male authority figures and role models because they were all in the armed forces.

Another factor was the easy availability of firearms, particularly in the immediate postwar years. Many weapons were stolen from the forces, while others were brought home by returning servicemen as souvenirs.

Bristol police never assumed that the use of an American gun in the murder of Parrington Jackson meant the killer was necessarily an American.

They took the theory that it might have been a deserter from the British armed forces much more seriously.

One of their first moves in the investigation was to request a

nationwide trawl of railway stations and bus stations for deserters.

And yet into the 1980s and beyond, it was commonly said that Britain should bring back National Service to reduce youth crime.

National Service ended in 1963, and not long afterwards politicians and pundits blamed the rise of 1960s youth culture, with its materialism, promiscuity and disrespect for authority, on its abolition.

Yet crime continued increasing through the ’40s.

The early 1950s did see a small fall in crime rates, but overall figures remained much higher than in the

● National servicemen on parade 1930s, when there had been no conscription. In 1950, a total of 461,435 offences were recorded in England and Wales; in 1955 it was

438,085. But by 1960 it had risen to 743,713. So there was a huge rise in crime while National Service was still going on.

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Reward on offer for any secret meanings of George Ridler’s Oven

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● This US Army issue Colt .45 was found in South Wales and had been used in the murder of a young girl. At first it was believed to have been used in Bristol too, but another gun of the same model was found in Bristol three months after the murder. Below, murder victim Robert Parrington Jackson

Latimer’s Diary tion from ‘Agricultural Shows’ to ‘Zoological Gardens’ and it has pictures in.

It’s loads of fun. There’s a whole page devoted to the city’s most important organs, for instance (the best ones were at the Colston Hall and the Victoria Rooms apparently).

Another three pages tell us about street sweeping and sewerage, and there’s a two-page table on the cab fares you should expect to pay.

From the look of things you could go out on the tiles in Bristol in 1906, get stinking drunk, have a slap-up faggot-and-pea supper, cab it home and still have change from half a crown.

It’s full of odd little bits. Here’s a local drinking song from the 1600s, Bristol accent and all: My Dog is good to catch a Hen A Duck or Goose is vood for Men; And where good Company I spy, O thether gwoes my dog and I. When I have dree zixpences under my Thumb, O then I be welcome wherever I come; But when I have non, O then I pass

by, 'Tis Poverty pearts good Company.

If I should die, as it may hap, My Greauve shall be under the good Yeal Tap; in voulded Earmes there wool us lie, Cheek by Jowl my Dog and I. The song is called George Ridler’s Oven and was popular with an organisation called the Gloucestershire Society, founded in 1657 just as people were getting really fed up with Cromwell’s rule. The Society worked secretly for the restoration of the monarchy, and aside from Royalists its numbers may have included Roman Catholics.

Over the years after the monarchy returned, the Society transformed into a charitable organisation, and undoubtedly an excuse for its members to flee their families and get drunk on a regular basis.

The song supposedly has some secret royalist meaning buried in it, but we don’t know what it is. Through the miracle of modern digital technology (I put it on Facebook) I asked some academic historians to spot the hidden meanings, but they didn’t have a clue either.

This column is offering the usual reward* to anyone who can decode the secret meanings of George Ridler’s Oven … (* ie nothing.)

A boat-iful day at Castle

● IT’S always a happy day at Latimer Towers when The Regional Historian flops down on the mat.

(NB: It’s a magazine, not a person.)

The Regional Historian is produced by the University of the West of England’s Regional History Centre (RHC) and comes out as often as they can manage it, usually twice a year or so.

It’s essential reading for anyone with an intelligent interest in the history of Bristol and surrounding counties. There’s news, book reviews and several articles.

So this latest issue, for instance, includes features on the use of Bristol-made clay pipes in the slave trade and how Bath’s “night soil” was dealt with in the 18th century before proper sewers came along.

The mag normally costs a fiver, but if you become an associate member of the RHC – it’s open to all and just costs a tenner – you get it free, along with discounts or free admission to RHC events.

