8
EPB-E01-S4 Times Bristol Celebrating our proud history and keeping your memories alive TUE 10 SEP 2013 T HE first of Bristol’s Doors Open Days took place in 1994, with the opening of 28 buildings to the public. “There was much nervousness that no-one would come. In the event, Bristolians turned out in their thousands on the day, and several of the venues were almost overwhelmed,” writes Doors Open Day or- ganiser Penny Mellor in a newly-published book. One of the organisations which took up the idea most enthusiastically was Bristol United Press (as it was called then), publishers of the Bristol Post and the Western Daily Press. The good folk here thought it was a grand idea to let the public in and show them around. They were keen to show visitors the old-style hot-metal printing presses which newspapers had been produced on for dec- ades. These were about to be replaced by newfangled systems, and journalists who had The golden age of law and order? A look at crime figures during National Service Page 4 City’s most notorious – and unsolved – murder Page 4 Things are looking up as Doors Open Day returns September 14 sees another of Bristol’s annual Doors Open Days, when we all get to go and have a good nose around places which aren’t normally open to the public. This year there are plenty of treats in store, including a few that have never been open before, as well as a brand new book to mark its two decades. Eugene Byrne reports. hammered away on typewriters all their lives were now starting to write their copy onto computer screens. (Some of us still haven’t gotten to grips with this new technology.) They reckoned a few dozen visitors would show, but they made a small miscalculation. Penny Mellor, who has been organising Doors Open Day from the start, takes up the story: “They were expecting 30 or 40 visitors at the most, but they got three or four thou- sand,” she told Bristol Times. “They later said that they even had to draft in the tea ladies to show people around.” Doors Open Day (DOD) was popular then, and it’s still popular now. In 2012, DOD re- corded more than 50,000 visits to all the venues on the programme. With the benefit of hindsight, there’s no great secret to its success. Most of us are Turn to page 2 The medieval crypt of St John on the Wall Page 8 Cut your cloth accordingly

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Page 1: Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

EPB-E01-S4

TimesBristol

Celebrating our proud history and keeping your memories alive

TUE10SEP2013

THE first of Bristol’s Doors OpenDays took place in 1994, with theopening of 28 buildings to thepublic. “There was muchnervousness that no-one wouldcome. In the event, Bristoliansturned out in their thousands on

the day, and several of the venues were almostove r wh e l m e d , ” writes Doors Open Day or-ganiser Penny Mellor in a newly-publishedbook.

One of the organisations which took up theidea most enthusiastically was Bristol UnitedPress (as it was called then), publishers of theBristol Post and the Western Daily Press. Thegood folk here thought it was a grand idea tolet the public in and show them around.

They were keen to show visitors theold-style hot-metal printing presses whichnewspapers had been produced on for dec-ades. These were about to be replaced bynewfangled systems, and journalists who had

The golden ageof law and order?A look at crimefigures duringNational Service

Page 4 City’s mostnotorious – andunsolved – m u rd e r

Page 4Things are looking up asDoors Open Day returnsSeptember 14 sees anotherof Bristol’s annual DoorsOpen Days, when we all getto go and have a goodnose around places whicha re n ’t normally open to thepublic. This year there areplenty of treats in store,including a few that havenever been open before, aswell as a brand new bookto mark its two decades.Eugene Byrne re p o r t s .

hammered away on typewriters all their liveswere now starting to write their copy ontocomputer screens.

(Some of us still haven’t gotten to grips withthis new technology.)

They reckoned a few dozen visitors wouldshow, but they made a small miscalculation.

Penny Mellor, who has been organisingDoors Open Day from the start, takes up thestory: “They were expecting 30 or 40 visitorsat the most, but they got three or four thou-sand,” she told Bristol Times. “They later saidthat they even had to draft in the tea ladies toshow people around.”

Doors Open Day (DOD) was popular then,and it’s still popular now. In 2012, DOD re-corded more than 50,000 visits to all thevenues on the programme.

With the benefit of hindsight, there’s nogreat secret to its success. Most of us are

Turn to page 2

� The medieval crypt of St John on the Wall

Page 8 Cut yourcloth accordingly

Page 2: Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

EPB-E01-S4

EPB-

E01-

S4

2 Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013 3Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013w w w. bristolpost.co.uk w w w. bristolpost.co.uk

New book tomark 20 yearsbehind scenesacross Bristol

Heritage Open Days 2013

curious about those places which wec a n’t normally get into. If you walkpast an interesting-looking buildingevery day – you might even have doneit for years – then of course you wantto see what’s inside.

This year, DOD marks its two dec-ades with a new book from RedcliffePress – Inside Bristol: 20 Years ofDoors Open Day by Penny Mellor. Ittells the story behind the event andprofiles 31 of the buildings whichhave taken part down the years.

The idea originated in the early1990s. Tessa Jackson, who was thendirector of the Arnolfini, had come towork in Bristol following a spell inGlasgow helping organise activitieswhen it was European Capital of Cul-ture in 1990. Part of that had involvedopening venues to the public.

At the same time, the Council ofEurope was encouraging civic organ-isations across the continent to dosomething similar. So while DoorsOpen Dayis going on in Bristol, thereare usually ‘Heritage Open Days’going on across the country, usuallyon the same weekend (see panelbelow).

