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Memories of Brislington - The Good Old Days - part 3 of 3
Brislington Village 1827
The Census Enumerators Books give a good picture of life below the surface of Victorian England but they do not exist in any detail until 1851. Before that date, village records tend to be concerned mainly with administration and therefore rather cold and lifeless.
Brislington is lucky in that the Rev. Charles Ranken kept a Visiting Book in 1827 and recorded brief details of families and their condition.
The Rev. Charles Ranken came to Brislington in 1827. He was not the Vicar because the Vicarage of Brislington was held in plurality by the Rector of Marksbury and both were in the gift of the Popham family who lived in Wiltshire. The Rector of Marksbury hardly ever set foot in Brislington and a curate was therefore appointed to look after the parish. Ranken succeeded his brother-in-law, William Coneybeare and they both lived at Gotley Lodge.
Coneybeare was interested in rocks and fossils and wrote 'An Outline of Geology.' He is said to have once abandoned the preparation of a sermon and rushed up to London when he heard that a giant fossil had been discovered at Lyme Regis and was on its way to the capital by ship.
In 1827 there were about 1,250 people in Brislington. Ranken made notes on only 50 families, consisting of 244 people, presumably all from the poorer groups since only five of them owned their own house and fifteen families occupied the Poor Houses provided by the parish.
Thirty families rented cottages from the big landowners at an average rent of 6.18s a year. Ranken was chiefly concerned to keep a record of the families' spiritual welfare and he noted those households where a Bible and Prayer Book were available and attempted to provide them where they were lacking.
He recorded the names of 244 people and of these 40 could not read or write at all. Out of 116 adults only 71 attended church regularly and there was a Bible and Prayer Book in the houses of 31 families. He tried hard to increase this number and marked down each success 'sold her a Bible ~ half price, September 1, 1827.'
The entries themselves contain many reminders of the local nature of welfare provision - there was nothing then like the remote, national System of today. The Poor Rate was collected from all inhabitants of the parish and used to provide the fifteen Poor Houses and a wide variety of grants to people in their own homes (this was before the building of the Union workhouses). For example:
John Challenger
Poor house.
Above 50. reads, not church, 2/6 from Parish, 1-shilling a week from Mr. Hill stands on the road.
James and Jane Niblett
Poor house No.1
James, 58, lame, cannot work, cannot read, not church,
not able. Parish 2/6 a week, in club 3-shillings a week.
Jane, 46, reads a little, has Bible and Testament, goes out washing. 1 shilling a day and food, church. Four children at home James, abt. 16, reads, has Bible, church generally, works for Farmer James, 10-shillings a week. John, 14, reads, church generally, works for Mr. Long. - 3-shillings a week. William, 12, reads, attends Sunday School. Edwin, 7, reads.
William and Mary Coggins
Poor House
William, abt. 66, cannot read, attends church, works when can, - 10-shillings a week irregularly, in club. Mary, abt. 57, cannot read, church, in club. James Coggins (brother) 74, cannot read, not church, works on ye roads 7-shillings a week, 1 s a week for lodging from Parish. Charles Humphries, lodger, abt. 44, cannot read, church when well, 1-shilling a week for lodging from Parish.
John and Hannah Jellamy
Poor House
John, 63, cannot read, church regularly, works for Mr. Cooke, 8-shillings a week, in club, asthma and dropsy.
Hannah, 55, reads, has Prayer Book, works in fields at 5 or 6 shillings a week, sometimes church regularly- sews.
4 children, 1 daughter at home. Sophia, 16, reads, church regularly, sews.
The Pillinger Family
Jeremiah Pillinger. He was born in Batheaston in 1705, the child of Jeremiah Pillinger and Susanna. He came to Brislington around 1730 and married someone called Betty and all his children except Isaac, the eldest, were born and christened here, between 1730 and 1749, six children in all.
Unfortunately I don't know what he did for a living till 1759 but then he got himself a contract to clean the Bristol streets - he became a scavenger. He had to clean up the dirt and rubbish. Then sadly he must have caught something from this occupation because he died in 1761. His widow, Betty, got Poor Relief from the parish for some years - if you fell on hard times the parish dealt with all the things the welfare state does now.
In the Brislington Poor Book it says in 1785: To Betty Pillinger, disbursed since Easter, 2 weeks at 2 shillings = 4s; 25 weeks, 11 at 1/6d, 14 weeks at 2d per week. It went on all the time like that. She would collect the money from the Churchwardens, the money was collected from all the inhabitants of the parish and then distributed according to people's needs. It was a better method than the workhouse because it meant that people stayed in their own homes within the community.
None of these Pillingers could read or write. They became literate with a Jeremiah who was born in 1779 - he signed his name but all the others marked it with a cross. There was a strange system at this time - if people moved from one district to another they had to produce some kind of settlement paper to say they were allowed to move - there’s none that survived for Jeremiah from Batheaston or his wife so she may have been a Brislington girl because they paid her Poor Relief without hesitation.
