Bristol Times Bristol Post 24 September 2013

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TAKE A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE BRISTOL TIMES Go online for more stories and pictures of Bristol’s past at our website

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TUE

24 SEP 2013

Celebrating our proud history and keeping your memories alive

● Before the days of computers … a newspaper page being made up in metal type in the 1950s.

Read all about it!

Your new, re-designed Bristol Post is the latest example of how Bristol’s newspapers have always adapted themselves to changing times. Eugene Byrne takes us on a tour of Bristol’s long and sometimes colourful newspaper history. Full story, pages 2&3.

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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Bristol’s first paper started in 1702

Colourful history of our news from coffee houses to interactive apps

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ere – try to read this: The Capitulation defired by Count Merci for the furrender of Rain, of which he was governor, at the time it was befieg’d by the Troops of the Allies, Commanded by Count Frife, is as follows, viz 1. That Count Merci, Brigadier General of the Armies of his Electoral Highnefs of Bavaria, and Governor of Rain, fhall go out of his place with his Garifon, comprehended therein …

That’s enough of that.

The significance of the passage above is that they are the first words on the first page of the oldest copy of a Bristol newspaper.

It’s also the oldest surviving copy of any local newspaper in Britain.

It’s called the Bristol Post Boy, or, to use its full title. ‘The Briftol Poft Boy, (pictured) Giving an Account of the moft Material NEWS both Foreign and Domeftick’.

(By the way, if you’re wondering about those f ’s ... People in the 17th and 18th centuries did not pronounce ‘s’ as an ‘f ’ in speech. This was a written and printed form; the proper term for the weird ‘f ’ is a “medial s” or “long s”. They were used because the letter ‘s’ in lower case used to be written like an ‘f ’. So when printing came along, most printers simply used regular ‘f ’ type for the long s.

In most places this practice had died out by the 19th century, though it continued in traditional German script until the Second World War. Not a lot of people know that …)

The Bristol Post Boy was first published in 1702, and in Bristol’s Reference Library they still hold a copy from which the above was taken and which was published in August of 1704. The story refers to the latest developments in what we now call the War of Spanish Succession.

The Post Boy was trying to make an honest living by providing information for a small but important readership – Bristol’s merchants.

The most up-to-date news on how the war was going could materially affect the fortunes of these men. Indeed, at this very time, Bristol’s merchant community was clubbing together to send two Bristol ships on a privateering expedition to prey on French and Spanish ships. They figured there could be big profits in it – and they were right!

The Bristol Post Boy contained no local news, and gathered most of its information from contacts in London, and from London papers.

As Bristol was an important mercantile centre, it won’t be any surprise to find that we had one of the

earliest newspapers in the country.

By the early 1700s, coffee houses were becoming popular places to do business, not least because if you met there instead of – as had been traditional – in inns and taverns, you could make deals with a clear head. It was in these places around Corn Street, the traditional business centre of town, that the Post Boy would have been read.

The Post Boy appears to have ceased publication in 1715, the same year that Samuel Farley launched the Bristol Post Man. The Farley family came from Devon originally, and their name was to dominate the West Country newspaper scene for a century.

The dynasty was founded by Samuel Farley, (1675?-1730) who trained as a printer in London, and set up successful papers in Exeter and Salisbury as well as Bristol. Here his base was at St Nicholas Street.

His sons followed him into the business. Edward Farley died in Exeter gaol in 1729 awaiting trial after one of the Farley papers had libelled King George II. You may not have heard of him, but he was one of the early and unsung martyrs for a free press.

Various of Samuel’s descendants went on to start, or run, newspapers around Bristol and the South West. The best-known of them, Felix, even started a Welsh-language newspaper in Pontypool in the 1740s.

The Farleys were people of very strong political and religious opinions.

Samuel was a passionate Tory (indeed, probably a Jacobite) while Felix became a Methodist.

Sarah Farley was a passionate Quaker, and enjoys the distinction of being the first Bristol newspaper editor to have been sued for libel.

The Farleys also had the most spectacular rows with one another, some of them lasting for decades and indeed beyond the grave. It seems to have been something of a family tradition to leave derisory sums of money to family enemies in one’s will. In the 18th century and well into the 19th, most of Bristol’s papers were published weekly, if that, and had small circulations.

This was partly because papers cost so much. The government was terrified of its own people, particularly during the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and in the long years of unemployment and mass poverty which followed the end of the wars.

So it placed heavy taxes – stamp duties – on newspapers.

But these were politically febrile

● Vans waiting to take copies of the Post hot from the printers to shops all over Bristol, 1950s times. In Bristol in the 1820s, Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal – the name lived on as a ‘brand’ though the Farley family were no longer involved with it – owned by John Gutch, agitated against a corrupt and complacent Corporation which ran the city for its own profit.

But it was a man named James Acland who really stirred things up.

He ran a scandal-sheet called The Bristolian which exposed the misdeeds of the city fathers. It was also the first local paper to report on the conduct of local court cases, showing how the magistrates, drawn from the ranks of local council members, aldermen and merchants, were corrupt

and biased, often packing juries with their own friends and relatives.

The authorities tried to clamp down on Acland. He was accused of evading the stamp duty, so re-launched his paper claiming it was a literary publication (and thus exempt from taxation). He was imprisoned for libel, and on his release further outraged the powers-that-be by attempting to sell cheap bread.

All this discontent would soon boil over in the 1831 riots, and the old Corporation would shortly afterwards be swept away for ever by reforms in the 1830s.

By the 1850s Bristol had half a dozen newspapers, all of them weekly,

and all of them openly supporting either the Whigs or the Tories apart from the neutral Clifton Chronicle.

