Fact 221: THE ALL SEEING OBSERVATORY
AS far as I am aware the Clifton Downs Camera Observatory is one of only two in Britain open to the public. The other observatory — originally known as Short's — is in Edinburgh and situated in the Outlook Tower at the top of the Royal Mile, next to the famous castle. It is not as old as the Bristol one, being established in the 1850s by the optician Maria Theresa Short.
The Bristol Obscura is actually a huge lens (five inches in diameter) and mirror which reflects a 360-degree panoramic view of Clifton, the gorge and the bridge (plus passing strangers) onto a white, five-foot diameter, bowl-shaped viewing table in a darkened room.
In 1837, early experiments in photography were made at the Obscura and 'photogenic paper' sold. The almost magical process — as it was seen then — was demonstrated arid explained to interested visitors. The building today actually looks like a windmill without sails so I suppose it comes as no great suprise to learn that it was originally built to grind snuff, a popular way of taking tobacco in those days. But in October, 1777, tragedy struck as a strong autumn gale not only destroyed the machinery by turning the sails too fast but also caused a fire.
The damaged building lay derelict until 1828 when a local artist called William West leased the ruin from its owners — the Merchant Venturers — and rebuilt it as an observatory and lecture room for local gentlemen. As well as admiring the almost magical view created by the Obscura, gentlemen could pay to look through telescopes, tell the time by an astronomical clock and consult a wind gauge. West encouraged his students to work on drawings and paintings — then a popular pastime for the well-to-do — and used the images created by the camera to help them.
West also spent two years cutting through the hard limestone rock under the observatory in order to gain access to St Vincents Cave (also called the Giant's or Gystons Cave). Used for early Christian worship, this had previously only been accessible from the cliff edge. After he had finished, in 1837, West's visitors could make their way down rock-hewn steps to view the gorge from the cliffside cave (just as you can still do today). It proved a real money spinner. The dual attraction has had many different operators over the years but was eventually sold off by its owners, the Merchant Venturers, in 1977. Controversial plans to licence the building and to open it as a unique pub failed but the observatory and caves are still open to the public — and well worth a visit — during the summer months.
Fact 222: Kingswood's controversial hospital?
Cossham hospital is now facing possible closure. We don't seem to hear much about Handel Cossham, the man who paid for it to be built. HANDEL Cossham, 'The Colliers' Friend', was born in Thornbury Gloucestershire in 1824, His father was a carpenter and builder, and when Handel left school he went into the family business. He few years later he left to take up a job as a collier's clerk in Yate. A staunch member of the Congregational church, he became a Sunday school teacher and then a preacher. He met and later married Elizabeth Wethered, his employer's daughter. He and his three sons were given a share in the business.
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Over the next 30 years, as coal fuelled the industrial revolution, the business prospered. Handel became a self-taught, but excellent, geologist, finding new coal seams that others had overlooked. In 1851 the family acquired pits at Parkfield and Shortwood and 10 years later at Kingswood, which included Speedwell, Deep Pit and others. In 1879 the Wethereds decided to sell up and formed a limited company. Hande! snapped up the shares and was soon a wealthy man. Unusually for a mine owner, he was concerned for the welfare of the 1,500 men in his employ and introduced many safety measures, such as stone or brick-lined shafts, before legislation made them compulsory.
He was also interested in education and started schools for his colliers' children in Yate, Parkfield, Mangotsfield and Staple Hill. Despite running a large business, Handel continued his Sunday preaching. He also, somehow, found time for politics, becoming a councillor in Gloucestershire and Bristol and twice being elected mayor of Bath. In 1885 he became the Liberal MP for Bristol East, a job that he took very seriously, rushing from meeting to meeting and giving himself little time to relax. In 1890 he had a heart attack and died in the House of Commons library.
He was a much-loved figure, and 50,000 mourners turned out for his funeral and burial in Avon View cemetery. Just two years previously, Handel Cossham had given Thornbury its town hall. His will revealed a large legacy, which, supplemented by the sale of his collieries, resulted in the building of a hospital 'that I may hereafter be remembered by the sick and suffering as a friend who, in death, as well as in life, felt it his duty to try to lessen human suffering and increase human happiness'. It opened to a grateful public in 1907.
