Fact 41: The Seven Sisters
They’re called the Seven Sisters but in fact Bristol’s best-known group of trees numbered half a dozen for many years... and then they were reduced to five. This imposing group of mature pine trees is one of the most recognisable landmarks on Durdham Down, the northern half of Bristol’s most famous open space, the Downs.
When the group was originally planted, they formed a loose circle with one tree in the centre. But the pine in the middle failed to mature, probably for lack of light and space as the other six prospered and grew taller by the year. It died and was removed.
The six remained a familiar sight for decades until the great January gale of 1990 when one fell victim to the mighty winds and was torn to the ground. Another lost one of its main branches but survived. Afterwards two replacement pines were planted to re-create the original number - but this time they were planted outside the main circle to ensure a healthy future.
Fact 42: A giant tomb for a giant of a man
Ram Mohun Roy was a giant of a man in every sense, one of the 19th century’s greatest reformers and a founding father of the world’s largest democracy. So when he died suddenly on a brief visit to Bristol, it was only fitting that he should be given Bristol’s most exotic, magnificent memorial.
Today it is still the grandest of any to be found at Arno’s Vale cemetery. Roy’s grave attracts pilgrims from many countries but especially from India, where he is revered as a founder of modern India and a leading reformer of his day. Among his crusades was a campaign to outlaw the horrible Indian practice of burning living widows on their husband’s funeral pyres.
Roy was on a brief visit to Bristol in 1833 to meet friends and sympathisers including Miss Catherine Castle. He stayed at her home, Beech House in Stapleton which later became part of Purdown hospital. Many of his visitors were women, for the impressive, handsome six foot tall aristocrat was celebrated in Europe for his calls for women s rights. He was also one of the first high caste Indians to visit Britain and so quite a star at the time.
Tragically, just 11 days after arriving in Bristol, he fell ill. Meningitis was diagnosed and he died soon afterwards. Roy was first buried in the garden of Beech House but, 10 years later, his remains were moved to Arno’s Vale and the monument commissioned by his disciple Dvarkanath Tagore built over his grave.
The monument is, incidentally, the only piece of true Hindu architecture in Britain.
Fact 43: The medieval treasure Bristol gave away
The Bristol Cross is one of the smaller architectural treasures of Britain - but it’s one which Bristol’s worthies were only too glad to give away. Today the Cross has pride of place at Stourhead, the world-famous 18th century pleasure gardens which the banker Henry Hoare built near Mere in Wiltshire.
This medieval masterpiece was set up in Bristol in 1373 and it stood on High Street with its statues off our kings of England. More than two centuries later, in 1633, the figures of a further four monarchs were added, including one of Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth I, who had made such an impact during her visit to Bristol in 1574.
But Bristol’s civic leaders declared this lovely monument an unsafe nuisance in its position on one of the city’s busiest roads and in 1733 it was dismantled and moved to College Green where, if it fell down, it was less likely to hurt anyone.
Thirty years later the Cross was dismantled once again and this time its stones were piled into a corner of Bristol Cathedral for some later use. The heap of old masonry was a constant irritation to the cathedral staff and when the romantic Mr Hoare agreed to add it to his collection of follies at Stourhead, Bristol’s leaders were delighted.
It has stayed at Stourhead ever since, a famous landmark at the entrance to one of the loveliest pleasure gardens in the world. A truncated Victorian replica stands in Berkeley Square near the top of Park Street.
Fact 44: The Apple Stone, Woodland Road Clifton
A curious Brunel relic, the Apple Stone is a huge bolder that was taken from the St Anne's Tunnel in Brislington and preserved by Brunel in memory of a worker who died during its construction.is one of the oddest sights you’ll find in and around Bristol University. It’s a massive boulder which now stands on display on the university’s big lawn alongside Woodland Road.
This huge spherical rock was one of two big natural nodules dug out in 1837 during the digging of the Great Western Railway tunnel at St Anne’s. Brunel was so delighted with them that he had the pair mounted on pedestals at the eastern end of the tunnel.
Legend has it that the university’s ball fell into the path of an express tram half a century later and it was only thanks to the bravery of quarryman John Chiddy of Hanham, who was killed clearing it off the line, that a major tragedy was averted.
But there is no doubt that in the 1980s British Rail, concerned at the ball’s deterioration because of the damage being caused by the rumbling of passing trains, offered the memento to the university for safe-keeping. Brunel’s Ball is clearly visible from Woodland Road. .. but its plaque bears no mention of John Chiddy. Bristol University had hoped to credit the Victorian hero, but British Rail has no record to support his tale of heroism.
Fact 45: Whitchurch - Britain’s top glamour airport
Whitchurch - gateway to the world for film stars, world leaders, Royalty, ambassadors and generals. Hard to believe? Well, it’s all true.
Whitchurch today is a quiet south Bristol suburb with a rather large open space in its midst... the windswept remains of Whitchurch Aerodrome. The tarmac runways are pitted, the place is deserted but in World War II this was a scene of hustle and bustle during Whitchurch’s moment of glory as Great Britain’s only civil airport with links to the outside world.
When war was declared in 1939, the great Imperial Airways and British Airways fleets of airliners were hurried down from London to Bristol for safety. Two years later a daily service from Bristol to Lisbon, capital of neutral Portugal was established. It was the only civil flight out of Britain and pilots had to brave the occasional Luftwaffe attacks on the leg across the Bay of Biscay, which lay within easy range of enemy-occupied France. Usually an uneasy, unwritten truce protected the Bristol-based airliners.
