Bristol
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Times
TUE
22 OCT 2013
Celebrating our proud history and keeping your memories alive
Page 7 Brunel and a clash of egos
Remember It’s that time again!
Pages 2&3
CHILDREN IN SEARCH OF THE ROMANS Pages 4&5
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● Schoolchildren uncovering part of the Kings Weston Villa, late 1940s
Page 8 Handouts? We get what we deserve!
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
WHY OUR CITY REALLY IS BEHIND THE TIMES This coming Sunday, we’ll be putting the clocks back for winter, along with the rest of the country. But for most of Bristol’s history, the city calculated its own time. Eugene Byrne, who is standing under the Tramways clock, looking at his watch and wondering if he’s been stood up again, explains.
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S MOST Bristolians probably know, the clock mounted over the entrance of the Corn Exchange in Corn Street has three hands. It’s one of those things we proudly show to visitors. There’s the little hand, the big hand … and the other big hand. The big hands show the time in minutes, one of them Greenwich Mean Time and one of them Bristol Time. So what time is it really in Bristol? Well that depends on who you believe. You can either believe the movement of the sun, or you can believe the government… For most of human history, we didn’t have efficient mechanical clocks, so the time of day was simply calculated from the position of the sun in the sky – known as “solar time” or “apparent solar time”. That’s why people had sundials. This worked fine in a pre-scientific age when most people got up when it was light, worked in daylight and then knocked off when it got dark, or perhaps carried on working a little longer by the light of candles, rushes or lamps. Efficient timekeeping, though, became an essential part of technological and industrial progress. Many historians will tell you that the adoption of set hours, regulated by efficient clocks, is the true foundation of the modern world rather than, say, the steam engine. Greenwich Mean Time came about because Britain was a seafaring nation, and by the 18th century ships were carrying chronometers – the best clocks available – set to this time in London so that they could calculate their longitude. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Greenwich Mean Time and efficient chronometers were the Royal Navy’s secret weapon, because it meant that British ships could be navigated
much more efficiently than those of rival nations. But Greenwich Mean Time is just that – the time as calculated at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. It is the solar time in that exact spot, and nowhere else. The correct solar time in Bristol, meanwhile, is over ten minutes behind. If you want to be precise about it, College Green is ten minutes and 23 seconds behind GMT. Other points within Bristol’s city boundaries can be several seconds either way of that. Until Victorian times, every town kept its own time, usually worked out by a local resident with some scientific knowledge, and this is how clocks in churches and public buildings were usually set. Even when stagecoaches were introduced, it made little difference that Bristol and London were 10 or 11 minutes apart, though by the 1820s the mail coach from Bristol to London was so reliable and punctual that people all along the route were said to set their watches by it. That Bristol eventually had to fall into line with London is partly due, as with so much else in Bristol, to Mr Brunel. On June 30 1841 the first Great Western Railway train arrived here. The GWR operated on Greenwich Mean Time; it’s said that some Bristol dignitaries, setting off for the great day, arrived ten minutes late. By the 1850s, all of Britain’s rail companies were operating on Greenwich Mean Time, or “Railway Time” as it became known. For some years this caused all manner of confusion to provincials who were still setting their clocks and watches to their local time. Plymouth, for instance, was a full 17 minutes behind London. In Bristol, we came up with a compromise. The clock on the Exchange, which was then at the heart of the city’s business district, adopted its
● Blink and you’ll miss it; Bristol’s smallest commemorative
● The Corn Exchange clock, with its Bristol Time (black) and GMT (red) minute hands two minute hands. It seemed sensible, but most other public clocks, such as those on churches, remained set to Bristol time. A lot of people resented this imposition of someone else’s timekeeping. When the railway came to Exeter the local authorities firmly refused to adopt what was disparagingly known as “Cockney time” for many years. In Bristol, one rural gentleman was said to have stood up in the main hall of the Commercial Rooms brandishing his grandfather’s pocket watch and declaiming that “one hand was good enough for my grandfather and it is certainly good enough for me!” But if it was the railways which posed a mortal threat to Bristol Time, it was the electric telegraph which administered the fatal blow. It arrived in Bristol, along the GWR rail line, in 1852. (It would have arrived a lot sooner. Brunel wanted to bring the telegraph
● William Langford’s clock; the first clock in Bristol to be regulated by a time-signal telegraphed from London
line as far as Bristol at the same time as his railway arrived, but he was over-ruled by the Great Western Railway Company directors, who said this newfangled nonsense was a waste of money, and would never catch on.) The electric telegraph did catch on, and very quickly. Soon Bristol’s newspapers carried breaking stories from London and then around the world with information conveyed to them by telegraph. Businesses, too, recognised the value of getting the most up-to-date information quickly. One of the first local telegraph systems was installed to inform merchants in the Commercial Rooms about newly-arrived ships coming up the Avon. The old system of messengers – they were called “Pill watchers” – who would ride or run into Bristol with news of ships coming up the Avon, was done away with. Now a
businessman would know when his ship was arriving and what it was carrying before it had reached the City Docks, and could start offering the cargo for sale ahead of any rivals. And of course that business might well be transacted by telegraph, too. But of course this led to the absurdity of telegrams sent from London time-stamped as arriving in Bristol ten minutes before they had been sent. So sentiment and local pride be damned; the needs of business, as always, took priority. In a debate in the Council chambers in September 1852, a mere three die-hards were overwhelmed in a vote. From now on, the Corporation resolved, Bristol would “regulate the public clocks by Greenwich time”. This was almost 30 years before Parliament decreed that the whole country should adopt Greenwich Mean Time. And so the second
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
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Spring forward, Fall back
plaque, set into the pavement directly underneath the Langford clock on College Green
● Bristol’s Exchange clock being put back for the winter in 2011 hand is red and the Bristol hand is black. If you’re ever confused, though, now and at any point in the future, remember that true Bristol Time is ten and a half-ish minutes behind London. Not long after the electric telegraph caught on, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich started a system whereby it sent a signal to the whole system throughout the country at various times of day. This time signal was the forerunner of the “time pips” we later had on the radio, and it ensured that the clocks throughout the railway and postal system were all set to the correct Greenwich time. In 1852, shortly after the telegraph came to Bristol a local clockmaker named William Langford saw an opportunity. He arranged, for a fee, for a telegraphic line to be extended from Bristol’s main Post Office in Small Street to his shop on Broad Quay.
