"Mary Jane Steer concentrates on farming life where Bristol expanded into the Severn Vale in the later 19th and 20th centuries. George Watkins and his family are the focus of her research. Like most of the rural population before 1900 they worked mainly as agricultural labourers, although George came to the area as a labourer on the Severn Tunnel in the early 1880s".
Category: Archives
Elmington Manor Farm: 1584-1911
"Elmington Manor Farm is the best-documented farm in the Lower Severn Vale Levels, which is why James Powell chose as his topic 'The Estate Management of Elmington Manor Farm and environs 1066-1950'". From sources in "public archives, planning departments, libraries and museums" Powell looks at the earliest records of the farm, and how it survived to be surveyed by the "Second World War Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries".
Medieval Redwick, South Gloucestershire
"The Severn Vale salt marshes attracted our Prehistoric ancestors because of the wealth of food - especially fish and wildfowl. Regular flooding prevented permanent settlement but left silt behind which enriched the soil... Sue explores a wide range of records kept by church and state to piece together the lives of Redwick's medieval inhabitants".
Tales of the Vale: The ‘A Forgotten Landscape’ History Research Project – Introduction
"A Forgotten Landscape is an exciting project designed to reconnect local people with their heritage in the Lower Severn Vale Levels. One strand of this Heritage Lottery Fund Landscape Partnership Project is a community history project called Tales of the Vale". Bainbridge introduces the project, and how it interprets the landscape of the South West.
Active Opposition to Hunting in the South West – a History yet to be Written
"The South West of England was prominent in the campaign to ban blood sports in the second half of the twentieth century. Both the Hunt Saboteurs Association and Save Our Stags, an organisation established to oppose deer hunting in Devon and Somerset, were both born in the region". Tichelar looks at the people behind the movement, and how it has shaped the areas approaches to wildlife and conservation.
Pill Boxes in the South West: a Neglected Heritage?
"While popular memory associates the summer of 1940 with debonair young men in Spitfires duelling the Luftwaffe in the sky, there was frantic building activity going on below in preparation for the expected German invasion. Eugene Byrne looks at some of the defence works made in anticipation of the ground war in the west of England".
A Church as it should be? Victorian Restoration in South West England
'In this paper Weller demonstrates that, chiefly with "examples from the parishes in and around Bristol and Somerset, that the older church buildings we see today, whilst for the most part still possessing a Medieval structural core, have undergone varying degrees of transformation, sometimes including partial or occasionally total demolition, during the Victorian Age"'.
‘Mr Toagis’s Stonehenge’
"An exploration of an uncelebrated benchmark in replica 'henge' monuments to mark the tenth anniversary of Clonehenge". From cake to cucumbers, Brian Edwards looks at the history of people creating replicas of the English heritage site, whether this be a re-imagining of the original structure, or a reproduction of their current state. Edwards also touches upon an Orwellian connection to this practice.
Prosecuting Bristol’s Fascists, 1934-1944
"During the Second World War a handful of local fascists or former fascists were detained in the Bristol area as potential security threats. Others were prosecuted for apparently expressing pro-German sympathies and even trying to sabotage the war effort. Eugene Byrne looks at some of these cases".
A Mystery at the Eleventh Hour
"Of the carefree outings that were possible in 1914, that balmy final Saturday in June witnessed some of the last of a passing age. The following day, Sunday 28 June, is remembered for the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie Chotek von Chotkova, the killings in Sarajevo widely regarded as starting the countdown to the Great War. Having stepped out that Saturday wearing white shoes, just over a thousand miles away from the expectant scene of those globally momentous events, Flora Roscoe’s 49 year old husband had uncharacteristically gone missing.In this article, Brian Edwards reopens the book on an unexplained disappearance".