When at last the stamp duties – the “tax on knowledge” – were abolished, the scene was set for an explosion in newspaper publishing.

Modern local papers as we would recognise them nowadays came to Bristol with the launch of the Western Daily Press in 1858 by Scots businessman Peter Stewart MacLiver and journalist Walter Reid.

It was one of the very first provincial daily papers in the country, but it would not be long before it faced competition.

The Bristol Mercury, published

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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Bristol newspaper timeline ✔ 1702 Bristol printer William Bonny starts the Bristol Post Boy. ✔ 1715 Samuel Farley’s Bristol Post Man is the first of many papers published by Farley family. ✔ 1752 Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal launched. ✔ 1757 Sarah Farley becomes first Bristol newspaper editor to be sued for libel. ✔ 1790 Bristol Mercury launched. ✔ 1827 James Acland publishes his short-lived Bristolian paper accusing the council of corruption. ✔ 1839 Joseph Leech launches Bristol Times. ✔ 1852 Bristol papers run first stories sent from London by electric telegraph. ✔ 1858 Western Daily Press becomes Bristol’s first daily paper. ✔ 1877 Bristol Evening News is city’s first evening paper. ✔ 1929 Bristol Evening World launched by Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere, starting a bitter circulation war. ✔ 1932 Evening Post launched in opposition to Evening World. ✔ 1939 Bristol United Press formed, bringing the Evening World and Evening Post together in one company. ✔ 1940-41 On some mornings during the Blitz, Bristol papers are just typewritten sheets. ✔ 1962 Bristol Evening World merges with Evening Post. ✔ 1974 Post & Press building on Temple Way opened. ✔ 1981 Bristol United Press launches Observer series of free weekly papers. ✔ 1991 Evening Post starts publishing a morning edition. ✔ 2000 Bristol United Press taken over by Northcliffe Newspaper to the machinations of the owners of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph who were in effect making a deal among themselves as to who should have Bristol’s evening newspaper market.

Journalists, business leaders and the Society of Merchant Venturers got together to create something truly Bristolian.

The result was the Post, launched in 1932 and billed as “the newspaper all Bristol asked for and helped to create.” All the founding directors had Bristol addresses and it was financed by hundreds of Bristolian shareholders.

The Western Daily Press, meanwhile, was still going strong, reinventing itself in the 1960s as a newspaper for the wider region.

The Post was by a long way the dominant newspaper in Bristol for much of the 20th century. In the 1950s and 60s its sales were so huge that they amounted to almost one paper

● Clockwise, from above: “The paper you have so eagerly awaited.” The first edition of the Bristol Evening Post, 1932; November 15, 1963, The Beatles are in town, according to the Bristol Evening Post, now incorporating the Bristol Evening World; November 2003. The Post with the iconic image of Concorde’s last flight. The paper had been printing in colour since the 1990s Group. ✔ 2012 Bristol Post and Western Daily Press become part of the newly-formed Local World regional newspaper group. ✔ 2050 Bristol Post can now be beamed direct to chips implanted in readers’ brains, in 3-D and with smells. Well, possibly. for every household in Bristol.

Old newspapermen (and women) tell a story which explains the success and eventual decline of evening newspapers in cities across Britain.

Back in the old days, the explanation goes, a man would knock off from his shift at the factory at five o’clock. He would get on his bike and ride home. Along the way he would stop at the newsagents and buy a packet of cigarettes and the local evening paper. Back home, he would sit in his armchair and smoke a couple of cigs and read the paper while his wife cooked his tea.

By the 1980s and 90s, though …

Well, he doesn’t work in a factory anymore, or ride a bike. He drives his car home from the office. There isn’t a newsagent anymore because the supermarket has put it out of business, or if there is one he can’t park outside because there’s double yellow lines.

And in any event he probably doesn’t smoke anyway. And when he gets

● Newspapers rarely carried photographs before the late 1800s, but before that they could carry drawings and woodcuts. Here the Bristol Mercury proudly presents a special extra page to mark the opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in 1864

home, then like as not it’s his turn to cook the tea because by now of course his wife is going out to work as well.

By the late 1990s, newspapers local and national were facing declining sales. There are all sorts of explanations aside from the above.

People are too busy. People get their news from the TV. Breaking news is on 24-hour rolling news channels, and printed papers, out the day after, cannot compete. People get their news online, or on their phones …

But the death of newspapers has been greatly exaggerated. Most are now, increasingly becoming online operations, a transformation which some have made with great success.

And as you may have noticed, the Post is still here, and it will be for some time to come. Bristolians are always going to need local news, and informed analysis of what’s going on.

They are always going to want to know about what other local folk are getting up to.

It might be that in 20 or 50 years’ time the Post will no longer be on paper. It’s already been online for a long time, you can get it on your phone, and – something no-one could begin to imagine in 1702 – you can get it instantly, anywhere in the world with a web connection.

Today’s new, re-designed Post is aimed at both readers who like their local paper on, well, paper, and those who want to catch up on the go, or join discussions about local issues online.

This is just the latest chapter in a history that goes back more than 300 years. And one way or another, the story will still be continuing 300 years from now.

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every Saturday, responded by launching the Bristol Daily Post, which would come out from Monday to Friday. Both papers were edited by John Latimer, who had come to Bristol from Newcastle to become the Mercury’s editor.

Latimer’s real passion was local history, and he cheerfully admitted that editing a weekly paper was not hard work. He was spending his considerable spare time researching Bristol’s past when the revolution in newspapers occurred. Now the Mercury’s owners were asking him to edit the daily paper as well.

