Fact 71: A Princely legacy

When the glamorous Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VIII, visited Bristol on November 26th, 1934, one of his ports of call was to inspect a brand new, model council house in Lurgan Walk, Knowle West. He met tenant William Bailey, an out-of-work labourer with eight children, and Mrs Bailey, who told the Prince of their delight with their new home after years in city centre slums.

So it’s fitting that one of the very few monuments to a caring prince who spent his Royal visit to Bristol meeting the poor and the out-of-work can still be found not too far from Lurgan Walk. It is in Hazelbury Road on the other side of the Wells Road in West Town, and it’s one of the rare remaining pillar boxes erected during his brief reign.

Edward became King on January 20th, 1936, barely a year after his hugely successful visit to the poorer parts of Bristol. On December 11th he had abdicated so that he could marry Mrs Simpson, the woman he loved. And all he left in Bristol were a few pillar boxes and some memories of the day the world’s then most famous prince met the poor of Bristol.

Fact 72: Weather clock-watching

Take a look at the massive tidal rise and fall of the waters of the River Avon between the old Bristol City Docks and Avonmouth and you’ll realise how crucial the winds were in the days of sailing ships.

A fair-ish breeze in the right direction could make all the difference between the safe arrival or departure of a vessel along that tricky river route, or disaster on the mudbanks. So when the Commercial Rooms were opened as the Commercial Coffee House in Corn Street in 1811, one piece of information its shipping business members needed to know was the direction of the prevailing wind.

The club obliged. . . by providing a clock with a weather vane face overlooking the main Great Room. Those with ships to sail kept a close weather eye for any changes - and dashed off to give their orders if the wind swung into a favourable direction. The clock is still there, the weather vane too. But today high-rise offices disguise true wind direction and, anyway, there are no ships to rush in or out of the City Docks should the weather change.

Fact 73: The wonderful Horse Bazaar

It was planned as a gracious covered entry for the smartest carriages, became Bristol’s best-known auction hall for horses... and was almost lost after years as a grubby car park. That is the colourful story of the dramatic natural amphitheatre which lies through an archway beside Brunel House on St George’s Road behind the Council House.

Once this imposing building was the Royal Western Hotel, a stopping-off place for transatlantic travellers about to board the steamship the Great Western. And through the archway on the Park Street side of the hotel was the Bazaar Ride, where coaches and carriages could arrive beneath a large covered area and passengers disembark in comfort in all weathers.

When the transatlantic trade vanished, the large area with its cliff background became the Horse Bazaar, Bristol’s best-known horse-dealing centre in the Final days before the tram, bus and car dominated transport. The old Horse Bazaar languished as a car park for many years and, like its illustrious hotel neighbour, was threatened with clearance and redevelopment. But the mood changed, restoration and heritage became the name of the game and both have been restored.

Today the old Horse Bazaar is attractively landscaped and a delight to the Bristol City Council staff who work in the redeveloped Brunel House, the modern offices built behind the original facade.

Fact 74: Bristol’s corner of a foreign field

The Continent has countless ‘corners of a foreign field’ where British troops fell and lie buried and which are places of pilgrimage for their friends, relatives and descendants. But Bristol has its own tiny corner which serves the same purpose for two German families and their friends.

They are the relatives and former comrades of the 26-year-old Hans Tiepelt and the 20-year-old Herbert Brosig, two German airmen who were buried with full Military Honours at Greenbank Cemetery in Bristol. Tiepelt was pilot and Brosig wireless operator aboard a long range Messerschmitt Bf 110 long-range fighter which took part in the unsuccessful raid on the Parnall aircraft factory at Yate on September 27th, 1940, two days after the daring and devastating attack on the Bristol Aeroplane Company’s works at Filton.

The two young German airmen must have been hoping for another success over Bristol’s skies — but this time the RAF was ready and their fighter was pounced on by a Hurricane high over Fishponds. The Luftwaffe plane was hit and fell with a chilling howl that reached screaming point as it disintegrated and smashed into a roof and courtyard at Stapleton Institution, now Manor Park Hospital, in a mass of blazing petrol.