For more information, see http://tinyurl.com/regional-history.

IF you’ve never visited Berkeley Castle, put that right soon. If you’re looking for an excuse to visit again, here’s two: First, from September 15 to 30 they’ve got lots of floral and produce displays around the castle, plus a harvest-themed children’s trail. The Berkeley family have a long tradition of celebrating the Harvest Festival.

Second, they’re now displaying a ship model which was found in a cupboard last year. This is a scale replica of the hull of the Severn, a 44-gun fifth-rater built for the Navy in Bristol in 1786. The model would have been used as a guide in the shipyard where, of course, many workers, however skilled, could not read.

The scale is one quarter inch to the foot, so workers would be able to ensure the timbers were cut to the right length.

Berkeley Castle already has a collection of maritime paintings and memorabilia, as several of the Berkeleys were in the Royal Navy down the generations.

The Severn was wrecked at Granville Bay, Jersey, on December 21, 1804, and the Berkeley Castle folk would love to hear from anyone with any ancestors who were involved in building the ship, or serving on her.

Meanwhile, if you fancy an outing up the road to Berkeley, all the info is at www.berkeley-castle.com.

Cheers then!

● The recently discovered model ship the Severn

Get in touch: Email Bristol.Times@b-nm.co.uk or write to Bristol Times, Bristol Post, Temple Way, Bristol BS99 7HD

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shortly before he was shot.

Two shots had been fired. One missed. Both came from a US Army issue Colt .45 automatic pistol, and a search for the weapon was launched immediately. For a time it was thought that the same gun had been used in the murder of a 12-year-old girl in South Wales.

A few days after the killing, an anonymous note to the police gave them a description of a possible suspect. Aged 30-35, clean-shaven, about five foot seven tall, medium build, dark suit, white shirt, dark tie.

Police also said they were looking for a second suspect, a possible accomplice, a younger man who had been seen looking shifty and nervous in the Odeon restaurant just before the murder.

Police questioned one man in Bristol, while at their request another man – a former American soldier – was questioned by US military police in Britain. Both men were cleared, no charges were made and the trail went cold.

The murder weapon was found later in the summer. It had been thrown into a water-tank, one of the many which had been set up around town during the war to ensure water supplies for firefighters during the Blitz and which had still not been dismantled.

The police maintained that they were looking for two men, and that the most likely motive for the killing was robbery. But in the years that followed, all sorts of stories and theories were traded around town.

The most common of these were around the theme of the glamorous manager’s love-life. It was rumoured he’d been shot by a jealous lover, or the boyfriend of an usherette who had become pregnant by him.

In the mid-1970s, a man living in

Bristol’s Salvation Army hostel, Fred Jesser, called the Post. He said that he had given information to the police at the time of the murder and it was his theory that the popular manager was killed because he was over-familiar with his staff.

“Jacko was the sort of bloke who would always greet his usherettes, waitresses and kiosk girls with a hug or a kiss,” he told a reporter.

“It was nothing more than wellmeant fun but I believe it led to one of their boyfriends becoming jealous.

Something happened to one of the girls in the kiosk and although Jacko had nothing to do with it, he apparently got the blame.”

A twist on this was that some said that actually women didn’t like him at all. He was rude, arrogant and a serial groper. One former usherette, interviewed in the press about 20 years ago, said he was a horrible man. “He used to think of himself as a real lad.”

One of the detectives working on the case was also interviewed 20 years ago, and said that the police never took the jealous lover seriously.

They’d looked into it, of course, but there was nothing there as far as they were concerned.

And then there were the ghost stories. The cinema was haunted by the manager, but he only ever appeared to female members of staff. In the 1990s, the then-manager told a local magazine that the ghost had appeared to a cleaner late at night. It was a hot summer evening, the cleaner said, but suddenly the auditorium went freezing cold, she saw a man, and then he wasn’t there.

The ghostly aspect came to a bizarre head in the late 1990s when the Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, a minor TV celebrity investigator of the paranormal, visited the cinema with an exorcist.