The Mercury was based at Tower Lane until 1878, when it moved to Broad Street where they had installed two new rotary printing

presses, which were between them capable of turning out 15,000 newspapers per hour. The Bristol Mercury and the Bristol Daily Post were now combined in a single title.

That year, at a dinner – the annual feast of the Chapel of the Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, there was great celebration of the new technology.

The Mercury’s write-up of the “feast” tells us that Latimer gave a speech in which he produced a copy of the Mercury from 1826. It was very small, and there were only a few adverts. “The only locally-reported thing in it was a coroner’s inquest.”

“The price of that little journal was 7d, a paternal government exacting 4d in the shape of a stamp ... Mr Latimer asked the meeting how many compositors, reporters or machinists would be employed upon such a journal as that and said the public owed the large journalistic advantages which they now enjoyed to the diffusion of those principles of Liberalism which the Mercury and Post had ever contended for (cheers)” The Victorian era was a golden age of the local press. It was not until the 1880s that national papers started arriving daily by train, and at first it was only for a wealthy elite taking The Times.

The locals had the field to themselves, and there was an explosion in local news reporting. The papers were packed with crime, politics, the occasional scandal, correspondence columns for the pressing issues of the day, and of course advertisements for everything from local business to governesses seeking positions.

If John Latimer was one of the giants of Victorian Bristol journalism, he had at least one rival in the form of Joseph Leech.

Leech (1815-1893) was the polar opposite of Latimer. Where Latimer was Liberal, Leech was a passionate Tory.

Latimer’s prose and personal manner was dry where Leech was extrovert and effusive.

Leech was passing through Bristol on his way back to his native Ireland and spotted a gap in the local market.

When he got home, he persuaded his father to give him his inheritance in advance and so returned with £500 with which he founded the Bristol Times and made a considerable fortune. He scored an early hit with his readers by travelling incognito to church services in Bristol and surrounding areas and writing reviews of them in his paper as a sort of mystery shopper.

By 1900, compulsory elementary education meant that almost all Bristolians could read. Industrial processes for producing ink and paper, and technological improvements in printing made papers ever cheaper.

The problem for local papers, however, was increasing competition from Fleet Street. New papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express were now being brought in on the overnight trains.

These were bright, populist papers which could afford the best reporters, and by 1900 they carried photographs as well as words.

Local papers fought back. They, too, took advantage of the halftone process, which turned photos to a series of tiny dots.

But the most effective response to the national dailies was the innovation of evening newspapers. The Bristol Evening News had been launched as early as 1877, but it was the 20th century which would prove the golden age of the evening paper.

The most successful of all of these would, of course, be the Bristol Evening Post, launched in 1932 in response

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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The reality behind the glossy Downton image

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ersonal cards on the table time … I love Downton Abbey – the soap-opera plots, the changing relationships between the characters and the sumptuous settings and costumes. I have not missed a single episode.

But, well, you know, between thee and me, it’s a bit of a guilty secret. If you’re a pedant, there are certain historical inaccuracies.

It is over-idealised. This TV vision of loyal servants and their thoroughly decent and generous masters and mistresses is nothing like the grim reality many of our forebears endured “in service.”

Life for almost all servants was all hard work for little time off and even less financial reward. You only need to see the way in which people, especially women, deserted domestic service at the first opportunity.

Well-paid factory work in the First World War caused a major shortage of servants, while the declining financial fortunes of the old aristocracy did the rest.

And then there are the odd little things that grate about Downton.

Personally, I find it odd that a series which tries very hard to get the costumes right never encouraged more of the male cast members to grow moustaches in the earlier broadcasts.

No, really – look at any group photo of men between, say, 1890 and 1914 – and you’ll find most of them have moustaches. They were all the rage, a sign of virility, and a fashion which was only ended by the occasional necessity of wearing gas-masks on the Western Front.

Then there’s religion. There’s precious little church-going or reference to the Almighty in Downton, yet it is set in an overwhelmingly religious age, a time when the great majority of people above and below stairs took the existence of a (Protestant, and usually High Anglican) God as axiomatic.

You take the servants at Tyntesfield, near Bristol, for instance.

If you’ve been there you’ll know that the Gibbs family were deeply religious. They were such High Anglicans that they were Catholics in all but name and had their own very elaborate chapel.

The servants at Tyntesfield, says Margaret Rowley, had to attend two services every single day of the week, apart possibly from Sundays when they were expected to go church in the village.

Margaret, inset, is one of the army of volunteers who make it possible for Tyntesfield to open to the public.

One of the things she does there is run special tours of the house looking at the lives of the servants, taking small groups of visitors behind the scenes to places which aren’t normally open to the public.

While Downton takes us below stairs to view the intimate lives of the cook, butler, housekeeper, footmen and assorted maids, we actually know relatively little about the individual servants at Tyntesfield.

The tour that Margaret and her colleagues run is based on the scant knowledge yielded by the 1891

With a new series of Downton Abbey underway on our TV screens, Eugene Byrne gets a special tour behind the scenes at Tyntesfield to see how closely the real lives of servants in a big house matches the fictional version on TV

● Some of the Tyntesfield servants in around 1900. Front, from left, are valet Charles C

Tyntesfield servants Tyntesfield’s Servants’ Tours are based on information on people living and working at the house gleaned from the 1891 Census. Here are a few of the workers: ● Margaret Rowley takes us on a tour below stairs Census. But much of the story of their daily grind – 12, 14 and even 16-hour days were not uncommon – can be conjectured simply by looking at the rooms in which they lived and worked.

Margaret takes us through the kitchen, the scullery and the still room.