In later years, Langford was able to make money out of this by selling the right time to various organisations around Bristol. They would pay to be connected to his system by wire, and this would regulate their clocks to within a fraction of a second. His first customer, apparently, was Bristol Cathedral; one doesn’t think of the Cathedral as being at the cutting edge of technology, particularly in Victorian times, but there you go. Other organisations soon followed, including W.D. & H.O. Wills and the Bristol Tramways & Carriage Company and more than a dozen other firms. It was Langfords who made the famous Tramways Centre clock which remains a local landmark to this day. William Langford was one of the leading clock and instrument makers of his time. This being Bristol, he also made nautical chronometers. Clocks made by Langford are much sought
after by collectors and fetch top prices at auction. The firm later moved to College Green, where another Langford clock can be seen, though the premises are now a music shop. This was Bristol’s first electrically-regulated clocks, which one assumes Langford made in order to show off the new technology. Some years ago, the Temple Local History Group commissioned one of Bristol’s most remarkable memorial plaques. If you don’t know about it, look for it next time you’re on College Green. It is set into the pavement directly underneath the clock. You can easily miss it as it’s very small. It is meant to show a line west of the Greenwich meridian and commemorates Langford’s achievement. It was put in place by the Temple Local History Group in the 1980s.
As originally installed, it showed the line of longitude at the correct angle, but when the area was re-paved some years ago, the workmen simply re-laid it parallel to the shop-front. The Langford clock, directly above the plaque, is no longer working, a state of affairs which many in Bristol consider a shameful state of affairs given its historic importance. It was restored back in the 1980s, once more thanks to the efforts and fundraising of the Temple Local History Group, but has not been functioning since its drive shaft was accidentally broken some years ago. (Former Temple Local History Group stalwart Julian Lea-Jones wrote Bristol Curiosities (Birlinn Ltd, 2007). Easily the best researched and most entertaining compilation of strange and curious local tales, it has quite a few more stories about Bristol’s timekeeping than this article does… )
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minute hand on the Exchange Clock showing Bristol Time was removed. In the 1980s some folk decided that it would be a nice touch to restore it. The Temple Local History Group, which had been researching the stories of the city’s older clocks, showed how the Bristol Time hand should be set at an angle of 62 degrees to the GMT hand. The old minute hand was restored in 1989 and unveiled to a mystified public, as both minute hands were black. At the official starting of the restored clock, the Lord Mayor Kathleen Mountstephen (yes, you’re still “Lord” Mayor even if you’re a woman) was raised up on a cherrypicker with paintpot and brush to paint the hand showing Bristol time red. The clock face and hands have been repainted a couple of times since then. At one point the GMT hand was pink, and for the time being the GMT
● The Tramways Clock, still a local landmark
● “DAYLIGHT saving time” was an idea that was the province of cranks in the Edwardian era. If you advanced the clocks by an hour in spring, they said, you would have more sunlight in the evenings. This would allow more recreation time in the evenings, and it would save on fuel as less coal would be burned to produce gas and electricity for lighting. Nobody took the plans seriously until the First World War. In 1916 Germany and Austria-Hungary adopted Daylight Saving Time to conserve fuel. Stuffy, conservative old Britain, House of Lords and all, followed suit within three weeks. As it was being proposed at the height of an increasingly costly and bitter war, almost everyone could see the point of it. Some farmers complained, but most people found they liked it. A doctor wrote to the Western Daily Press saying that sunlight is much more healthy than artificial light, and that vital war work would be carried out more efficiently. He himself preferred to treat his patients “by the light of Heaven rather than light that has come from a ‘main’.” Another correspondent suggested that since it was now possible to put the clocks back by an hour, perhaps we could also put people’s ages back by ten years. A few days after Daylight Saving came into force, in May 1916, the Western Daily’s ‘Woman’s World’ column said: “Last Sunday was a glorious day, and we awoke to the earlier hour of the daylight saving without being conscious of the change … I am sure I should never have persuaded my maids to give up their extra hour in bed on Sunday morning had not the clock registered the usual time of rising, and as it was they simply rose quite cheerfully.” Ever since then, Britain has put its clocks forward an hour in the spring and back an hour in the autumn, with a few hiccups and changes of date here and there. For three years at the height of the Second World War we have “Double Summer Time” when the clocks went forward two hours.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
NEW DISPLAY SET TO PULL IN LEGIONS OF VISITORS
Parson, philanthropist,
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A new exhibition at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery puts some Roman finds from the area on show. But as Eugene Byrne discovers, the stories behind the people who made these finds are just as interesting.
