For nearly 40 years, Sheila Sanders has been housekeeper at one of the finest houses in Dowry Square.She was employed by John and Paula Spielman, and before that by Colin Fenton, a buyer for Harveys wine merchants.
Mr Spielman, who was well known in Bristol business circles, died around 20 years ago and his wife, who enjoyed the 'Sport of Kings' and owned racehorses, died last summer. Now their former home, number 10 - built by local man George Tully in about 1746 - is up for sale. The guide price? A mere £900,000.
Sad to leave, Mrs Sanders describes it as 'a beautiful family home which I hope will go to someone who will appreciate it. I have some lovely memories of this house'.
She recalls that more than 50 years ago, many of Dowry Square's 16 houses - including number 10 - were threatened with demolition as they were in such a bad state of disrepair. Some were even considered unfit for habitation.
The square was originally laid out in about 1721 on Dowry Fields - whose dowry it was, we don't know - as a speculative venture by Thomas Oldfield and Tully, a local Quaker carpenter/architect. The two men planned the square to be open on one side, as it is today, facing south towards the river with gardens at its centre
The houses weren't built for sale but as rented lodgings for wealthy visitors to the hotwell - a spa fed with warm water bubbling up from the limestone rocks directly below where the suspension bridge is today. A house in Dowry Square could be rented (if you were rich enough) for £80 a year. Weekly rates for an apartment started at 10 shillings ( 50p) or 16 shillings with board.
Servants, who would inhabit the attic rooms, cost half price. In its heyday, the chic spa attracted the literary set. Pope, Addison, Cowper, Gay and Sheridan were all visitors. But many others came to be seen - to gossip, dance and promenade. At its height, the spa was attracting some 700 visitors a 'season', which stretched from May to October. The Bath 'season' - as days drew short - followed on through the winter.
'Every fine Sunday the place is like a fair,' wrote a Hotwell observer in 1754, 'vast numbers coming from Bristol and all around to drink the water.'
But the decline of the attraction was as swift as its rise. The curative power of the water was being discredited - especially as a cure for TB - and pollution caused by sewage floating down river, then the city's main sewer, certainly didn't help.
Costs to use the facilities - which were leased by the Merchant Venturers - rose steeply and instead of 10 shillings (50p) a season for a subscription, visitors had to shell out 26 shillings (£1.30) a month. Those in search of pleasure - such as gambling, drinking and socialising - were driven away to cheaper and more fashionable spas, leaving the Hotwell with the sinister reputation of being the last resort of the incurable. The invalids soon began to outnumber the pleasure-seekers and many people suffering from TB found their last resting place in the Strangers Burial Ground on the lower slopes of Cliftonwood.
Among those who came to live in the Square was the scientist Humphrey Davy, the inventor of the miners' safety lamp. He had arrived from Cornwall in 1798 to assist Dr Thomas Beddoes, a chemist who was experimenting, among other things, with cures for TB (then called consumption). For about a year, the brilliant 19-year-old - who had as his assistant Peter Roget (of Thesaurus fame) - was superintendent at number six - the so-called Pneumatic Institute. This pseudo-scientific establishment, supported by subscription from liberal men of science, attracted curious intellectuals from all over the country.
It was, at first, a great success. There was certainly no shortage of sick people looking for a cure and the institute soon had eight inpatients and 80 outpatients.
Davy, visited by the Romantic poet Samuel Coleridge and his friend Robert Southey, carried out - by all accounts hilarious - experiments on the medicinal effects of inhaling nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Bristol-born Southey - later to be made Poet Laureate - said that the gas made him laugh and tingle in every toe and fingertip.
'Davy has invented a pleasure for which the language has no name,' he was to exclaim.
The scientists even built a treatment box - something like a sedan chair - inpatients would sit while inhaling the gas from a bag. They were also given electric shocks (the Voltaic pile had just been invented). Wild rumours about what was happening at the institute spread throughout the city. One said that 10,000 dogs which had been ordered for experiments had escaped onto the quayside. Although there were plenty of patients coming to the spa with the condition, the scientists didn't find a cure for TB - or any of the other ills of the day such as palsy or scrofula - and the institute closed its doors in 1801.
Davy left to become a famous lecturer and Professor of Chemistry at London's Royal Institution. Beddoes, who stayed in Bristol, died some seven years later.
A later visitor to the square was Jacob Schweppe, who advertised 'artificial mineral water and Bristol Hotwell water impregnated with air'. It was the West Country's first fizzy drink but came far too late to save the spa's reputation.
The old Hotwell House was demolished in 1822 and by 1830, despite the building of a new pump room, it was all over. Number 10 - where many of the spa visitors must have stayed - still retains many of its original features. All the main reception rooms have shuttered sash windows and the dining room has floor to ceiling panelled walls.
Like so many houses of this period, the drawing room - which runs the full width of the house - overlooks the square from the first floor. And below stairs is the all-important cellar, ideal for keeping your wines at just the right temperature.