There’s the butler’s pantry and the housekeeper’s sitting room. That’s one good thing about Downton - and indeed Upstairs, Downstairs before it - they do show you how there was a very clear and stark pecking order

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Many visitors have family members who were nursemaids, kitchen maids and so on, and they like to see the working areas. And it’s nice to present this house which was well-ordered and run with consideration for servants

Margaret Rowley

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among the servants.

“If anything, things below stairs are even more of a hierarchy than they are above,” says Margaret. “The butler and the housekeeper were very important people.”

And then there’s all the bells. Rows and rows of them along the walls so you’d know which room you were being summoned to.

Tyntesfield House was built by William Gibbs in the 1860s, and passed to his son Anthony in 1875.

They loved new technology, and it was an ultra-modern, state-of-the-art

building in its time. The bells were operated by a complex system of wiring which the house’s National Trust owners do not dare tamper with. You can’t ring the bells to summon the servants anymore because the Trust fears that if any of the wires break they would be a nightmare to fix.

They also operated on a clever system whereby even if you didn’t see which bell was ringing, it would remain in a different position once rung, so you could still tell which room you were required in.

Close to the main array of bells downstairs is a little shelf where the Hall Boy would stand to note down which rooms were ringing for service. In the 1891 Census the Hall Boy was one John Gladen, aged about 25.

Ten years later he was still being described in the Census as an “indoor servant.”

“I think that we have to conclude from this that he really wasn’t all that bright,” says Margaret.

“If you look at some other places, you’ll find that the Gibbs family treated their servants rather well,” she says. “Probably better than most places.”

Upstairs we look at the servants’ bedrooms – men and women were kept strictly separated on different wings. “Most of them have fireplaces, and there’s a little sitting room for the housemaids. They also put in a luggage lift, which meant that the servants didn’t have to carry heavy things up the stairs. I think that shows a lot of consideration.”

The luggage lift was modernised by the Trust to provide access to the house for wheelchair users. But all the original workings of the lift are still in place.

✔ Scullery Maids In 1891, there were two scullery maids, Bessie Haydon, 22, from Exeter, and Harriet Ridge, 19, from Whitchurch in Oxfordshire. It may be that they were recruited from Gibbs family connections in Devon and Oxfordshire. Bessie was one of ten children born to a farm labourer and his wife, who helped out as a laundress. Harriet, still unmarried, was working in London as a cook by 1901. ✔ Cook Emily Constable was born in London in 1860, and had worked her way up from being a kitchen maid. By the 1901 Census, she had married Tyntesfield’s butler and was running the Battle Axes pub in the local village. The Battle Axes belonged to the Tyntesfield estate and was built

by Blanche Gibbs as a temperance house – the Gibbses were strongly opposed to drinking. At this time the Battle Axes may have been serving

The day and night nursery rooms are, she says, among the most popular places on the tour. This, presumably, is because of the old toys artfully left lying around, and their general air of cosy, privileged childhood.

“Really, though, people like the whole tour because they’re fascinated to see how their forebears would have lived in a house like this. They realise that for the most part they would not have been upstairs, they would have been downstairs.

“Many visitors have family members who were nursemaids, kitchen maids and so on, and they like to see the working areas. And it’s nice to be able to present this house which was a well-ordered house and run with con-

● The servants from TV’s Downton Abbey beer, but it did not sell spirits. ✔ Housekeeper Rebecca Basnell, aged 43, from Northumberland. Though unmarried, she would have been known as “Mrs Basnell” and was in charge of five housemaids. By 1901 she had become housekeeper at Egglestone Hall in Durham. By then Tyntesfield’s housekeeper was Blanche McDonald, 57, from Eastnor in Herefordshire. ✔ Nurse Antony and Janet Gibbs had nine children in 1891; the oldest was 17,

sideration for servants.”

Margaret thinks that the biggest inaccuracy in Downton is in the relationships between masters, mistresses and servants, but concedes this is necessary to create drama.

“The level of interaction is always overplayed. In reality, the butler would have spoken to the lady of the house and the master of the house, the housekeeper would have had dealings with the lady of the house … But kitchen maids and scullery maids would never have seen the lady of the house. The lady would not have come down to the kitchen for a little chat.

“And affairs with the chauffeur would never have happened!”

When she’s conducting people on the

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✔ J e m 3 l h

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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

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but the younger ones were the responsibility of the nurse/nanny Harriet Bayley, aged 45, a tailor’s daughter from Godalming in Surrey.

She was assisted by a nursery maid, Jeanne Messeilles, from Lausanne, aged 21. Swiss nursery maids were the height of fashion at the time. ✔ Lady’s Maid Janet Louisa Gibbs had an equally-fashionable French lady’s maid in 1891. This was Aimee Collen, 33. Her job was to make her mistress look good; she was dressmaker, hairdresser, and confidante. She had

her own room and was waited on by the servants, so was very high in the pecking-order. ✔ Footmen There were two footmen in 1891, Arthur Savile, 24, from Halstead in Essex, and Fred Hemming, aged 20, from Frome in Somerset. Footmen were supposed to be decorative and as such were usually tall and good-looking. They had to be housed well away from the female servants.

Fred Hemming would later become the butler and served the Gibbs family all his life.

below stairs tours, she does occasionally get asked to compare Tyntesfield with Downton.

“We try to dispel that sort of thing from the start,” she says, mock-sternly.

“To be fair, of all the films and TV dramas – Upstairs, Downstairs for example – Downton Abbey is probably the most accurate.”

She is not aware of any of her own ancestors having been in service; they were mostly farm workers. If she were to find herself transported back to 1900 and had to work as a servant, she reckons that the job she’d find most tolerable would be that of a governess.

