"Two common observations about the development of Bristol in the 19th Century are that its economy was notably diverse but that it grew rather more slowly than some of the more vibrant northern industrial towns. In this article, Peter Malpass considers the ways in which these traits were reflected in the development of the city’s built environment".
Tag: manufacturing
Alum. One of Bristol’s Forgotten Industries
With the continuing redevelopment of large areas of central Bristol, many of our former industrial buildings vanished almost daily. In this article, Julian Lea-Jones gives an account of one such local industry, the Temple Back Alum works that closed in the 1980s. Alum (the common name for Aluminium Sulphate) is an essential but unnoticeable product widely used by many industries.
History or just story-telling?
In 2007, local author John Payne published his own account of 'the rise and fall of a Bath company', a personal history of the city's engineering firm, Stothert and Pitt. We reviewed the book in RH18 and invited John to reflect upon the process of writing 'industrial history' or 'business history' as 'community history'. For, as he suggests here, there would seem a world of difference between most academic accounts of commercial change, and the sort of approaches taken to the subject by people for whom working for the firm had been formative. What is the relative value, he wonders, of personal histories of the workplace?