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HE usual version of Bristol’s history says that the city originated in the Anglo-Saxon era. Brycgstowe, or however you want to spell it, started out as the place with the bridge sometime before the Normans arrived in 1066. There was no Roman Bristol – not like there was a Roman Bath, or Cirencester or Dorchester. So, no Roman Bristol as such – but there were plenty of Romans in the Bristol area. That is there were very few Romans from Rome, but during the four centuries or so in which most of Britain was part of the empire, plenty of people lived, worked and died in the Bristol area. Our neighbourhood is very rich in the sites of settlements, farms, villas and roads from Roman times. Down the years, these have all yielded some fascinating finds, telling us about the hopes, dreams, fears and everyday lives of people who lived around here almost 2,000 years ago. Things are still coming to the surface, whether because of the efforts of local archaeology societies and amateurs all the way to professional excavations. Gail Boyle, senior collections officer (archaeology) for Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives, reckons that some of the next big finds will come from Emersons Green, now an area of major housing, office and industrial development. She said: “It was not a surprise that there is a major Roman site there because there is a Roman road that goes all the way through. “There was also that major site discovered when they built the ring road, the Rodway Hill area – that is where the coffin came from, the Mangotsfield man and woman. People do not realise that the whole area is littered with Roman remains.” The most important site when the Romans arrived was Portus Abonae (Sea Mills). Gail said: “The vital strategic point for them is getting across the Severn to South Wales. “This is a good location. It is just in from the mouth of the Avon, it is relatively sheltered, it is easy to get out into the Bristol Channel, and
2 ● Gail Boyle at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery holds a Romano-British pewter flagon from a Brislington Roman Villa, AD 300 Photo: Barbara Evripidou easy to travel up the Avon, or the River Trym.” Sea Mills grew up, the theory goes, as a civilian settlement around what was originally a military encampment. We know the Roman military was here in the early decades after the conquest because of several archaeological finds, particularly tiles and bricks with the legend LEG II AUG stamped on them. That is Legio II Augusta to give it its full name, the Second Augustan Legion, one of the legions which spearheaded the Roman invasion of Britain, and later one of the legions holding down the potentially-rebellious Brits after the conquest. However, the local tribe in the Bristol area, the Dobunni, had surrendered without a fight, probably cutting some sneaky deal with the Romans in return for various privileges – but we will gloss over that and move on. The Second Augustan Legion’s main base was at Caerleon and there would have been extensive traffic between Sea Mills and the other side of the Severn. The legion’s commander, and the man responsible for the Roman conquest of South West England, was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, who would go on to suppress the rebellion in Judea and then become emperor. So there is a good chance that at least one Roman emperor came to Sea Mills, right? Gail said: “Oh, I do not know about that. It would be nice to think that, though.” As a museum curator, Gail would have to have some sort of solid proof
WHAT TO SEE ● THE Romans and Bristol can be seen at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery until January 12, admission free. The Orpheus Mosaic, a mosaic recovered from Newton St Loe when the Great Western Railway was being built is also on show in another part of the museum over the same period. ● Roman Empire: Power and People is at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery until January 12, admission £5/£4 concessions/£3 child/£10 family of 4. Under 5s free. ● Kings Weston Roman Villa is not normally open to the public, but you can visit it by picking up a key from Blaise Castle House Museum or Bristol Museum and Art Gallery during their opening hours. A refundable £5 deposit is required for the key. for such a claim. But we will believe it anyway. We will imagine that the future Emperor Vespasian passed this way once or twice, and may even have stayed a few nights here. This was before he went on to rule the greatest empire of the ancient world with a great deal of style and humour. Historians tend to class him as one of the “good” emperors in that he did not do anything crazy or oppressive, unlike most of the others.