“That would be OK. You’d be on reasonably good terms with everyone, you’d probably have come from a gentry

background, and you’d have had some education. I think I would probably have been quite comfortable as a governess in a good household.

“The reality, though, is that coming from a family of agricultural labourers, I would have started out as a scullery maid and wouldn’t have got much further than that. I would have been deemed too lippy!”

● The Servants’ Tours at Tyntesfield are every Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday at noon until the end of this year’s season (November 3).

Price is £10 per person, in addition to the normal admission charge. To book, phone 0844 249 1895. Any spare places can also be booked at reception on the day.

So … Did you do Bristol Doors Open Day? Mrs Latimer and I never miss it, and had a splendid time at this year’s poking our noses into other people’s business.

Highlights included the old Guildhall, soon to be turned into a five-star hotel.

Nice to see the old place being used, though it did mean that this year’s DOD may have been our only chance to look inside at what remains of the courtrooms.

Of course the best bit was the cells down in the bowels of the building.

At the special request of the Editor I am not going to show you any of the photos I took of the colourful graffiti and drawings etched into the woodwork by several generations of wrong ‘uns.

No, instead we’ll have this, from another of our DOD adventures.

We took a look around the Environment Agency’s Horizon House in Deanery Road. This is a state-of-the-art eco building with all sorts of clever tricks for saving energy and generally being jolly green.

What it also has is a roof garden/balcony with fantastic views over the city. So the highlight of my day was getting some photos of the sculptures at the back of the Council House, sorry, City Hall, which are not so easily visible from the ground.

Lots of people don’t even realise they’re there.

There are two, one of a boy, one of a girl, both of them riding seahorses, and they were sculpted by David McFall, who also did the rather better known unicorns at each end of the building.

We can safely publish a picture of one of these. This is the boy seahorse rider (right). Both were carved from Portland Stone and are supposed to represent the “spirit of the Avon” and belief in the future of Bristol.

● Cabot Tower. Soon to be flashing at the world once more sources you need to start researching. There’ll be advice on useful websites, an introduction to parish registers, civil registration and census records, tips for developing your research skills, and opportunities to discuss your own research with the experts. All this for just £15, including drinks and handouts, but booking is essential (0117 922 4224 Tuesday to Friday) to secure a place.

So mention the War dep’t: Bristol’s M shed museum is planning a big exhibition for late next year focussing on the city’s experiences in various wars and conflicts from 1914 to the present.

This is of course all part of a very impressive local programme of events, talks, publications etc. for next year’s centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. They are appealing to Bristolians to come forward with objects and stories to include in the exhibition and are holding their next “drop-in day” this coming Saturday, September 28.

If you’ve got some interesting or unusual artefacts relating to the First or Second World War, or any other conflict, or if you have an interesting story to tell – either from your own experience, or maybe the story of the experiences of a family member, then they’d love it if you called in.

Drop by anytime between 11am and 4.30pm. If you have any queries beforehand, you can always contact Catherine Littlejohns on 0117 903 9816/352 6953 or email Catherine.littlejohns@bristol.gov.uk.

Inspect Your Morse And now some truly splendid news,

Calling would-be family historians!

There are lots of folk out there who’d rather like to track down a bit of family history, but don’t know how to go about it. If that’s you, there’s some good news.

The excellent Bristol & Avon Family History Society have got together with the equally excellent Bristol Record Office to put on a beginners’ day at M shed on Friday, October 25.

It runs from 10am to 4pm and will cover all the essential skills and

● One of the seahorse sculptures, representing the spirit of the Avon and hope for Bristol’s future

and a bit of a BT exclusive …

We had an email a couple of weeks back from Mr Alan Hale, who reminded us that back in the day, Cabot Tower used to have a light on top which at night flashed out the name of our city in Morse Code. Mr Hale was wondering what chance there was of the beacon being restored.

Good point, we said, and immediately got on to the council. And the answer we received was very satisfactory.

As you may remember, the tower was closed for a while for restoration work. This was completed at the end of last year, and it’s now open again.

For the finishing touch, they are indeed going to install a light that’ll spell out ‘Bristol’ in dots and dashes.

They hope to do this, according to a spokesperson, “in the not-too-distant future”. The most important thing they need to sort is finding someone with the requisite steeplejacking and abseiling skills who can actually put it up there for them.

So there you go. When it happens the Post will, as always, be first with the news.

I was so thrilled by the Cabot Tower business that I was all set up to write the whole of this week’s column in Morse Code, but the killjoys on the top floor weren’t having any of that because they said that nobody can understand Morse.

Nonsense, I said. A surprisingly large number of people speak Morse, though some might be a bit rusty now. My mother and my aunties, who all worked in the Post Office back when they still had telegrams, could all knock out fluent Morse.

And my Dad, who was a merchant navy radio officer, had a passing familiarity with dots and dashes. Or so he led me to believe.

Likewise pretty much anyone who was in the forces back in the day. My cousin Ernie, for instance, said his knowledge of Morse was very useful when he was held captive.

He’d tap out messages to other inmates in Morse Code on the hot water pipes when he was being held in a prison in ‘Nam. Cheltenham, that is. Two years for receiving. Boom-boom!

Cheers then!

(Or rather -.-. .... . . .-. ... - .... . -.!)

● 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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Latimer’s Diary

ow bist? The Post had an email the other day from Mr John Hawkins, who had a letter in Bristol Times trying to trace relatives. He says that as a result he was contacted by a direct descendant of the ancestor he was trying to find out about.

So at the risk of blowing our own trumpet, well done Bristol Times, and well done readers.

