Fells The A-Z of Curious Bristol

Strange Stories of Mysteries, Crimes and Eccentrics
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5716-8
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

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

MAURICE FELLS is a born and bred Bristolian with a passionate interest in the city's history, and a prolific author of books about Bristol. He worked as a journalist in both the print and broadcast mediums, and held key editorial posts in regional television, radio and newspapers. He now freelances, with features on local history appearing in the Western Daily Press and Bristol Post. He is often asked by BBC West and ITV West to take part in programmes about regional history. He has also written features about the regeneration of Bristol City Docks for national newspapers.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fells, Maurice

Leseproben

ALE CONNORS’ TASTY TASK

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

Their task was to taste the ale that was being brewed to make sure it was wholesome for sale. For this they were paid £2 13s a year. The Ale Connors were required to tell the council about any ‘knavish brewers’ so that action could be taken against them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ARSONIST WHO TRIED TO BURN BRISTOL DOWN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ASHTON COURT IMPOSTOR

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

Ashton Court Mansion (Trevor Naylor)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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