Sea Mills is considered such an important Roman site that part of it is now protected by English Heritage. Any major building developments there would have to be accompanied by equally-major archaeological exploration. Some of the Roman finds from Sea Mills and elsewhere in the Bristol area and further afield are now on display at a special exhibition at the museum. This is in addition to the Roman Empire: Power And People exhibition featuring some of the most spectacular or interesting Roman artefacts in the British Museum collection. The new Romans And Bristol display shows many more artefacts – and it looks at the people who found them. Gail said: “We want our visitors to get a flavour of the other kinds of objects we have in our collections. “We want people to have a more intimate experience and understand some of the motivations for collecting the material we have put on show, and understand the kinds of people responsible for collecting that material. “It is an opportunity for us to show that collection but it is also for people to understand why they did it and why they continue to do it.” Many visitors, one suspects, will find the stories of some of these folk – such as antiquarians, collectors, metal-detector enthusiasts and local archaeology societies – just as interesting as the things they found. Here are some of them:
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The Rev John Skinner (1772-1839) Born near Bath, Skinner was educated at Oxford and after a spell as a lawyer he took holy orders and became Rector of Camerton in Somerset. The life of a country parson was not demanding and Skinner spent most of his time digging up Roman sites in and around his parish as well as working with his fellow antiquary Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who owned the Stourhead estate. In his excavations around Camerton he found, among many other things, three hoards of coins and he believed the village must once have been the town the Romans referred to as Camulodunum, though this has since been proved to be on the site of modern Colchester. Skinner was not a happy man. Stuck in a job he disliked in a parish he hated, his mental health deteriorated with some family tra-
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
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businessman, doctor, and a small army of schoolchildren - the searchers as interesting as the things they found
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4 gedies. He was so disturbed that he did something unthinkable for a vicar at this time – he committed suicide. He left his collection to the Bristol Institution, the forerunner of Bristol’s City Museum.
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Alfred Jowett Selley (1854-1945) Born in Exeter, Selley set up in business in Bristol as a maker of cases but spent his free time cycling
around the Mendips and Bristol looking for objects. Unlike most other enthusiasts of his era he was not a wealthy man and his modus operandi was to search for finds in freshly-ploughed fields or to try and persuade farmers to part with things they had found. He seems to have run a fairly successful business on the side by sometimes selling finds to Bristol Museum, although he also donated things as well. He collected several finds from around the Sea Mills area, but was also interested in stone tools from prehistoric times.
George Counsell Boon (1927-1994) George Boon is the most remarkable of all these figures. Interested in archaeology from an early age, he was still a student when he excavated the Kings Weston Roman Villa and helped protect it from developers.
At 11 he was involved in excavations in Shirehampton and Sea Mills and as a teenager was writing to the Museum director voicing concerns about how housing developments might destroy the Roman remains in the area. So while still at school he and his friend John Clevedon Brown carried out a number of small excavations. In 1947, as work began on the new Lawrence Weston housing estate, the duo discovered the Kings Weston Villa and excavated the site on behalf of the Museum. In doing this, they supervised volunteers from the Clevedon Archaeological Society – and in a move which surely wouldn’t be permitted nowadays – a small army of schoolchildren (do write in and tell us your memories if you were one of these junior Indiana Joneses!) George Boon went on to a distinguished career, eventually becoming curator of the National Museum of Wales and one of Britain’s leading experts on Roman remains.
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Alfred Capper Pass (1837-1905) Born into a wealthy Bristol industrial family in St Philips, he took over the family smelting business in 1870. He became interested in Roman remains when the firm started to use materials from ancient Roman spoil heaps in the Mendips. He invest-
igated Roman sites around the area, as well as prehistoric sites such as Silbury Hill and built up an impressive collection of Roman brooches and tools which his family donated to the new Bristol Museum after his death. He also found time to run a very successful business along philanthropic lines. He built houses for his workers and donated money to Bristol’s new University.
Dr Hugh Alderson Fawcett (1891-1982) Qualified as a medical doctor, Fawcett spent most of his life in East Anglia but sold his collection to Bristol Museum for a token sum shortly before he died. Fawcett used every means available to him to acquire a huge collection of prehistoric and Roman objects – he excavated, he went to auctions and antique shops and bought or swapped with dealers, workmen and other collectors. Fawcett was mainly interested in stone and copper objects and tried to arrange his collection in such a way as to show how tools had evolved over time.