The greatest, grandest and most famous used the Whitchurch-Lisbon route as their passage to the Portuguese staging post to a world beyond beleaguered Britain and occupied Europe. Just one aircraft was lost on the journey. Typically, it carried several VIPs, the best-known the film star Leslie Howard. Whitchurch aerodrome’s glory faded quickly. The war over, the great airliners were back in London and in 1957 Bristol opened its new airport at Lulsgate.
Fact 46: The great Bedminster zeppelin raid myth
The myth has lingered for years. . . that Bedminster suffered a raid by a German airship during the First World War. The tale is still told and there isn’t a word of truth in it. Memory plays curious tricks and the Bedminster airship raid is a particularly potent example.
Bristol certainly did take air raid precautions against zeppelin attacks in the 1914-18 war - churches were banned from ringing bells for fear they might act as sound beacons to an approaching fleet of enemy airships and a blackout was imposed - but the city’s airspace was never invaded, even though Bristol was a leading manufacturer of planes, poison gas, explosives and weapons. So how did this curious legend arise?
Almost certainly because Bedminster really was over flown by the Graf~Zeppelin piloted by the great airship pioneer Hugo Eckener - not as an enemy but as guest on a courtesy flight over Bristol on July 7 1932, part of a whirlwind 24 hour tour of Britain.
Eckener and his crew flew over Filton, the Gloucester Road, the Centre, Whiteladies Road, the Avon Gorge and Bedminster and Ashton before heading towards Weston-super-Mare and Wales. The Graf Zeppelin’s sensational appearance over Bedminster was followed, nine years later, by appalling bomb damage in the area. The events became confused in local memory, people recalled zeppelin raids on London during the First World War.., and so grew the myth of the Bedminster airship blitz.
Fact 47: Shipshape and Bristol Fashion
Everyone knows this famous old expression about Bristol in its heyday as one of the world’s greatest ports - and almost everyone gets it wrong when explaining what the saying really means. No, it does not, as most people think, serve as a compliment to the tidiness of yesterday’s seafaring Bristol and the smartness of its ocean going vessels, their rigging and their well turned out crews.
Instead this expression dates back to a time when the City Docks were tidal with a very nasty rise and fall of water the second largest in the world, which left ships stranded on sharp mud-banks when the level was low and which had their timber hulls groaning with the strain each tide brought. Any ship which fetched up in the port of Bristol needed a good, stout frame to withstand the sort of pressures a few days moored in Bristol involved.
If your boat wasn’t Shipshape and Bristol Fashion, then it was best to sail well clear of the old port. The alternative was a very expensive delay for repairs!
Fact 48: Bristol’s sea-going church
St Michael’s Hill is one of the prettiest streets in Bristol with its picturesque setting and collection of fine old buildings. And none of the buildings are prettier than the delightful almshouses which Bristol merchant Edward Colston built for the poor and needy after buying a three acre site on St Michael’s Hill for £100 in 1691.
Colston spent a further £2,500 having the attractive almshouses built around an elegant courtyard with, as the centrepiece, a delightful little barrel-vaulted chapel. Its most unusual feature? The panelled walls. . . made of old ships’ timbers. The chapel played a central role in the lives of the 24 residents, for Colston insisted that the only people housed must be Bristol-born and regular Church of England church-goers.
Colston had made an immense fortune, much of it from the slave trade, and the almshouses were the first of many gifts made to Bristol. It’s possible some of these timbers are from his slaving ships which used to sail the lucrative triangular passage from Bristol to Africa to the American colonies and back.
Fact 49: The day Bob Hope came home to Bristol
When Bob Hope, Hollywood’s wisecracking top comedian, came to find his roots in Bristol, he caused a near-riot. It happened on Saturday August 30th, 1952 when Bob told his chauffeur to drive his limousine to 326 Whitehall Road, his home in toddler days.
Bob had played two sell-out shows at the Colston Hall the night before. Between appearances the Evening Post took one of his former Whitehall neighbours backstage to meet the star in his dressing room.
She told him how she remembered the four-year-old boy who had emigrated to the United States with his family in 1907 and gone on to find fame and fortune in smash hits like the Road comedies with Bing Crosby. Bob noted the address of his one-time Bristol home and, as he set off for the next leg of the tour, decided to take a look. When his big car drew up outside the house so he could inspect the place and take some shots with his movie camera, a large, noisy crowd quickly gathered to gaze at the Hollywood star and exchange jokes.
‘I have carried with me ever since a permanent and forcible reminder of Bristol. This is it,’ he said, tapping a scar on his right temple. ‘Brother, how well I remember it. I had a little dog as a pet and one day I saw boys ill-treating it near the house. I ran out and to try to protect it and one of them threw a stone. It got me on the temple.’
But there were no ill-feelings, he added.., just some scar tissue to mark his days as a Bristol boy.
Fact 50: Mr Mcadam’s testing mouthful
John Loudon Mcadam’s idea was very simple.., that the best roads were made from smaller stones. His method, he was convinced, would be cheap, effective and could transform Bristol’s roads from boulder-strewn quagmires in wet weather and rutted obstacles in the dry to good, solid, smooth suffaces.
Mr Mcadam was appointed Bristol’s roads surveyor in 1815 and put his plan into action. It worked. In fact it worked so successfully that his roads provided ‘an example that has been followed and imitated from one end of the kingdom to the other’. But - a very important but - how to ensure that the stones were small enough for a Mcadam road? Stone-breaking gangs would be only too happy to get away with larger lumps of rock and so save themselves the trouble of yet more work to break them down to the surveyor’s 6 oz maximum limit.
So Mr Mcadam invented just the test to keep his gangs on their mettle. If a stone looked too big, he insisted it was promptly popped into the breaker’s mouth. And if it wouldn’t fit in the mouth, it had to be broken again. The lesson was soon learned. . . and the stones stayed small.
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