Finally, in 1993, there came a resolution of sorts … That year, a man named Jeff Fisher walked into a police station in Cardiff and announced that his father was the killer.

Billy Fisher, known as ‘The Fish’, had been a petty crook in the 1940s.

He and his mate Dukey Leonard had travelled to Bristol from South Wales that day in 1946 with the intention of robbing the cinema.

They had panicked, he said, when the manager walked into his office when they were trying to open the safe, and ‘The Fish’ had shot him.

He confessed his crime to his son when he was on his deathbed in 1989.

Jeff Fisher told the police he believed that his father may have murdered more than once.

Officially, however, the case remains unsolved.

OOKS. You can prop up tables with ’em, you can chuck ’em at flies, and you can even read ’em. Marvellous things.

Won’t heard a word against them.

I like them so much that I buy lots, preferably old ones from secondhand shops. “What do you want all them for?” Mrs Latimer regularly complains. “They’re all the same. They’re all just lumps of paper with words in.

Why don’t you just keep one and I’ll order a couple of skips for all the rest?”

“Pshaw!” I reply (I’m learning to speak historical.) “Pshaw! They all have words in a different order to one another. That’s what makes them so interesting. Why, you might as well complain that my Wagner and Heavy Metal CDs are all the same because they all make the same horrible noise!”

“I was about to get onto that,” she usually replies.

Bristol’s Secret Royalist Code My most prized secondhand bookshop find of recent months is a copy of Arrowsmith’s Dictionary of Bristol from 1906, a snip at fifteen quid.

Despite its great age, it’s a toilet book. You know, something for dipping into and reading a bit at a time.

It’s split up into little alphabetically-organised gobbets of informa-

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Free history events

Historians on hand to help out writers

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MEET the Historians is a new initiative which brings together members of the public and local experts such as historians, archaeologists, genealogists, librarians, archivists and fiction and non-fiction writers.

Working with the Bristol Literature Festival and Bristol’s museums, the Historical Novel Society has put together two free events.

The first of these events – From Roman Fact to Roman Fiction – is on October 19 from 2-4pm at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.

Historical novelists Manda Scott and Ben Kane, Professor Kate Robson-Brown of the University of Bristol and museum curator Gail Boyle will explore the relationship between Roman fact and Roman historical fiction. The afternoon will include a special introduction to the exhibition Roman Empire: Power and People by curator Gail Boyle (NB: there is a charge for entry to the exhibition).

From Roman Fact to Roman Fiction is part of a programme of activities accompanying the touring exhibition Roman Empire: Power and People (September 21 – January 12, 2014), when objects will be displayed alongside objects from Bristol Museum’s own collections.

The second event – The Best Port of Trade in Britain, Bristol’s Maritime History – is on October 26, 2-4pm at Bristol M Shed.

Historical novelist Julian Stockwin, Bristol author Lucienne Boyce, historian Adrian Tinniswood and Dr Steve Poole, of the University of the West of England, will offer advice on researching Bristol’s maritime past.

Richard Lee, who founded the Historical Novel Society in 1997, said: “We have a terrific line-up of experts who will be on hand to talk about researching local history and answer questions.”

For further details and how to book, see the HNS Bristol and South West Chapter’s website: http://tinyurl.com/meet-the-historians

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Sculptures continue to delight 50 years on

Council row and architect’s cheek gives us our beautiful unicorns

Race relations

● What an impressive sight the Bristol unicorns on the roof of the Bristol Council House, now City Hall, on College Green are.

Apparently the story goes that when the gilded sculptures, 3.6m high, were about to be hauled into position there was a rumpus in the local and national newspapers.

On October 25 1950 the front page of the Bristol Evening Post described them as “gleaming lantern-jawed, wild-eyed, stiff-legged …”

The architect, Mr E Vincent Harris, had ordered them without informing the council and, even worse, he was now on holiday in Italy!

Another Bristol paper said: “No-one knows, or at any rate no-one will say, who ordered the unicorns and why.”

The City Architect, J Nelson Meredith, told the press “The whole thing is a complete mystery to me.

Unicorns have never been mentioned for the Council House. I do not know who ordered them.”