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Obituary
Campaigner for city’s heritage
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We were saddened to hear of the recent death of Dorothy Brown, who spent much of her time in the last few decades campaigning to save Bristol’s heritage. Former Bristol Times editor Gerry Brooke writes: I REMEMBER Dorothy as a doughty fighter for building conservation in the early 1970s. That was a time when it looked as though Bristol’s planners and many politicians were intent on finishing off what the Luftwaffe had started during the Second World War – demolishing what precious little was left of the city’s architectural heritage. Funded from her own purse, in 1971 Dorothy set up the Bristol and Visual Environmental Group, to bring people’s attention to what was happening to many neglected buildings in the city. At the time, many of these were unprotected by conservation-area status. An early success was saving, restoring, and finally finding tenants for a handful of then-derelict but historically-important buildings in Old Market, some of which dated back 200 or 300 years. It is thanks to Dorothy’s foresight and tenacity that the Old Market area retains much of its character, though her wish to see it closed to all but essential traffic remains an unfulfilled dream. Throughout the 1980s, many of her wishes came true, with historic areas of the city, previously neglected or overlooked, being given legal protection. Brutal demolition of lovely old buildings, such as those on St Michael’s Hill, a conservation tragedy which had led to many protests and angry letters to the local papers, was halted. Dorothy’s other big success story was in South Gloucestershire, where what was left of a historically-important building, Acton Court, was in imminent danger of collapse. Again she and her group rode to the rescue, saving the Tudor building, and its gardens, for posterity. With Dorothy’s passing the city has lost a fine campaigner, someone who never gave up hope that historic buildings, even in an advanced state of decay, could be saved. Her great hope, she once told me, was that Bristol’s communities would flourish and that it would, once more, be a joy to walk in the city’s streets. Historic building conservation is now, quite rightly, an accepted part of town and city planning, but we must never forget the vital part played by pioneers such as Dorothy Brown, who helped awaken a sleeping public to just what was being lost.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Post defied German raids
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EGARDING your article in the Bristol Times (October 8) about the blitz, the one referred to was on the night of November 24/25, 1940, not 1941. I was 10 years old at the time and can remember the blitzes we had in Bristol during 1940 and 1941 very well. In the Bristol Times a couple of weeks ago you also mentioned that the Bristol Post issued a single, typewritten, news sheet after the blitz some days. I still have a copy, purchased by my mother after one night’s blitz, priced one penny. I also have a copy, again one duplicated sheet, dated June 26, 1959, of the Bristol Post issued during the printers’ strike. David Picton Clevedon Editor’s reply: Yes, see our apology
● The Post’s emergency bulletin last week for putting the first major German bombing raid on Bristol in the wrong year. The author of this howler, Eugene Byrne, assures us that he knows lots about the Bristol blitz and has even done guided tours of the blitzed areas of central Bristol. “I like to tell people about how this great city of ours refused to be beaten by Napoleon’s air force,” he said. We hope he is joking. Meanwhile, Bristol Times reader Beryl Kemp arranged for us to be sent scans of one of those Bristol Bulletin newspapers put out by the Bristol Post following a bombing raid. She found it in the house, yellowing and held together with sticky tape. The words are fading now, but you
can still make them out. It begins: “Bristol lost historic buildings in a Nazi flare and flame raid which grew suddenly in intensity nearly an hour after the alert was sounded.” The last words on the sheet read: “Standing in the door of a badly-wrecked motor and cycle shop was the figure of a lion rampant, defiantly challenging entrance. “One butcher exhibited the notice ‘All lamb free of ration. Buy as much as you like’.” Perhaps a few other readers have copies of the Bristol Bulletin stored away somewhere as reminders of this vivid, and often tragic, chapter in the history both of Bristol and of their own families.
Memories of my time at school ✒I WAS born in Forest Road, Fishponds and went to Chester Park primary school. Then, in about 1952 I started my senior year, in Speedwell School. In 1965 I came to live in Australia, firstly Adelaide and then Queensland. I remember the faces of so many in the picture and I remember some of the teachers – Miss Spencer, and in this picture there was also Miss Mahoney. I also have a picture of my first Christmas cake which I made , at our cookery class. Most of my cooking now comes from things I was taught in that class . The boys were in the level below and had a separate play area, but they used to wait after school on cookery day school and get cakes from us – this made my mother not too happy, to say the least! I remember the corner shop where we used to by our lollies and the
● Ann Vaughan’s photograph of her time at Speedwell School in the 1950s quarry that was close by. I also remember going to the Speedwell Baths after lunch, even in the coldest of winters for swimming lessons. I would really be delighted if there are any girls out there that remem-
ber me. I have been in touch with Roger Cook – Cookie as we called him – who is big in the music industry in America now. Ann Vaughan ann.vaughan3@bigpond.com
Lecture features archaeologist looking forward to the future ✒AVON
Local History & Archaeology is a voluntary charity founded in 1976 to bring together and to represent local history and archaeology groups. There are now over 80 associated groups in the Avon area, with a collective membership of over 10,000. In 2011, ALHA instituted the Joseph Bettey Lecture named in honour of Dr Joseph Bettey, the doyen of local history in this region. The intention is that the lectures should inspire amateurs to engage in re-
Picture of the Week
search and indicate promising topics and approaches. The first two were given by Professor Mick Aston on the Shapwick & Winscombe projects and by Professor Ronald Hutton on witchcraft in the modern period. Professor Aston’s lecture was expanded and published as ALHA booklet no 12 in 2012, being among the very last things to come from his pen before he died. This year we have Robert Jones, Bristol’s senior archaeologist, reflecting on a very productive period
in the archaeology of the city and looking forward to the future. The lecture is tomorrow in the Chapel Lecture Theatre, St Matthias Campus UWE. It starts at 7.40 pm, and attenders are asked to arrive by 7.30. There is ample free parking on campus. The lecture is free, but registered attenders will be admitted first and are guaranteed seats; also notification of any changes: e-mail names to: jonathan.harlow@uwe.ac.uk
● THIS week we thought we’d show you this lovely nostalgic photograph of a traffic jam, which we are sure will bring many memories to our readers of all that happy times they used to spend listening to Tony Blackburn on the car radio, and being late for work. We found this in the archives when looking for something else altogether, but thought it was topical given that bus lanes excite such passions, and since the Mayor has recently made noises about looking at the usefulness of some of them. So this is Cheltenham Road, along with a traffic jam, and one of Bristol’s newfangled bus lanes. The year? 1973. To be honest, we’d need to do a little more research before finding out exactly when the first bus lanes were introduced in Bristol, but here’s your evidence as to how we’ve loved and hated them for at least 40 years now.