The eldest son Isaac became a farmer and married a girl called Mary in 1762 in St. Luke’s. They had nine children and all were baptised in the church, four of them in 1780 which suggests they must have had a visit from the vicar and he reminded them. Isaac took in a pauper child called Edward Pope in 1777 when the boy was eight and it says that he was apprenticed to Isaac Pillinger, yeoman, at Oakenhill. Edward stayed with the family to learn husbandry till he was 24 years old - I imagine he was an orphan and on the parish.
After about 1783 Isaac himself fell on hard times and received Poor Relief and one of his children was put out to apprenticeship by the Parish 'Mary Pillinger, aged about 8, a poor child of the parish aforesaid, apprenticed to William Jones in respect of an estate in Brislington which he occupies from the Duke of Chandos, to dwell and serve there from the day and date present until the said apprentice should accomplish her full age of 21 years or marry'. Perhaps the crops failed at this time.
Of Isaac and Mary’s children, only the youngest, James, remained in Brislington. He married Grace Fisher in 1809 and was a farmer like his father. They had six children but the only one for whom records have been found is Henry, born in 1818. He was a milkman, married a girl called Elizabeth and lived in the Rock.
Another great grandson of the first Jeremiah Pillinger lived in Brislington. He was Joseph, an agricultural labourer. He first married Eleanor Thomas from Bedminster and then a woman called Marry Ann who already had a son called John Joseph Smith. In 1861 the family were living at Nelson’s Glory which was probably a Beer House. Joseph was described in the census as a railway labourer.
They had two children, Walter and Rebecca and it is strange that when Joseph died and left his property to his wife she left it on her death to the son of her first marriage. Poor old Walter was eased out. Joseph’s brother, William, also lived in Brislington. He married as his second wife a girl 22 years his junior and they kept a pub called ‘The Pilgrim’ on the same site as the present building.
Church Restoration 1874
The following report appeared in the Daily Bristol Times and Mirror on June 17, 1874. It is clear that the main motive behind the restoration was the removal of the appropriated box pews.
'Brislington was all alive yesterday when the parish church, after having been closed for a little over twelve months, and having in the meantime undergone extensive alternations and restoration, was re-opened. Flags were displayed in the village a large banner floated from the top of the church tower, the bells rang merrily throughout the day and the occasion was made a general holiday in the village.
Before the present work was taken in hand, the outside of the sacred edifice was fair to look upon, its bold tower rising high, and its form being, if not a perfect specimen of church architecture, at all events anything but ugly.
The great eyesore was the interior; there the wretched system of appropriated pews was in full force, the massive pillars were covered with plaster and the roof was made hideously plain by the same treatment .... Many attempts had been made previous to the present one to carry out the work but they all failed. Some two years since the restoration scheme was again taken in hand; a committee, consisting of the Rev. G.L. Cartwright (Chairman), Messrs. T. Danger and George Vowles (Churchwardens), Henry Adams, Sinnott, W. Adams,, Proctor Baker and other gentlemen being appointed.
They set to work with vigour, energy and determination and the result was that their appeals for aid were entirely successful. It was estimated that £3,100 would be required for the work and acting on the principle of ‘Look before you leap’ the committee made themselves pretty safe before they commenced and £2,600 was paid into their hands previous to the work being begun.
image right: 1911 The Wesleyan Chapel on the corner of Church Lane - It once stood where the rear of 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' now stands.
After the service a public luncheon was held in a large marquee that had been erected on the grounds of Mr. J.C. Ireland who kindly placed them at the disposal of the committee. Over 400 parishioners and guests sat down. The committee kindly distributed 150 tickets to the poorer inhabitants of the village and all partook of the lunch together in the same tent. It was very prettily placed upon the tables and there was an abundance of everything.
The Bishop, replying to a speech of welcome, said that he had a special claim upon them because he was the first bishop that had been seen in the parish within the memory of man.
Well, times were different now from what they were when bishops went about with four horses and outriders and showed themselves in great state.
In God’s good providence it was so ordered that in this age they also had facilities of locomotion that they never had before. The railway had done wonders and activity was spreading amongst every class of society in England. It would be a terrible thing if the poor bishops were to stand as the only sluggish, idle, lazy people in the whole community (hear, hear and laughter).
He hoped that Englishmen would live for a common object and that by-and-by, after their little tiffs and splits, they would settle down into a unity that would make the dear old Church of England stronger than she had ever been before.
Later in the afternoon the school children were provided with a nice tea in the same tent. About 150 sat down and after the tea they engaged in pleasant games. The infant children were all supplied with cakes. Altogether yesterday will be a day long remembered in the parish'.
It is gratifying to know, and it speaks well for the liberality and real religious feeling of the principal inhabitants of the parish that they cheerfully resigned their prescriptive rights to the old pews - at least we may say that there is but one exception — and that now the church is what it should be, the church of the people, free and unappropriated.