Fact 223: Mystery of the man who died' aged 153'
In Brislington church cemetery there is a grave which states that a Thomas Newman was 153 years old when he died. TWO mysteries surround the grave of Thomas Newman. Firstly, the inscription states that he was 153 years old when he died in 1542, but the record for the oldest person we know of is 120. So did a local wag, or even the stonemason, add the figure one to the 53 way back in the 16th century and nobody noticed, or did Thomas really live to that great age? Secondly, the gravestone in St Luke's states: 'This stone was new faced in the year 1771 to perpetuate the great age of the deceased.'
But the greater mystery is that there is another grave of another Thomas Newman, also aged 153, in Bridlington, Yorkshire, with almost the same inscription. So, is the Brislington stone the one that disappeared from Bridlington hundreds of years ago? Or was a headstone put in each space because nobody was sure where Thomas lived? But would people living in 16th-century England know that there was both a Brislington and Bridlington hundreds of miles apart? Could there have been two Thomas Newmans who both lived to 153? I doubt if the truth will ever be known. The celebrated farmer Thomas Parr, who was buried in Westminster Abbey in the 17th century, claimed to be 152! - When the average life span for a male was only 30.?
Fact 224: Lysaght's corrugated iron
Legend had it that there was scarcely a building in the Empire which was not in some part constructed from Lysaght's corrugated iron. But when the business started in 1857 as a small factory in Temple Back, few guessed that within 40 years the name of John Lysaght, then 24 years old, would be known throughout the world. From humble beginnings, selling galvanised buckets, John soon realised the potential of his material. He added the galvanising and corrugating of sheet iron to his business and sales began to soar.
His St Vincent's works, on the Feeder canal in St Philip's, were well- sited to receive the sheet metal coming by water from the steel-rolling mills he had acquired. The firm became so productive it built its own furnace in St Philip's Marsh. Through its Redcliffe brand name, Lysaght's produced agricultural hardware such as cattle, sheep and pig troughs, corn bins and sheep racks. A special line was a vermin-proof, wind-proof pig-feeder, which sold by the thousands. The firm, like many others, prospered during the First World War, but in 1919 was taken over in a surprise £5 million deal.
In the 1920s it became part of Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds (GKN) and further expansion took place. Sheet rolling mills and galvanising plants were installed in Australia, Argentina and Canada.
The home market was not forgotten and Lysaght's became best-known as construction engineers. Many well-known buildings, such as the John Lewis store in Broadmead and Electricity House on the Centre, were built around the firm's steel work.
The Ashton swing bridge, built in 1906 over the Avon and at one time carrying a main road on its upper deck and the docks railway on the lower, is one of the company's best-known landmarks. In 1948 the government tried to nationalise Lysaght's, which was at that time employing up to 1,000 people in Bristol. This was eventually decided against and in 1951 the company joined with Robert Rheem of the USA to go into steel drum production. The works were automated and modernised- the family firm had come of age. It is now part of the Blagden Industries Group.
Fact 225: Bristol-built railway engines that conquered the world
BECAUSE Bristol's prosperity is now largely built upon finance, many old manufacturing industries and their fascinating stories are being rapidly forgotten. Who now remembers the mighty locos of Bristol, custom-built by the Avonside Engine Company of St Philips for export all over the globe? By the 1830s, these magnificent engines were working away on heavy gradients and tight mountain lines in such diverse places as Latin America, Africa, New Zealand and especially India.
Henry Stothert of Bath - whose father was an ironmonger and local foundry owner - set up the Avonside Ironworks in 1837. The site chosen, Cuckold's Pill, was ideal. On one side was the Floating Harbour and on the other the Bristol and Gloucester Railway line. Being near to Temple Meads also had advantages, and within a year or two orders for building the 7ft gauge Firefly class engines came in. These locos, named the Arrow and the Dart, were among the first to travel on the newly-opened GWR line to Bath in 1840.
More orders followed and the company soon got an impressive reputation. 'Stothert of Bristol have made excellent engines for us at low prices,' said Brunel.
At one time the firm employed more than 800 people. It would supply whatever gauge or type of engine was required, and put in specialised engineering expertise. Valuable contracts were won for home, colonial and foreign railways and locos began going in number to the West Indies, Mexico, Sweden, Canada, Finland and even Japan.
Such was the prosperity for railways in the 1860s and 70s that a specialist firm also set up in Bristol making industrial locos. This was Fox, Walker & Co of the Atlas Engineering Works, later to become Peckett's. The railway boom could not last. A combination of management problems, rising production costs, industrial disputes and finally the failure of the local bank led to major problems and the company went bust in 1881.