Hoping to engineer a meeting with old pal IS it possible to try to find an ex-squaddie pal of mine? As he and his wife now live in or very near Bristol, I do hope that you can help me. His name is Phillip Honour and his wife’s name is Jan. Phillip served in the Royal Engineers, stationed in Munsterlager – in northern Germany – in 1979 and 1980. They had a son named Leigh and they lived in a married quarter in the town. They lived on a road called Danzegar Strasse. They were good friends of ours and I do hope that, through your paper, you can help me to get in touch with them once again. I can be contacted at davey.long@hotmail.com David Long
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
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Latimer’s Diary Turned out nice again! ACTUALLY it hasn’t, but I’ve been trying to start this column each week with some well-known historical greeting or the catch-phrase of some long-deceased celebrity. I was going to start with “WAKEY WAKEY!!” But some people might get the wrong idea and get all offended. Anyway, a funny thing happened to me in the supermarket the other week. Mrs Latimer went away for a long weekend up at her sister’s, leaving me home alone. I was quite looking forward to this. I had big, big plans. Then I discovered that she had hidden my bottle of Old Spice, my gold medallion and my toupee, so that put paid to that. So instead I looked forward to sleeping in the middle of the bed and watching a load of noisy, stupid films with lots of guns and explosions in. (Who is this man Jason Statham? He can’t act!) I was also going to do my own catering, and so I made my first unaccompanied trip to the supermarket
Cheers Julie! JULIE Finch, who’s been head of Bristol’s Museums, Galleries and Archives since 2009, has had the mother of all promotions. The biggest brownie-point on Julie’s CV of course is the successful opening of M Shed after a, well, shed-load of problems with the design of the building, cost overruns and more. So impressed were the government of Western Australia that they’ve hired her to lead the development of the state’s new museum in Perth, a project budgeted at over 400 million Australian dollars (about £260m English.) Western Australia’s Culture and the Arts Minister John Day said: “Securing Ms Finch’s expertise is a windfall for this project. Recently she was instrumental in leading the development of a vibrant new museum in Bristol’s city centre which attracted 750,000 visitors in its first year of operation.” We wish Julie all the best for the future.
Fresh air, exercise, and tradition IN 1190 Lord Robert de Berkeley, the Lord of the Manor of Bedminster, allowed a pipe to be laid to carry water from the Ruge Well at the top of Knowle Hill to St Mary Redcliffe church. And each year it’s traditional for clergy, churchwardens and parishioners from St Mary Redcliffe to walk the route of the pipeline – just under two miles. This year the walk is on Saturday, October 26, and the walkers will be joined by Charles Berkeley, heir to Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. Ned Cussen of Jones Lang LaSalle, surveyor to St Mary Redcliffe Church Lands Charity, will be leading the walk from the spring near St Barnabas Church in Daventry Road through Lower Knowle and Bedminster to Redcliffe Hill. It’ll go through Victoria Park where first-time Pipe Walkers traditionally are ‘bumped’ on one of several old stone markers indicating the route. Also in the park is a labyrinth constructed by Wessex Water in 1984 at the point where the
● Isambard Kingdom Brunel (right) and John Scott Russell (on the left) at the launch of the Great Eastern; see “ Clash of egos” below pipe is crossed by a twentieth-century drain. The pipe, originally lead but replaced with cast iron by the Victorians, ends just inside the church gate on Redcliffe Hill where a Latin inscription commemorates Lord Robert de Berkeley’s donation. You can see an effigy of Lord Robert his Norman self in the north transept of St Mary Redcliffe Church. If you’d like to join the walk you’ll be very welcome – it’s Saturday (October 26), and meets at St Barnabas Church in Daventry Road, Knowle for coffee at 9.30am prior to a 10am start.
Clash of egos FOR any Brunel-ologists out there, the ss Great Britain’s 2013 Brunel Lecture looks rather interesting. Professor Andrew Lambert’s talk at the new Brunel Institute alongside the ship takes place on November 4 and is titled: “A Clash of Egos on the Thames: John Scott Russell, Brunel and the Great Eastern”. This is all about Brunel’s last great ship, and the shipbuilder he went into partnership with to construct. This entire episode in Brunel’s life has been quite controversial in recent years. Earlier biographers of IKB have tended to follow the line that everything was Russell’s fault, but more recent research suggests that Russell has had a bit of a bum deal from the historians. So it’ll be interesting to see what Professor Lambert, who is Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, has to say. The picture above shows Brunel and Russell (on the left) at the launch
of the Great Eastern. The lecture is at 7pm and tickets can be bought in advance online at ssgreat britain.org.
