In the eighteenth century, the Spa town of Bath was bustling with gentry who came to buy luxury goods and specialist services; but until the 1780s, very few of these visitors had been French. In this article, Trevor Fawcett follows the story of the French Courtiers at Bath in 1787, and their connection to a scandal involving Mary Antoinette on the eve of the French Revolution.
Tag: London
‘No time for cuddles?’ The Wartime residential nurseries at Dyrham Park
During the Second World War, children flocked to the country from cities across Britain as evacuees. Many of the large country houses became nurseries for children below school age; Dyrham Park Manor in Gloucestershire was one of these homes. In this article, Hyla Holden uncovers the story of the Dyram Park nursery for evacuees which was run by Lady Islington.
Sites of memory and neglect: John Thelwall and the art of dying quietly
'The burial fields around St Swithin's Church at the top of Walcot in Bath contain some pretty impressive mortal remains. There's Fanny Burney for instance, and Jane Austen's dad. And Sir Edward Berry, one of Nelson's captain's, a veteran of the Nile and Trafalgar. These three eminent visitors to Bath all have more in common than approximation in death however, for their monuments are also the subject of expensive recent face-lifts'.
Bristol Association of University Women: The Early Years (1911-1928)
In 1911 a group of women graduates took the important step of forming the first branch in Bristol of the British Federation of University women. In this article, Bardgett looks at the formative years of the organisation, and how different events shaped its attempts to further education, medicine and social work.
The Local Hero
As we entered the new Millennium, historians reflected on the main events which shaped our lives. One of these achievements has been that women in Britain obtained the vote. Many books have been written and various debates undertaken regarding Emmeline Pankhurst's suffrage movement, the W omen's Social and Political Union (WSPU). However, there were many women who fought for this cause who have had little or no acknowledgement over the years. Pearl Jebb writes a short piece as a tribute to a Suffragette who seems to have been forgotten.
Bristol in the 1490s
Five hundred years ago, Bristol was the second or third largest town in England ( only London, York, and possibly Norwich outstripped it in wealth and population), but was finding it difficult to maintain this position in the face of increasingly difficult economic conditions. Bristol shared in the problems besetting many of its rivals: population growth was held back by recurrent epidemics, with the result that levels of trade and demand for manufactured goods remained low, while the shortage of tenants meant that houses fell empty and soon decayed; the increasing competition from rural clothiers hit the urban textile industry, and the town's elite showed growing reluctance to volunteer for burdensome and costly civic office. Peter Fleming offers an insight to life in Bristol in the last decade of the fifteenth century.