The Western Daily Press contacted sculptor David McFall in his Glebe Place studio in Chelsea, but this threw no light on the inquiries.

Installation of the sculptures was halted until a council meeting accepted that the unicorns had been considered in the planning stages, but shelved when the War intervened.

When Vincent Harris, who was 71 at the time, came back to Bristol he explained to the council that he had commissioned the unicorns, at the

Bristol’s bus boycott legacy

Post under floorboards

Sleepers to sit on

Wonder we did not find it before

What a dump the ground was!

● WE have been clearing our shop on Whiteladies Rd and under the floorboards we found an old edition of The Evening Post with the byline ‘The Paper all Bristol asked for and helped to create’ It makes entertaining reading. We have occupied this location for over 30 years so it’s a wonder we hadn’t found it sooner!

Best Wishes Mark Brigham llis Brigham Mountain Sports (& The Snowboard Asylum) Whiteladies Rd, Clifton

● I WAS very interested to read the story by Eugene Byrne in Bristol Times (August 13) about the match-fixing scam involving Bristol Rovers players in April 1963.

I remember it well, and how it was on the front page of The People newspaper and how it was a big disgrace to the club.

The story reminded me how the season ended. Rovers were staring relegation in the face. Our last game of the season was away to Halifax Town, a game we had to win to avoid the drop.

The Rovers Supporters Club headed to Halifax and marched from the station to their ground, ‘The Shay’ … What a dump it was! They had railway sleepers to sit on, and

BRISTOL Bus Boycott to Race Relations 1963-2013 is the title of an event at St Paul’s Learning Centre on Saturday September 14, 1pm 5pm, free.

Join Paul Stephenson OBE and co-author Lillieth Morrison for a discussion about the legacy of the Bristol Bus Boycott.

Paul and Lillieth will be talking about the boycott from 2pm, followed by an informal discussion about the impact this had on race relations.

Share your own personal stories about living in Bristol over the last 50 years.

The event is part of the Bearpit Local Learning Project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The project will involve local school children and college students who will create a story panel for permanent display in the Bearpit.

For more information email Ruth@locallear ning.org.uk

Editor’s Reply Thanks for that, Mark. Perhaps this could be the start of an occasional feature in which readers

● One of the unicorns on the roof of the Bristol Council House, now City Hall, on College Green cost of £2,400, in place of long and expensive ornamental ridging that would have cost £600 more.

We should applaud Harris’s autocratic behaviour on this occasion because half a century later they sparkle splendidly on a sunny day, and the Council House would be duller without them.

The unicorns are identical and are set facing each other.

McFall’s single 44.5cm model was exhibited at the 1951 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and is now on show in the Lord Mayor’s parlour.

Why unicorns? We ask. They have been significant to Bristol ever since unicorns first appeared as

compete to send us pictures of old copies of the Post found in unlikely places. Also feel free to take old or recent copies of the paper to exotic foreign locations and photograph yourself reading it there. Ideally we’d like a photo of someone reading the Bristol Times at the summit of Everest, but we’ll settle for Paris, Rome or New York.

supporters on the city’s common seal in 1569. In heraldry they have many attributions, but the city chose them to represent virtue, as the city motto is ‘Virtute et Industria’.

Listing the Council House as Grade II* in 1981, English Heritage praised the building as “an important work by the most celebrated civic architect of the first half of the 20th century”, but described the unicorns as “Epstein sculptures”.

Two Portland Stone finials, on the rear parapet of the building, of a boy and a girl riding seahorses, are also

by David McFall.

D F .Courtney, Weston-super-Mare

Editor’s reply: Thanks for that! Readers may or may not be aware of a rather wonderful local legend associated with the unicorns. Architect E Vincent Harris was not universally popular in the profession. Many considered his work dull, while he detested modern architecture.

The story goes, and we have no idea if this is true or not, that one of his rivals lived in nearby Unity Street. One of the great advantages in the unicorns for Harris was not just saving the Council £600. It was also that every time his enemy walked out of his front door, the first thing he would see would be … a unicorn’s backside.

the standing area was a cinder track.