Bristol’s first historian PROFESSOR Peter Fleming, the leading expert on medieval Bristol, is giving a talk this coming Thursday. Prof Fleming’s lecture is titled: “Bristol’s first historian? Robert Ricart’s Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar and notions of history writing in 15th Century Bristol.” He’ll be looking at Bristol’s earliest chroniclers, particularly Robert Ricart, whose “Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar” (which is medieval for “The mayor of Bristol’s calendar”) dates from the 1470s. He’ll be looking at the things that medieval Bristolians knew about their history, and the things they made up. It’s on Thursday, October 24, at 6pm at M Shed. It’s organised by UWE’s Regional History Centre, admission is free, and all are very welcome.
Trenches to trams ONE of the best local history books of recent years was Trenches to Trams: The Life of a Bristol Tommy by local historian and researcher Clive Burlton. This traces the life and times of George Pine, Clive’s grandfather. George Pine was one of four brothers from a working class Easton family, all of whom served in the First World
War. Two of them were killed, while George, a bugler with the Territorials before the war, was awarded the DCM for gallantry and was injured three times while fighting in France, Belgium and Italy with the Gloucestershire Regiment. His older brothers were killed, and George went through the Somme and Passchendaele before being wounded and invalided out of the army. The book is compiled from George’s own memoirs as well as research by Clive and paints an astonishingly vivid picture both of his wartime service and his postwar career working on the trams. During his researches, Clive uncovered hundreds of photographs, objects and documents from family, public and private sources. Some of them are now on display at an exhibition at Bristol’s Central Library which runs to the end of November. As well as text and photographic panels that describe the life of George Pine, it includes a number of display cases with material loaned from the Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum, the Peter Davey Bristol Tramways collection and Pine family items. The Reference Library has also added some of its First World War-related material to the cases. Clive will be giving a talk at the Reference Library at 7.30pm on Monday November 11. Admission is free. Call 0117 903 7202 to reserve a place.
● 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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in, ooh, about 10 years. I’m not normally allowed to go food-shopping on my own as, apparently, I’m incapable of buying anything that a) we need, or which b) has any nutritional value. Even then, I am – apparently – incapable of buying junk in a suitably price-conscious and thrifty manner. So with my trolley I wound my merry way up and down each aisle in a free-form, random and entirely happy manner, picking out those things as took my fancy and trying to plan meaningful meals as I went. On getting home, I unpacked all the goodies and made a rather bizarre discovery. My entire shop consisted of what my children disparagingly refer to as “Old People Food.” Item: One Fray Bentos tinned steak and kidney pie Item: One Rowntree’s jelly (raspberry flavour) Item: One Rowntree’s jelly (strawberry flavour) Item: One large tin Spam Item: One supermarket own brand Arctic Roll. And so it went on. Lime marmalade, Jammie Dodgers, a tin of mixed vegetables, a tin of oxtail soup, and a jar of fish paste. What I’d done, without even thinking about it, was purchase a load of things which were treats when I was a kid, but which are not normally allowed anywhere near the Latimer larder nowadays. Doubtless a psychologist would now spout some nonsense about how
I was subconsciously reverting to childhood, or seeking some sort of comfort. Though actually I’m pretty sure I was just bingeing on things I liked and hadn’t had in ages. It was all rather marvellous. I challenge anyone to deny that Spam, lettuce and tomato in sliced white bread is not the Sandwich of the Gods. The Letters Page awaits your denials, and indeed your ideas of what the finest retro foods are. Enough nonsense. Lots of serious business this week.
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Handouts? We get what we deserve!
● The colours of Westonbirt Arboretum
This week in Marion’s Memories: politics, pensions, Christmas during wartime, and National Service
Stroll through trees and time
I
T IS no secret among my family and friends that I am interested passionately in politics (I blame my parents). In the interest of harmony with my readers, wild horses would not make me divulge which party I support – suffice to say (one of my mum’s favourite sayings) that at the moment I would describe myself as a floating voter. However, watching Question Time the other Thursday night, my blood boiled. A most unpleasant man, in my opinion, stated that “everyone” knows the largest group of people on benefits in the country is, without doubt, pensioners. Pensions, as I am sure you will agree, are not benefits because nobody gave them to us – we paid for them with contributions over many years. My dad took great pride in paying his way – and brought us up to be the same. Mind you, he was not a fool – he would pay his round but nobody else’s. When my little brother was born in 1942 my dad, a soldier, was granted ten days’ compassionate leave to get to know him. Then, as Jimmy Wheeler used to say, that was his lot. Off dad went to fight a war. And my dear old mum – I am sure I never appreciated her enough – went on looking after us without a moan. In those days, being a mum meant bringing up your family. My first husband, George, started work at 14 years of age – and, apart from National Service, worked until his death. George and I were children who grew up during the Second World War and I think that was what shaped us. We never thought of our parents as being brave but in hindsight they were – and us kids accepted our lot in life. We sang funny, rude, songs about Hitler and Mussolini and put up with whatever fate threw at us. We could not be picky about food – if it was there we ate it. I can remember asking what was for dinner one day, and being told “if it” – in other words, if it was there we could eat it. A couple of doorsteps, filled with whatever we had, went down a treat – especially if we were sitting on the pavement with
Footsteps into history
“ We couldn’t be ‘picky’ about food – If it was there we ate it!
