"A major investment opportunity arose at Bath in late 1768 with the announcement of a project to build a fresh suite of assembly rooms among the terraces and crescents of rapidly expanding Lansdown". Fawcett examines the details of their construction, as well as their use by various societies and individuals.
Category: Archives
Farming Practices on the Lands of Bath Abbey and Hinton Charterhouse Priory during the Sixteenth Century
"The scramble among the aristocracy, gentry and merchants to obtain and keep some of the stream of former monastic property which became available after the dissolution of 1536-40 led to numerous legal disputes. They have left a rich store of evidence concerning the monastic estates and the purposes for which they were used". Bettey looks at how farming practices shaped local industry in the region, and how it shaped the region.
Heritage and Regeneration: making history at the Stokes Croft Museum
In August 2010, the Stokes Croft Museum opened: an unfunded venture, established to showcase the diversity of life in an area of Bristol renowned for its music and graffiti, but also its problems of crime, addiction and prostitution. Rose Wallis looks at this new 'single-room' heritage attraction, and how it reflects the many identities of the area.
Stolen Paradise: Civilian squatters in military camps in and around postwar Bristol
During the summer of 1946, thousands of British families took the law into their own hands to temporarily solve their housing problems by "requisitioning" empty military camps. Eugene Byrne takes a look at the mass-squatting movement that swept the city and surrounding area, which took up almost all of the country's vacant military sites in two weeks from its ignition.
Crewing the Bristol Slave Trade: the Bristol Ships’ Muster Rolls, 1790-1795
In this article, Mike Breward looks at the use of Muster rolls on ships, noting what their purpose was and why they are so important. "Muster Rolls, listing ship's crews by name together with their service details, became a legal requirement on ship owners by an Act of Parliament in 1747. Their original purpose was to record monies paid into the 'hospital fund', a levy from seamen's wages for a relief fund for the injured and the provision of payments to widows and families of deceased sailors".
A History of the Cirencester Brewery, 1798-1949
'In March 1792, the Gloucester Journal advertised the forthcoming sale of 'one of the most complete breweries outside London'. Could this be the earliest known record of Cirencester's most important brewery - a business that would later become the biggest industrial complex in Cirencester and the largest employer in the town? The Brewery played a vital role in the regional economy until closure in 1949, but the date of its foundation is a little more difficult to place. With the Cirencester Brewery's own records dating rather uncertainly from 1798, Joyce Moss examines the evidence for its development'.
The Notorious Case of James Nayler
'James Naylor's entry into Bristol in 1656, seated on an ass in imitation of Christ, together with the severity of his public punishment, has long been regarded as one of the most notorious and colourful episodes of the Civil War era. But was the punitive reaction of the city authorities a response to his political radicalism or to his religious heterodoxy? Flora Menzies takes a fresh look at the evidence'.
The ‘Bristol Riot’ and its ‘Other’: St Paul’s and Southmead in April 1980
The spring and summer of 1981 saw one of the most widespread and intense periods of 'widespread urban disturbance' in England in the 20th century. During the week of 6-13th July 1981 patterns of the disturbance diffusion emerge suggesting that major 'riots' in inner city areas of mixed ethnicity created numerous further incidents in other ethnically homogeneous districts, sometimes considerably distant from the original 'flash-point'. Ball investigates two examples two examples of Bristol-based unrest which shook the South-West.
Engineering Work, Politics and Industrial Relations
The research discussed in this article is about 'work, society, and politics with a focus on engineering from the mid-1920s to the mid-1970s. Its starting point is earlier research on the 'labour process' specifically the influence of Taylorism and 'scientific management' in Britain. The broader aim is now to connect what Burawoy called 'the politics of production' with the politics of the wider society. It also deals with some integral research questions and key themes'.
Critical Views of G. E. Street’s Proposals for the Rebuilding of the Nave of Bristol Cathedral 1867
'The restored nave of Bristol Cathedral was designed by George Edmund Street and has generally been regarded as an highly successful attempt to follow, without slavishly copying, the remarkably inventive architecture of the 14th-century chancel. Street was appointed as the architect of the proposed new nave'. In this, Bettey and Warren look at how those involved raised the funding, and the details surrounding its completion and its function as a place of worship was resumed.