The remains of the two men were gathered and now lie in peace in their Bristol graveyard.

Fact 75: A.E.J. Collins’ historic innings

Check the Guinness Book of Records and it’s still there. .. highest individual cricketing score, A.E.J. Collins, 1899. He was Arthur Edward James Collins, born in India in 1885 and a judge’s son. He had lost both parents by the time he came to Bristol to board at Clark’s House, the Victorian villa on the corner of Guthrie and Northcote roads.

He was a popular, sporty boy who, on Thursday June 22nd, 1899, aged 13, was captain of the Clark’s XI in a match against theJunior XI of North Town house. He won the toss, put in his side to bat and opened the batting himself. The game was played on an outfield off Guthrie Road with a poor surface and limited boundaries on all but one side. So on the long boundary, all hits had to be run and the short boundaries only counted for two.

Collins hit his first stroke at 3.30 p.m. and, by close of play at 6 p.m., he had scored 200. On Friday lessons allowed another two-and-a-half hours’ play and by then news of an exceptional innings had gone round the school. ‘So brilliant was his play that even the Old Cliftonian match lost all its interest and quite a large crowd watched the boy’s phenomenal performance.’

Young Arthur’s innings almost ended at 400 when an easy catch was dropped but he went on to equal the existing highest scoring record of 485 and finished that day’s play with 509. The match resumed on Monday June 26th, with just 55 minutes to play after lessons. Collins reached 598 but he was running out of partners.

And on Tuesday June 27th, 1899, after just 25 minutes’ play, Arthur lost his final partner with his personal score on 628. He had played less than seven hours’ cricket with limited boundaries. Collins went on to become a good sporting all-rounder, he joined the army and he hated being reminded of his schoolboy feat.

Lieutenant Collins of the Royal Engineers survived only a handful of weeks in France before dying in the opening battles of World War One.

Fact 76: Bristol's haunted Old Vic

It’s long been claimed that the lady in black who haunts the beautiful old Theatre Royal in King Street, home of the Bristol Old Vic, is none other than the great actress Sarah Siddons. There are similar tales of Siddons’ hauntings at other theatres but why should she haunt the Theatre Royal where she rarely appeared and where nothing momentous happened to her?

The answer is that the Theatre Royal’s dark lady is indeed the ghost of a Sarah, but not Sarah Siddons. She is the wraith of Sarah, mistress and then wife and widow of actor/manager William Macready. He ran the theatre in Victorian times and after his death his widow kept the place going through very difficult times, sometimes paying actors’ wages from her own pocket when box office takings were poor.

She is never seen in parts of the theatre built after her day and she is not unpleasant. At her worst she can be annoying and silly, making lights spin or appearing in the auditorium as she keeps an eye on the theatre she helped save from bankruptcy. ‘Seeing Sarah’ has become a Theatre Royal tradition, but over the years her name became muddled with that of another, more famous Sarah.

But Sarah isn’t the only spook at the Theatre Royal. He’s called Richard, he worked in the paint shop making and painting scenery, he died in a tragic accident and stage staff come across him from time to time. He was working on the mighty frame, a huge easel used for painting big backdrops, raised and lowered by a very large wheel. A cog failed to engage, the frame plummeted and the flying handle of the wheel smashed into his head, killing him.

The actor Nigel Stock, famous for his stage, TV and film appearances, once entered the paint shop and froze at a particular spot. . . Richard’s spot. He told the painters he knew the place was haunted.

He wasn’t telling them anything new. They were well used to the ghost which stands just out of direct eyesight but which moves objects and even sends some shooting across the room. The paint shop staff have got used to Richard and his occasional visits.., but they wish that instead of playing tricks on them he’d get to work and paint some of the scenery at night.

Fact 77: How Bristol beat Columbus

In 1492, the story goes, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. 'Wrong, very wrong'.

In the first place, millions of American natives knew all about their homeland. Secondly, Norse sailors had built a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland centuries before Columbus. And thirdly, at least a decade before Columbus, Bristol sailors had discovered the cod-rich seas off Newfoundland and landed to split, salt and dry their catches for transport back to Europe, particularly to Spain and Portugal.