our friends. My dad did not have a Christmas at home with his family from 1941 until 1947 after he was demobbed. How he enjoyed that Christmas. He told my mum it was like a feast after famine – and how she managed it I will never know. Also, we children did what we were told, or else. When youngsters left school and started work, often in local factories, they still did what they were told or they were out with a flea in their ear. And at the age when young men might have gone off the rails, what was it that kept them on the straight and narrow? It was the dear old sergeant major – or other appropriate rank, depending on which Service you were called into. If you read your Bible, like me, you will know that Samson had taken a vow to never cut his hair. Then he met the wicked Delilah, who, learning his secret, caused his head to be shorn while he slept, thus depriving him of his power. George reckoned that was the principle the Army worked on – deprive the young conscripts of their hair as they suffered their first free haircut, courtesy of the demon barber, and deprive them of their swagger. I remember George writing to me
about how he felt when, within a day of being in the Army, he had not only lost the quiff of which he was so proud and been shorn, he ended up on a parade ground at about 5.30am on a freezing cold day in January 1948, in his underwear, being shouted at. My brilliant first husband had a lovely mum who wrapped him in cotton wool and indulged his every whim. He never ironed as much as a shirt – and here he was, out on his own, expected, after basic training, to become a soldier. What a culture shock. For those who broke the law, the best they could expect was a short prison sentence – all of which they were expected to serve. And if the crime was murder the judge would don his black cap and the hangman would beckon. In the 1950s there were about 35 million people in our country. The male population had been decreased by two world wars so there was no danger of not being able to get a job or of not paying tax and National Insurance. So what we pensioners get is our just rewards. Let us all decide to get our own back and live as long as possible. God bless. Love, Marion
FANCY a stroll? As it’s autumn the trees should be looking pretty spectacular about now. There are plenty of places you can go to catch sight of trees in all their seasonal glory; around Bristol there’s the Downs, Stoke Park, Leigh Woods and so on all the way down to your own local park. If you go for a wander around Kings Weston Estate you’ll also find that the Kings Weston Action Group has recently published a ‘Tree Trail’ leaflet, a guided walk which looks at the history of the estate through its trees. Further out of town, Stourhead at this time of year looks absolutely amazing – but make sure you get there at opening time on a weekday if you don’t fancy sharing the experience with hordes of other folk. The point about the most spectacular autumnal displays is that all are man-made. There is nothing “natural” about grand old aristocratic estates boasting fine old trees. All are, to some degree, the product of deliberate and carefully though-out planting. And they often used trees which had been brought from other parts of the world, sometimes at great expense. The finest collection of trees in the region, and the most spectacular autumn colours are, of course, to be found at Westonbirt Arboretum. Westonbirt is largely the work of one man, Robert Stayner Holford (1808-1892), who inherited the estate in 1839. The Victorian age had just began, and with it an exciting period during which naturalists and explorers penetrated the farthest reaches of the earth in search of new plant and animal specimens. Holford never went on any expeditions, but he was wealthy enough to finance them, and to purchase new specimens that were being brought to England. His vast wealth also enabled him to rebuild the house (now a girls’ school) and its gardens, which also included planting an arboretum. He even decided to move the original hamlet of Westonbirt so that it wouldn’t get in
the way. His design concept was for a romantic landscape where he could take his friends. By 1855, much of his arboretum – Main Drive, Specimen Avenue and the three main rides, Holford Ride, Morley Ride and Jackson Avenue – had been laid out. When Robert Holford died, his son Sir George Holford (1860-1926) continued his work. He planted maples and rhododendrons and expanding the arboretum across the valley into the the ancient Silk Wood area. But even before he inherited he had been interested in the estate. When still in his teens he had cre-
The Victorian age had just began... an exciting period during which naturalists and explorers penetrated the farthest reaches of the earth in search of new plant and animal specimens. ated what is now known as Acer Glade, and much of today’s autumn colour can be traced back to the Japanese maples he planted. He died in 1926 leaving no heir, and the estate passed to his nephew, the fourth Earl of Morley. The following year, the house was sold and became a school. The estate was split up. When the fourth earl died in 1951, the arboretum passed to his brother. By the 1950s the 600-acre estate had been neglected for some time and was handed over to the Forestry Commission, which took on the huge task of opening it up to the public. No longer just one wealthy man’s passion, this unique collection of trees and shrubs has now become a vital resource for conservation, recreation and education. If you fancy a visit before all the leaves are gone, see www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt.
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