The game kicked off and Rovers took a two-goal lead into half time.

But Halifax came out in the second and attacked.

Halifax pulled back two goals to level the game, and the pressure was now on for Rovers.

Time was running out, and it was a nail-biting 15 minutes. Then Geoff Bradford raced towards the Halifax goal, beating several defenders before firing a strong volley which beat their goalie.

We were ahead 3-2 and hung on for the final ten minutes. When the referee blew his whistle the Rovers fans invaded the pitch to congratulate their heroes.

The results from around the grounds came through, and the Rovers were safe for another season. What a happy trainload of supporters we were when we headed back to Bristol!

Paul Gilbert Clevedon

www.bristolpost.co.uk

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

7

School stories

Memories of a scholarship girl moved me ● I ENJOYED reading Marion’s Memories in the Bristol Times (August 27).

I also attended Merrywood through scholarship, in 1948/9.

I lived in Clifton Wood at that time and had to catch two buses to the school.

It was a huge, scary, step from being able to walk to my small mixed primary school in Princess Victoria Street, Clifton (now a library), where I was then one of the seniors and a confident young girl, to being one of the youngest in a large all-girls school in Knowle West, where I suffered many experiences of girls’ bitchiness to each other.

My favourite subject was music and singing.

Marion mentioned the school uniform. My parents, also, were quite poor – my parents had been professional musicians before the war but, when war began, my father (who was in an orchestra on the transatlantic liners) took a job on the railways, starting as a porter and gradually working his way up to signalman.

I, also, was very proud of my uniform. We were allowed to tuck in the top rim of our hats just to be slightly different to others like La Retraite and Colston Girls’ School.

However, I was embarrassed by the summer uniform – my parents could not afford to buy the official dress so I wore a cast-off from a neighbour – one day, in assembly, our Head, Miss Dick-Clelland, announced that, as the swimming gala was soon to be held, any pupil who could not wear the proper summer dress should go to her office – you can imagine my embarrassment – not only could I not have the correct dress but had to sit outside her office and then explain the reason why!

I am so glad that children are not belittled like that these days.

There is now a reunion every year for my year called “The 49ers”, held at The Beeches Hotel in Brislington, secretary is Molly Judge’.

Anne Colley

● A Junkers Ju 88 bomber. The one which landed at Lulsgate was a new version, which proved extremely interesting to the RAF boffins

Lost Germans gave RAF a fantastic prize ● I MIGHT have mentioned that I used to visit Bristol Airport on a daily basis for nearly 30 years.

So I was wondering if you would like to hear a story of the very beginnings of flying at what was originally RAF Lulsgate Bottom.

Flying started here before the Wimpy bulldozers had finished laying down the 3,900ft, (1,200m) main runway which, with all the buildings, cost £309,000 in 1941.

Work started on the laying down of the runway on the 11th of June of that year. The completed airfield was declared operational on the 15th of January 1942.

But … At 06:10 hrs on the 24th July 1941, the wartime workers had just started work and at this time of year it was light, although quite misty.

When out of the blue, to their astonishment, an aircraft landed on the unfinished runway, coming to a stop near to where they were.

One of the construction gang recognised that it wasn’t an RAF plane, but a German one! He quickly realised that he had better do something and drove his tractor in front of the now-stationary twin-engine bomber, shouting to his mates: “Call out the Home Guard!”

Or words to that effect.

In actual fact, the airplane was a Luftwaffe JU88 A4 of 3/KG 30.

The four aircrew got out of the plane and the pilot asked the startled Emerald Isle worker, in French, “What part of France is this?” As he did not understand the somewhat strong-accented reply he realised that something was amiss,

And drew his pistol and made haste back towards the aeroplane, shouting instructions to his crew …

Well, they didn’t get very far as they were hemmed by the tractor.

Shortly after the Home Guard soldiers arrived and after a lot of shouting and waving of (possibly bullet-less) rifles, they persuaded the invaders to surrender.

