'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"'.
Tag: Frome
‘Slandering the Poor’: Maud Davies and Life in an English Village
"The title of this article was the headline in the Warminster & Westbury Journal, January 1910, for a report of a recent meeting of Corsley Parish Council. Most places would be delighted if anew book was published about them, but when in 1909 a young scholar produced a study of this parish on the edge of the Longleat estate, between Warminster and Frome, the council tried to suppress it and have it withdrawn". Jane Howells provides an insight into the controversy, and why the council attempted to keep it quiet.
Somerset Working Memories: The ‘Home in Frome’ Oral History Project
"This article is intended as an exercise in‘reflective practice’ rather than a piece of academic writing. It describes an innovative and successful oral history project at Frome in Somerset, which resulted in the publication of a book called Working Memories, reviewed elsewhere in this edition of Regional Historian.The article covers the background to the project;the choice of sample of 90 people interviewed;the collection of photos and memorabilia; the editing of the interviews; how oral history relates to other forms of history; and some substantive and methodological conclusions that might be drawn from the project".
Michelangelo’s West Country equal? Edward Hodges Baily, RA
In 1988, a portrait of one of Bristol's most famous sons was returned to the city after spending fifty years in a packing crate in Scotland. The famous son in question is Edward Hodges Baily, and if his name is unfamiliar, the same cannot be said of the work he has left behind him. For Baily is the man who sculpted the figure of Nelson in London's Trafalgar Square. Julian Lea-Jones goes in search of Baily's glittering career and unravels the story behind the return of the great man's portrait.
‘It is past the art of man to find us out’: anti-Catholicism and the ‘Bristol Firemen’ in 1730
‘Shortly after midnight on 3rd October 1730, a series of brilliant 'fire balls' or hand-made grenades were seen arching through the air on St Augustine's Back, Bristol, and over the back wall of George Packer's large and opulent mansion house. There was 'a noise like the report of several guns', followed by quickly spreading flames. Within minutes, the merchant's home was ablaze, his household in full flight, and it was only a favourable wind that prevented the flames spreading to nearby warehouses and the dense flotilla of wooden ships crowding the adjacent quay.’ In this article, Steve Poole uncovers a story of organised extortion by arson at Bristol, and the ethnic and religious prejudices which it exposed.