Edwin Walker of the Atlas Works took over Avonside for a nominal sum and resumed production, but this time making industrial locos only. A period of mixed fortunes followed, but the great days were over for good. Avonside produced some small locos for the Port of Bristol Authority and after a small boom period during the First World War its fortunes changed again. In the bleak depression of 1934, Avonside went bust again.
Fact 226: The History of Brentry Hospital
For many years, Brentry Hospital has provided care for the vulnerable.Now it's up for sale and will probably be converted into luxury apartments. We take a look back at the history of a forward-thinking Victorian medical institution IT must have been a very emotional day as the half-dozen or so people who had been left behind at Brentry Hospital finally drove away to a new life in the community, leaving just an empty shell of a house, echoing with a century of memories, secrets and ghosts. For this old house, now awaiting a new future in a new century, had been not only their only home, but a refuge from a sometimes cruel world.
Brentry House had been a home for people with learning difficulties and mental health problems since 1922, but its story goes further back to the turn of the century. It was an ex-missionary, the Rev Harold Burden and his wife Katherine, who founded the institution, originally as a home for alcoholics, the first place in the whole country to offer any sort of help to them. The Rev Burden was guardian of Bristol Prison at the time and the Royal Victoria Home, as it was known, was originally opened in Horfield.
It was here that patients received 'careful training' to 'restore many from habits of degradation' and to 'make them fit for the duties of citizenship and to aid them to live sober, industrious lives.' The home was seen as a place for young women who might be falling into 'moral danger' but by 1898 an inebriates act meant taking in a lot more patients and Brentry House and its 90 acres of grounds, long the home of gentry folk, was purchased by the Burdens. But this was not such a radical gesture, as Bristol people with mental health problems had been housed together before, with varying degrees of success.
In 1696 John Carey had founded St Peter's Hospital (it stood in Castle Park until lost in the blitz of 1940) for the care of 'pauper lunatics.' Dr Dover (of Dovers Powders fame) was a physician there.Many patients here were moved to Stapleton into what was to later become Manor Park Hospital. In the 1790's the famous Dr Fox also treated the mentally disturbed in a Quaker Asylum at Downend, and a few years later at Brislington House. At about the same time a Dr Henderson was running the Hanham House for 'lunatics', governed, according to the methodist founder John Wesley 'not by fear but love'.
But the Rev Burden's vision was much broader, while still holding the same liberal views. His 'certified inebriate reformatory' would have two village 'homes', one for males, the other for females. They were described as 'artistic homes' accommodating 10 to 12 persons, and were 'complete with all modern improvements: such as water supply and electricity. The superintendent and officers lived in the big house, with Mrs Burden giving each woman her personal help and attention. The Brentry 'homes' continued along these lines until the 1920s but by then two more 'mental deficiency' acts had been passed, and the number of persons being certified rocketed. The Burdens were forced to adapt and the home became a vast institution with 220 beds. It was to be a regime of fresh air, exercise and good diet.
Patients' time was to be occupied as fully as possible. On top of farming and market gardening were added painting, decorating, carpentry, tailoring, boot, sock and basket making and wood bundling. New workshops were built, plus a library of 500 books. New fangled valve radios were also introduced, keeping patients in touch with the world at large. After the Rev Burden's death in 1930, the institution was renamed Brentry Colony and many new facilities, including a concert hall, were opened.
Professor Nixon, a consultant, believed that good food would make a 'first-class sedative' and the Brentry kitchen staff were justly proud of their tasty dinners. Patients were encouraged to play sports and were generally given a lot more freedom than in the past.With the founding of the National Health Service in 1948 things changed yet again. Brentry was joined with Hortham (started in 1932 by Bristol City Corporation) in a large hospital grouping.
During the 60s and 70s great strides were being made in new drug therapies, as well as better treatment, care and rehabilitation. Other hospitals, such as Southmead and Frenchay, gave much greater co-operation, help and support to the hospital. Research was also being done at the renowned Burden Institute.
Two very well-known doctors at this time were Dr Alan Heaton-Ward and Mr Jose Jancar, who died recently. A lot of patients were now being sent out into the community; many went to the Fishponds Industrial Rehabilitation Unit, where they learned a trade in the hope of being able to find a job when discharged. In reality many returned to labour in the hospital workshops themselves, often selling finished goods to the general public.
By the 1980s the government had started to initiate its 'care in the community' plans as an alternative to the isolated, institutional life of places like Brentry. As patients left many of the old, ugly hospitals such as Leigh Court and Stoke Park closed down. Now that Brentry was closed as well, with Hanham Hall soon to follow, the end of the largest caring institution, so much a Victorian ideal, has finally died.