These German chaps had been on a bombing mission to Birkenhead docks and had become disorientated due to the RAF radiating electronic countermeasures on their homing beacon at Brest. They had mistook the Welsh coast for Cornwall, and crossed the Bristol Channel, which they thought was the English Channel.

They landed on the first airfield in

France – or so they thought! – that they could find.

Their aircraft was indeed a prize.

This captured aeroplane was first flown to RAF at Farnborough for evaluation, and then onto RAF Collywestern to join 1426 Enemy Aircraft Flight known as ‘RAFWAFFE.’ The aircraft was painted in RAF colours, given the registration of HM 509 and joined the many other captured German aircraft used in a variety of purposes.

The German aircrew under interrogation were not very communicative, although admitting to their navigational errors, and were eventually dispatched to one of the POW camps to sit out the war.

Gerry Davis

Picture of the Week

● To get in touch with Eugene Byrne and Bristol Times Write to: Bristol Times, Bristol Post, Temple Way, Bristol BS2 OBY Email: eugene.byrne@ b-nm.co.uk EPB-E01-S4

● THIS is another one in honour of Heritage Open Days this coming weekend.

These charming pieces represent the Four Seasons, and they were made in Bristol, not Dresden or any of your other fancypants crockery towns.

Frenchay Village Museum will be open from 2pm to 5pm on Saturday, September 14, and Sunday, September 15, and will be displaying some of its fine collection of Bristol Porcelain made in the 1770s by Richard Champion of Moorend Farm.

His sister married Philip Debel Tuckett, who founded the Tuckett dynasty in Frenchay, and the 36 pieces of porcelain were donated to the Museum by one of Philip Tuckett’s descendants.

8

Cloth should be cut accordingly

The following year I managed to get a job in Mostyns but there I only showed the fabric, not actually cut it.

So I guess I might have slightly given the wrong appearance. But needs must, as my mum used to say, and one day when two friends and I were chatting we had a brilliant idea! We would go to evening classes and learn how to make our own clothes, and perhaps even our children’s.

We enrolled for sewing classes at Wellsway school and then clubbed together to buy a second-hand sewing machine. It was lovely – a Singer, quite light-weight, with a top that folded down and, of course, a pedal.

After our enrolment we each purchased a pattern and some material and with great excitement off we went. The sky, we felt, was the limit with our new hobby! Well, luckily my pattern was quite straightforward – a shift dress because, my friends, it didn’t come naturally to me.

My mum, when I was a teenager, would get quite tired of me, as every time I knitted a jumper she would have to sew in the sleeves.

One day, for about the umpteenth time she told me I was neither use nor ornament – which I felt was a bit harsh! But try as I might I couldn’t get the hang of it. Any way one day when I was pedalling away and my two friends were sewing, for some reason – and I remember it so clearly – one of them, Eileen, started to sing a song Derek said he had never heard of.

“Oh, the sewing machine, the sewing machine, a girl’s best friend!”

I knew it – I just can’t remember the film – but I know Barbara Hutton sang it. Before long we were all singing it at our evening class.

I have to admit as well as being the worst knitter in my family, I wasn’t what you would call great shakes on a sewing machine – but that basic pattern saw me through quite a few summers.

As my first husband used to say, whenever I came home with a couple of yards of material “is this going to be a shift dress with sleeves or a shift dress without? Proudly I also learned to make my dirndl skirts and before long I could also run up a pair of shorts for son Chris.

And at last to my mum’s relief I learned to finish the small garments I knitted for both Chris and Julie all on my own! And to my credit the first time I had to put a zip in I discovered I had a talent and so although my two friends soon surpassed me in their dressmaking skills there was still a place for me.

Our curtains at Bluebell? Well, I no longer have my trusted sewing machine, moving was such a hassle, and sadly it takes me and Derek a long time to thread a needle with our ageing eyes – so I must admit I ordered them online and had all of them professionally sewn.

I don’t know if you agree, my friends, but as Derek sagely remarked, what a different world it would be today if more people took the same attitude to life and ‘cut their cloth accordingly’.

God Bless, love Marion.