We can’t guarantee that using our Letters & Appeals section works every single time, but it works a lot of the time, and we love it when that happens.

les Crisp, the cook, housekeeper and Fred Hemming the butler

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www.bristolpost.co.uk

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Backtracking with the Beach Boys

Pub features in publication

Wish they all could be Shirehampton girls?

Dad had great fun in Beaufort

Last month, the Beach Boys released a massive box set with over seven hours of music, covering the whole of their 50 years in the business.

What not even the most hardcore Beach Boys fan might not know, though, is that three of the rarest tracks on the compilation come from recordings made in Shirehampton. Eugene Byrne reports.

● Surfin’ Shirehampton … above left, The Cobras in 1965. Left to right: Ian Gane (vocals & rhythm guitar), John Williams (drums) Paul Mitchell (lead guitar), Pete Relton (bass guitar & vocals); below left, the Beach Boys arriving in London in 1964

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f you’re a Beach Boys fan you may well have already gone out and bought the massive six-CD box set they released at the end of August.

Made in California consists of a vast number of tracks spanning the band’s whole career. There are also out-takes, demos, B-sides and other assorted rarities. There are live cuts and TV performances. Not all of these are particularly slick, but, to purists, that will be precisely the point.

It all goes to prove that the Beach Boys were among the all-time greats, up there with the Beatles and the Stones. The flaws and rough edges around some just go to prove that they were not just another 1960s studio pop band manufactured to take money off teenagers.

For many, the real draw will be the 60 or so tracks that have never been released before.

And the Bristol connection? Three of the tracks on the album were only possible because of a young Bristolian music fanatic who in 1966 was recording radio programmes using an expensive reel-to-reel tape recorder he’d bought on the proceeds of his first job.

Step forward and take a bow Ian Gane, who taped the songs in the front room of his parents’ house in Shirehampton.

The Beach Boys came to England in 1964. This was with all the original members of the band – Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine. They recorded seven numbers for the BBC in a private session without an audience at the Playhouse Theatre in London. These were broadcast the same night on the BBC Light Programme’s Top Gear.

Two years later the Beach Boys came to Britain again, and to mark the occasion, the BBC re-broadcast the Playhouse session on Saturday Club with Brian Matthew, and Ian Gane was ready with his tape recorder.

“It was a Brenell 3 Star that I bought in 1962 with savings from my first job – I was 18 at the time,” explains Ian. It cost £58, which was a huge sum of money in those days. The sort of thing that had older people complaining about how the young generation had no idea how good they had things.

His top-of-the-range machine, which he says only died about 15

I note from Bristol Times (Sept 3) that one of your correspondents, Mr C P Elvins, would like to have a picture of the Beaufort Arms in Barton Hill.

The pub is featured in the Images of England series entitled “Barton Hill”, Tempus Publishing, 1997, and the photograph is on page 58.

The address given though is “on the corner of Henry Street and Beaufort Road”. However, like your correspondent, I think it was one of three pubs on Great Western Street, there was a Top House (the Beaufort), Middle House (the Mechanics) and a Bottom House.

The “Bottom” pub was the Weavers Arms and it got its name, and cli-

entele, from the G. W. Cotton Factory.

My father George was a local in the Top House and regularly exercised his tonsils there to favourite old songs such as Salome and My Brother Sylvest.

He was devastated when the Beaufort’s trade disappeared seemingly overnight with Barton Hill’s redevelopment in the 1950s.

Interestingly the licensee was the landlord’s wife as he wasn’t allowed to hold a licence due to his fascist sympathies. Dad had many a great night in there.

Popular games in there were ‘pennies from heaven’, when they use to sing the song and then lob coppers into a bucket for charity, and “tippit” a form of spoof.

The Judge and Jury club also used to frequent the Beaufort, one of its members was the notorious “Hopper” Chinook (rat catcher who used to bite their heads off in the surrounding pubs) he used to dock puppy dogs tails by the same method and put the money into the charity pot.

Mark Steeds by email

Postcard find in book

I need to contact members of the Sutcliffe family

years ago, was of virtually professional quality.

“Everyone recorded things off the radio back then,” he says. “Of course it was probably illegal, but nobody thought about it in those days.

“Now what most people did was they’d put a microphone next to the speaker, but I wired directly into the radio to get the best quality.

“Being in a band myself I was interested in recording technology, and a friend and I used to rehearse together. So I just hooked it up to my parents’ Phillips valve radio, and the sound quality was very good. It was only AM radio and the BBC Light Programme, but it was fine, there are no clicks, pops, dropouts or anything.

“Not long after that broadcast I went to see them playing live in Cardiff. That was a brilliant night.”

For decades it was assumed that the recordings had been lost for ever, but last year, with the band planning a 50th anniversary tour, Ian got in touch with Geoff Barker, who presents the Rock ‘n’ Roll Party programme on BBC local radio.

“He didn’t even know that the Beach Boys had done a UK session and he went through the BBC archives and found that they did not have the recordings. The BBC policy in those days was to wipe the tape afterwards as it was so expensive. So he played one of the tracks I recorded

on his show.”

To cut a long story short, Capitol Records got to hear about it and bought the recordings from Ian. For a lot of money?

“Well, let’s just say I got the price of a good holiday out of it,” laughs Ian. “What matters is not me,” says Ian. “It’s about the music. I was told that some of the band had listened to the tracks and commented, ‘they’re beautiful’, and it must be great, listening to songs they recorded, hearing them again for the first time in 50 years and the memories they brought back.”

When he made his recordings, Ian was working as an engineering apprentice, and spent much of his career as an engineer as an estimator and quantity surveyor. But he also spent some time in the music industry as a rep for RCA and EMI. Some readers might also remember the band he was a member of in the 1960s, The Cobras.