The chancel has been rebuilt and lengthened out ten feet, giving a decidedly improved appearance to the building. The north chancel aisle, formerly used as a vestry, has also been rebuilt. Both were in a very bad condition. The chancel arch, however, although a little corrupt in outline, and decidedly out of the centre of the church, has not been disturbed, as it is original medieval work.
On the south side of the chancel an organ chamber has been erected. The nave and north porch roofs have been denuded of their lath and plaster flat ceiling and are thoroughly opened out. This gives the interior a much more handsome and effective appearance then it hitherto had... The north aisle never had an open roof but a new barrel oak panelled ceiling has been placed there.
The cumbrous galleries which were such a disfigurement to the church, and of which there was an unusual number, have all been taken down, fully revealing the graceful proportions of the old nave arches. The whole of the high pews have been removed and are replaced by new benches of American oak. The old Jacobean pulpit has been cleaned and repaired and put on a substantial stone base.
The opening service took place yesterday morning. At the entrance to the church an arch of evergreens had been erected, surmounted by the text 'Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise.' The Bishop of Bath and Wells, accompanied by the clergy and choir, entered the church in procession, a suitable hymn being sung ....
Brislington - As I remember It
Mrs. Staddon grew up in Brislington and remembers her early days and the War years.
'My father moved from Dorset to Emery’s Farm about 1911 and my elder brother and I were both born there. Farming was a very tough life then and he decided to go into the carriage business about 1919. We came to Wick Road then.
He had a depot in town but ran the business from the house. He kept some vehicles in Water Lane in Mr. Miller’s yard. He started running motor coaches about 1920 — they were called ‘Good Luck Coaches’ painted red and they had a gold horse shoe on the back.
We used to have a big black board outside the house with a list of tours on it and people used to ring us up on our very old fashioned ‘phone or call at the house. The coaches had solid tyres, big mud guards, a rolled-back hood so when it rained it could be pulled over and seats with a separate door for each row.
image above:
The charabanc owned by Mrs. Staddons father, possibly photographed in Bournemouth. Notice the solid tyres and 12 m.p.h. limit. This vehicle was a Karrier model, registration number HT 542 and was new in the Spring of 1920.This was only a summer time business; in the winter he did haulage work. Later it became full time and most of the family were in it, working a seven day week during the war.
My father had one of the first cars in Brislington - it was called an Overland. I think it was American, about 1924. It must have been very big because behind the drivers seat there was enough room to put two stools for the children to sit on. I went to Wick Road school - there was a marvellous teacher - a Miss McGuire. She was very, very strict and so proud of us all. When we had swimming lessons at Barton Hill we walked there and back.
Image above:
The Stowell family, taken about 1899. There were five boys and five girls and the youngest is now 81. Taken outside Oakenhill cottages which still survive near the Trading Estate.The girls all went into service and three of the boys served in the First World War.
And when we had Sports Day on Tuesday afternoons we used to go to the Imperial Ground, another long walk. In those days we didnt have coaches to take us anywhere. I remember once there was a Bristol-French week and there was a display of P.T. by all the schoolchildren at a ground in town.
All the schools took part, some in red, some white and some blue. We had to make the letters, 'GOD SAVE THE KING' and Wick Road School was the G of King. I remember the General Strike of 1926, the miners marching through Bristol on their way to London. My mother took me into the front bedroom to see them as they marched by. They all wore caps, had packs on their backs and had mugs hanging from the packs by a string. I think there were 100 or may be more.
She also remembers the village during the War 'There were a couple of bombs dropped in Grove Park Road but the first blitz was on November 24, 1940.
That was when our house went. It was said the bombs were dropped on the way in - there was a straight line of them. Our home was blitzed just after 6 p.m. - you could hear the incendiaries falling all around and it was terrifying. We werent expecting it - there had been warnings the summer before and we had an Anderson Shelter in the garden but it all came so suddenly.
I wasnt there when the house was hit. I went home when the All Clear went about 11 p.m. - I had a lift and all the way up the Bath Road were hose pipes. I was dropped at the corner of Winchester Road and there was a soldier outside our front gate. When I looked up I nearly collapsed with shock because the house had been hit and next door as well. Two elderly ladies lived there and fortunately they had gone away for the weekend.
I said to the soldier, Where are the people? and he said, Theyre either in the Church Hall or in Grove Hall. They werent in either and I couldnt find them. Eventually I went round the back. The smell of old bricks was very strong - a smell of gas too. My two sisters and younger brother were in the Anderson shelter.
She said the blitz started so quickly when they were having tea. My other brother who was married had come to stay with us, with his baby son, while his wife was in hospital. Everything was coming down so quickly they decided to go to the understairs upboard Id slept in there many a night during the previous summer when there were lots of warnings.
Then the bombs dropped and the house collapsed and the cupboard was in the centre. They tried to get my brother and his baby son but as fast as they moved rubble away it caved in.
It was a terrible experience. Eventually the ARP people came but it was too late. It was a terrible shock.'
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