PS I thought readers might like to see this photo of me having a cuddle with Ivy Grace – Derek’s seventh great-grandchild. I am an honorary great grandmother.

built in the 1690s by a rich merchant named John Cook or Cooke. He shut himself up in this tower because he had a dreadful fear of snakes (in another version he’s hiding from the

plague) and took up food and supplies on a rope.

He died after being bitten by an adder which came up in a bundle of firewood.

This week in Marion’s Memories – a girl’s best friend, the sewing machine

D

O you agree, my friends, time seems to pass so much quicker as we get older? In theory now we are ‘retired’ we should have more time on our hands but somehow it doesn’t seem to work out that way. It was early last year that Derek and I viewed the show flat at Bluebell Gardens – and somehow it wasn’t too long before we made a decision to move.

The show flat, being on the ground floor, had a door opening on what was to be a winter garden. It wasn’t until we viewed our own apartment (chosen by Derek!) that it dawned on us we had bay windows in our lounge.

“Oh dear,” said Derek, that will be difficult to curtain!

“Not a problem,” I said breezily – for not only did George and I have bay windows in my flat in our basement flat in Bathwell Road, Totterdown, (horrid ones actually, with sash windows) but when I lived at Keynsham and gave up work to bring up my children, once they were both at

● Marion enjoys a cuddle with Ivy Grace, Derek’s seventh great-grandchild, making her an honorary great grandmother school I ventured back curtains. I only sold the into the work place material! part-time every Mind you, that year to gain a few had its moments well earned pentoo. I recall the .......................................................... nies between nervous feeling September and I had the very Christmas first time I had As my first husband used to which enabled to take down a say, whenever I came home us to have a bolt of very with a couple of yards of good Christpretty materimas and a al, unroll it on material, “Is this going to be a self catering a long table shift dress with sleeves or a summer holiwith a measure shift dress without?” day – and truth all the way to tell I quite endown, and having joyed it! ascertained very I explained to Derek carefully how many that on one occasion I yards (it was yards then managed to get work in and not metres) the customer Debenhams as a curtain ‘consultant’, wanted. With trembling hand I made thus reassured Derek who said “Well, the first cut.

I leave it all to you then”.

That feeling never quite disapWhat I forgot to mention however, peared, especially when I was selling was that I didn’t actually make the a very expensive velvet.

“

Places of interest | Sea Walls

A great spot – with or without an ice cream van

EPB-E01-S4

THE Sea Walls are a favourite part of the Downs with a lot of people. There are the spectacular views over the Avon Gorge, and who knows how many millions of photos of the Suspension Bridge have been squeezed off here.

Yes, a great beauty spot indeed, and as there’s usually an ice cream van parked here too, it’s one of those places lots of people like to visit, or take their weekend guests to.

And yet this is a place with an extremely gruesome history.

It was always useful as a vantage point for seeing which ships were coming into port. But that worked both ways; anything on the Sea Walls was visible to passing vessels, too. So by the 1700s it was occasionally being

used for displaying executed criminals.

Executed felons were “gibbeted” – their bodies hung in chains – here.

The idea was to terrify anyone contemplating a life of crime by showing them the consequences. These corpses (which may possibly have been coated in tar to preserve them longer) were visible to sailors down below, and to people on the Downs, which in the 18th century was a remote area and notorious as a haunt of robbers.

Andrew Burnet and Henry Payne, who robbed and killed a man on the Downs were gibbeted here in 1744, for instance, but the bodies were removed, we are told, by a gang of Irishmen. They were later found on

the rocks of the Gorge and hung up again.

The other problem with the area was that people sometimes fell off the cliffs. In 1746 one John Wallis built a wall for public safety, and it was known as Wallis’s Wall until well into the 19th century.

The ornate house nearby is called Tower Hirst and was built for a wealthy merchant in around 1860; from here he could see his ships coming in and out of Bristol along the Gorge.

There used to be another tower nearby, but it’s now gone. It was called Cook’s Folly and was notorious on account of a bizarre legend which comes in several different versions.

The best version goes that it was