“We were a typical 60s band,” he says. “Our influences were people like Chuck Berry Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly and so on. And the Beach boys, too. We were probably the only Bristol band who were doing surfing instrumental back then.”

One of the band’s members died last year, but Ian still meets up with former Cobras bassist Pete Relton every few weeks to play.

Made in California by the Beach Boys is out now on Capitol Records.

Are you able to help me contact any members of the Sutcliffe family who resided at 9 Dundonald Road, Redland, Bristol in 1931?

Whilst in Boscastle/Tintagel a few years ago, I bought a secondhand book. Inside the book was a black and white “real photo” postcard of Tintagel Castle.

On the reverse was an ink-written holiday message to a “Miss E – Sutcliffe”.

The postcard was dated June 24

1931 and franked with an orange/red one penny stamp. Unfortunately I can only transcribe part of the hand-written message, so it would be fascinating to meet any of the Sutcliffe family who can possibly fill in the gaps for me.

Likewise, perhaps the same postcard will help the Sutcliffe family in compiling their family history.

Mr M.E. Bampfield 42 The Plantation, Brierley Hill, West Midlands DY5 4RT

www.bristolpost.co.uk

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

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Picture of the week ● Luvverly fruit! Get your five a day here!

Costermongers in Bristol City Centre, 1935.

The picture comes from the Reece Winstone collection and we thought we’d put it in as a reminder to readers that you can see 150 pictures of Bristol and Somerset in the old days at the Royal West of England Academy.

Photographer Reece Winstone is of course best remembered for all those books of old photos of Bristol and the exhibition at the RWA, titled Bristol and Somerset: Vanishing Lives has been put together from photos selected by his son John.

The exhibition continues until November 13 and admission is free.

Ricky and the Renegades

Felix Road

Odeon cinema

Can anyone help solve mystery of barracks?

Let’s rock and roll – call for band to get in touch and Kim would like anyone involved with the band to give her a call.

Back in the day, Ricky and the Renegades played most of the city’s major venues, including the Colston Hall and The Glen and countless villages halls, pubs and clubs.

Kim can be contacted on 0117 914 4496.

MEMORY LANE BRISTOL TIMES Go online for more stories and pictures of Bristol’s past bristolpost.co.uk

Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly and my prize success The recent news article in the Bristol Post about the 75th anniversary of the Odeon cinema in Broadmead reminded me of the time I was a winner in a competition in a club organised by the Bristol Evening World newspaper.

I was about ten years old at the time, approximately 1952. The competition involved the film starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly called High Noon.

I enclose a photo of myself – in glasses – with the manager of the Odeon and the other prize winners.

As I remember it, we were treated to a showing of the film, but received our prizes beforehand.

I only expected to receive 7s. 6d, but received a whole ten shillings – 50 pence in modern money. I was thrilled to bits!

Marilyn Stabb Whitehall

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● We’ve had an appeal from Bristol Times reader Kim Starr who would like to contact former members of local band Ricky and the Renegades, pictured here playing at Frenchay Village Hall in July 1961.

Kim’s dad, Alan Starr – his nickname was/is “Twinkle” – was the lead singer. He’s now 72 and still the life and soul of any party,

I wonder if you can help? I’m looking for any history of 29 Felix Road, Easton, Bristol, around 1917.

I know it was a Salvation Army barracks at that time, but the mystery is when my grandfather died, aged 43 (he was a coal miner). On his burial records it has the above address, as well as his own of 5 Cromwell Street, Bedminster, where he died).

The Salvation Army lost all records of this place, so can’t help, but I wonder if any readers might have any insights, or pictures of this place.

The Post was very helpful with my last appeal, when I was researching Cromwell Street, where my grandparents lived. The lady next door still lived there and was in her 90s, and knew my mum and her brothers.

Did the Salvation Army help the poor or ill people, what were the barracks used for? My grandparents were very poor.

Marlene Brown 58 Frognal Gardens, Teynham, Sittingbourne, Kent ME9 9HU

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My black eye holiday mishap This week, Marion’s Memories are very recent indeed. You might even call them Marion’s Mishap – but it all comes good in the end

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his week’s column is about a very recent memory, but I thought it would amuse my readers. I shall call it ‘Marion’s Holiday Mishaps’ which one day in the distant future might seem funny – but not yet!

For as I type these words I have a really bad headache, two fairly discoloured eyes and a swollen nose…

Our holiday to Tunisia on September 1 didn’t even start well.

Our flight was due to leave Bristol Airport at 6.30am, and there was much discussion the night before over whether we should go to bed early and get up at 3am for our taxi at 4.15, or just stay up.

We decided to go to bed and set our alarm for 3am. However, waking up at 2.30 urgently needing a wee I thought to myself “well, being a kindly lady I will make my dear hubby a nice cup of tea, and he shall drink it in bed whilst I shower.”

Footsteps into history | Burgesses and freemen

Ancient ritual creates city’s newest freeman

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FRIDAY, September 13, saw a ceremony taking place at M Shed, with the creation of a new Freeman of the city of Bristol, and two apprentices.

The ceremony and the wording of the undertakings signed are an extremely old part of the city’s tradition, but they don’t happen very often any more.

On this occasion, former Lord Mayor Royston Griffey was created a freeman (or burgess) of Bristol, while two others, Griffey’s son Henry and local businessman and charity organiser Stephen Parsons, were made apprentices.

These titles date back hundreds of years. The Bristol Record Office has books recording the burgesses dating back to the time of Elizabeth I, while the apprentice books go back to Henry VIII’s reign.

The actual roles of freeman and apprentice are in fact much older.