The evidence can be found in a court case which took place while Columbus was still dreaming of a transatlantic trade route. In 1481 Bristol customs officer Thomas Croft was charged with contributing towards the cost of a voyage by a Bristol ship which had sailed west with 40 bushels of salt. Customs officers were not allowed to trade.

Croft pleaded it had been a voyage of exploration to find and examine ‘a certain Isle of Brasil’, not a trading mission, and he was cleared.

The salt, in fact, had been used to cure the fish Bristol sailors had found on a previous trading voyage after being banned from the cod-rich waters of Iceland a little earlier. Tongues wag in taverns and those of Bristol sailors may have been a little too well-oiled by wine when selling their dried cod in Spain. Columbus seems to have learned of Bristol’s fishy secret.

A secret letter from an English spy to the so-called discoverer of the New World pretty well clinches the matter. It reads, ‘It is considered certain that the cape of the said land was discovered in the past by men from Bristol. . . as your Lordship well knows.

Fact 78: Sweet -’toothed success

In 1992 the British press hailed the 60th anniversary of the Mars bar as if it were an event worth fussing about.., and no wonder Bristol’s sweet-makers looked scornful...Sixty years old? Pah! A mere nothing to a sweet-toothed city which was in at the very start of the chocolate business back in the mid-eighteenth century and whose entrepreneurial founding father of the sweet shop announced in 1756:

‘The best sorts of chocolate, made and sold wholesale and retail by Joseph Fry, Apothecary, in Small Street, Bristol’...Fry’s grew and grew, opening new factories in what is now the Broadmead area of Bristol while increasing the range of products. By the 1920s central Bristol had become too congested for this ever-growing industry so, in 1921, the company moved to its green field site at Somerdale, Keynsham.

Many of Fry’s famous brand names have lasted and lasted. . . but none has done as well as Fry’s Chocolate Creams, first introduced in 1853. Chocolate Creams were born when Queen Victoria was in her early 30s and they’re still going strong... Mars at 60? Hmm. . . a mere stripling by Bristol standards.

Fact 79: Clifton’s shopping Cinderella

For more than a century it lay forgotten and unloved, the fanciful covered shopping centre that Joseph King designed to be the smartest shopping mall in the West Country. The Royal Bazaar and Winter Gardens would attract the rich and the famous who would be enchanted by the two storeys of shop-fronts within this charming little shopping mall on Boyce’s Avenue, between Victoria Square and busy Regent Street.

It never even opened. Just as the lovely arcade was completed in 1878, architect Mr King ran out of money and, not long afterwards, the open spaces and shops which should have been a busy scene of commerce and chatter became a silent furniture storehouse and depository. Generations of shopkeepers who traded in the adjoining premises peered into this neglected Victorian wonderland with amazement and, from time to time, there were efforts to realise Mr King’s dream.

By the 1980s the frontage had become so dangerous that it was shored up with ugly scaffolding, further scarring Mr King’s creation.

But now at last, more than 110 years after the galleries and shops were completed, the Royal Bazaar and Winter Gardens has come to life at last. The arcade is open and there are, at the time of writing, ambitious plans to turn it into that shoppers’ paradise that Mr King dreamt of all those years ago.

Fact 80: Bristol’s most bizarre domestic entrance

'The door to nowhere'.. It’s a puzzle that fascinates pedestrians and motorists as they walk or drive down past the steep corner from Granby Hill into Hope Chapel Hill.. . a smart, very attractive period doorway which hangs in mid air.

There’s a big drop below and not a stair to be seen to allow visitors to cross the threshold without risking their necks. The house is Rutland House, a handsome Georgian building and the reason for that peculiar entrance can be dated back to the 1970s when the house was converted into flats. All went well until the designers realised that the front door wasn’t of any practical use to the new design — but that the door was protected as an historic feature of Clifton.

The door. . . but not, oddly enough, the stairs leading to the door. They weren’t listed as of any interest at all. So the door was sealed up, the stairs removed and the conversion completed, leaving Hope Chapel Hill with one of Bristol’s most bizarre domestic entrances.

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