Until the Great Reform act of 1832, you had to be a freeman to elect the mayor, aldermen and council men, and to carry out most trades within Bristol. To become a freeman you

● After my accident, Derek said I looked like something from a horror film

However as I put his tea on his beside table, he awoke with a start, peered at the clock and, thinking we had overslept, jumped smartly out of bed, giving me a nifty kick in my tummy.

Our somewhat frosty relations had thawed by the time we boarded our aeroplane, especially since we were greeted by Claire, our lovely steward with whom we had flown before.

I salute the way Thomson’s aircrew deal with difficult passengers, especially the very grumpy passenger, who really felt he should have my bulkhead window seat instead of the aisle one ‘because he didn’t want to sit by a ‘loo’ or get bumped by trolleys!

(I am sure he does not read Marion’s Memories, but I did think it was not very gallant for him to expect me change seats so that all those things might happen to me instead of him!)

Thankfully Claire, after telling him

she had never bumped her trolley into a passenger, found him another seat.

My dad would have said it’s being so miserable that keeps him happy.

We arrived to torrential rain – something we experienced from time to time throughout our holiday accompanied, I must admit, by some absolutely fantastic thunderstorms.

It was on our ninth day that fate struck me a body blow – literally.

First, we overslept and just managed to get into the restaurant for breakfast and then after hurriedly showering I suggested I go on down to the beach whilst Derek showered.

Having buzzed for the lift I didn’t realise when it arrived it had malfunctioned, and wasn’t level with the floor.

I tripped and fell heavily into the lift, banging my head on the lift wall and then falling onto my nose, which is not exactly small and pert at the

best of times!

Covered in blood, I was rescued by a staff member who took me back to our apartment, so the first sight Derek saw was me with my face and hands and beach suit covered in blood!

He said, looking back, it reminded him of the film Count Dracula, starring Boris Karloff as a vampire from Transylvania. Somehow watching horror films at home now is never as scary as it was watching them in a cinema!

I bet a lot of ladies remember cuddling up to their protective boyfriends in the back row of the cinema watching scary films.

Mind you, I also bet the boyfriends were probably just as scared!

Of course that reminded me of Bob Hope singing Fangs for the memory.

Anyway a doctor was summoned – his tentative diagnosis was a broken nose, and, hopefully, just bruises.

● Royston Griffey (right) on becoming a freeman, pictured with (l to r) his wife Hazel, their son Henry Alan and Bristol’s Lord Mayor Faruk Pic: Shawn Spencer Choudhury could marry the widow or daughter of one, be born the son of a freeman within Bristol’s boundaries, or serve a seven-year apprenticeship to a master who was himself a freeman.

By the 1700s, freemen were often created in huge numbers at election times. The story goes that a favourite ploy by both Whigs and Tories when an election was in the offing, was to search the city for the widows of freemen. These women would then be paid to marry political supporters of one side or another who were not freemen. These sham marriages would soon afterwards be dissolved in local churchyards with both parties standing to either side of a grave and declaring that they had been “parted by death” (the old marriage vow being “until death us do part” – get it?!)

“I just thought it would be good to continue the tradition,” Royston Griffey told Bristol Times.

“So we went onto the Matthew, some of us in medieval costume, and had a cruise down the river. But we held the ceremony at M Shed afterwards as the Bristol Record Office people didn’t want to bring the burgess books onto the ship.”

When asked what rights, privileges

We can see humour in most situations and if I hadn’t been in such pain and discomfort I would probably have laughed when the doctor came hobbling in on one crutch to examine me, and then dashed off leaving his bag on the floor.

He instructed me to summon a taxi and meet him at the local clinic – and to bring my insurance policy, passport, and money.

But then an amazing thing happened – something I don’t remember happening in my country for years – the General Manager arrived, a charming man who we had been introduced to only days before, and he instantly reassured me.

This was his responsibility; he would take care of all bills and a staff member would accompany me and Derek to the clinic and the hotel would pay all expenses.

Luckily, I had no serious injuries, just from a chipped bone in my nose and various other bruises.

I was therefore able to travel home on the right day.

The day after my accident discussions took place between Derek and I and the hotel manager as regards the subject of compensation – actually it was a very good-humoured conversation – and quite quickly we had decided Derek and I would accept a free holiday, which we are taking in October!

When we told one family member he did remark we weren’t actually getting compensation because giving away a holiday in a big hotel was really not “any skin off the manager’s nose” (bad pun, I know!)

My dad would have said “all’s well that ends well” … And I am still here to tell the tale!

God Bless, love Marion.

and responsibilities the status of freeman confers on the holder nowadays he cheerfully declares: “None!”

Only 19 freemen have been created in the last 20 years, most of them at the Lord Mayor’s residence at the Mansion House. Most of these have been members of the Society of Merchant Venturers, who, purely for tradition’s sake, like their members and Masters to be freemen, as they were back in the days when merchants ran the city.

Most of these modern freemen have first “served” a seven-year apprenticeship to a master who is himself a freeman.

On completion of this apprenticeship the master then has to pay you £2 by way of wages for your seven years of (non-existent) “work”.

The language of the documents apprentices and freemen have to sign is ancient, colourful and, to modern eyes, quite bizarre. Apprentices, for instance are told: The secrets of his … Master and Mistress shall keep, their Goods he shall not inordinately waste. Taverns he shall not frequent, at Dice he shall not play, Fornication he shall not commit … but well and faithfully shall behave himself in all things, as well in words and deeds, as a good and faithful Apprentice, according to the Use and Custom of Bristol.

On the Matthew trip on the same day, the Long John Silver Trust handed over a £1,000 cheque for life membership of the Matthew Trust.