So there you go. Not everythingcoming out of Europe is a bad idea.

Bristol, though, has always stoodslightly aloof from the rest of thecountry, preferring to keep its own,unique event.

This year there are many of theusual favourites. Among the contem-porary buildings there’ll be theever-popular Aardman AnimationsHQ and the Bristol Heart Institute. Ifyo u ’re into all things green, thenHorizon House on Deanery Road,close to the Central Library, is sup-posed to be the state-of-the-art when itcomes to environmental buildings.And while we’re on matters green,d o n’t forget the sewage works out at

Avonmouth, where they are makingfertiliser from Bristol’s, um, wastematter and using the gases it pro-duces to power the plant.

Still with Avonmouth, you can getcoach tours of the Avonmouth andRoyal Portbury Docks, but bookingfor this is essential – call 0906 711 2191(calls charged at 50p per minute).Obviously there’s a lot of historyhere, though what they’ll want you tosee is all the modern stuff, and theways in which they’re trying to createa sustainable port for the 21st cen-tury. But this is a great chance tounderstand just how important thedocks are to Bristol and what an

Get involved | Bristol Doors Open 2013

will have some people on hand to tellyou some of the building’s back-ground story.

This is an excellent opportunity, forinstance, to look around St John’s,aka St John on the Wall, at the end ofBroad Street. Famously, it was built,quite literally, into the city walls, andhas a fascinating, rather spooky me-dieval crypt. As you wander aroundthis, bear in mind that this is only oneof the many medieval undergroundspaces and cellars that are actuallyall over town.

While you’re in the neighbour-hood, don’t miss Christ Church, theopulent 18th century church that wasone of the favourite places of worshipfor the High Anglican great and good

back in the day. This is a glorious,bright, richly-adorned place … Andthen take the short walk to Wesley’sNew Room in Broadmead and con-trast its stark, Nonconformist aus-terity. Comparing these two places ofworship tells you everything youneed to know about the huge gulf inwealth and status which once existedbetween rich and poor Bristolians.

Still in the same neighbourhood,the one must-see this year is theGuildhall in Small Street. This wasbuilt in the mid 19th century as Bris-tol’s Assize Court and functioned asthe Crown Court until a couple ofyears ago. Now the courts have allbeen moved across the road and thebuilding is set to become a five-star

For more on the Underfall Yard seethe big article in last week’s BristolTimes.

If you’re in that general direction,d o n’t forget Bristol Record Office,which is offering behind-the-scenestours. The BRO has miles of shelvingwith archives and documents datingback to the middle ages, some of themabsolutely priceless. Note, though,that these have to be pre-booked. Call0117 922 4224 or email b ro @ b r i s t o l .go v. u k .

Down in Dean Lane in Bedminsterat the Bristol South Baths is a fas-cinating historic hangover, and

� No prizes for guessing which local animation firm’s HQ this is

� If you’ve been doing BristolDoors Open Day for all 20 years, orif you’ve seen everything on offerthis year, don’t worry. There areplenty of other places openingelsewhere this weekend to satisfyyour curiosity.

Heritage Open Days take placefrom Thursday, September 12 toSunday, September 15 at locationsright across England, with loads ofvenues across our own region.

T h e re ’s at least half a dozenplaces in Bath, including specialtours of the tunnels at the RomanBaths. There’s quite a lot in South

Gloucestershire as well.One here that will be of great

interest to some is the Oldwood Pitat Rangeworthy. On Sat September14 and Sun September 15members of the SouthGloucestershire Mines ResearchGroup are running tours around thesite of the old mine. The history ofthe site will be explained to visitors,both on guided tours of the siteand in a variety of displays ofinformation and artefacts. Thetours are all above ground; theground is uneven and can bemuddy, so sensible footwear is

advisable. There will also berefereshments available.

More details are atw w w. s g m r g . c o . u k / o l d w o o d .

Heritage Open Days weekendalso offers a rare chance to visitwhat (in Bristol Times’s opinionanyway) is one of the mostintriguing places for miles around,the Banwell Bone Caves.

The Caves are welcoming visitorson Sat, September 14 and Sun,September 15 from 10.30am to4.30pm, and if you’ve never lookedaround them it’s well worthconsidering a visit.

The Caves’ story goes somethinglike this: Over thousands of years,animals living in the area died anddecayed, and their bones werewashed into caves. This wealth ofbones was discovered a fewhundred years back and the sitewas bought by a bishop inVictorian times for turning into a19th-century religious theme park.

Why? Well obviously, thechurchmen reasoned, these werethe bones of animals which hadperished in the Great Flood ofNoah’s Ark fame. My Lord Bishopinstalled fake pagan artefacts (as

Seen it all before? Then try a heritage open daythe non-believers had died for theirwickedness), a wood and, at theother end of the estate, a tower. .

The house and land are privatelyowned and not often open to thepublic, but this is a chance to gointo the caves, see the thousandsof accumulated bones, climb thetower and wander the woods.

Admission is free, thoughdonations towards the upkeep ofthe site are most welcome.Refreshments will also be available.

Bear in mind, though, that theHeritage Open Days offer plenty ofother venues, too. And even ifyou’re going to spend the Saturdayvisiting places in Bristol, most ofthese outside the city are open onthe Sunday.

For further information, and a fulllist of all the other places opening,see w w w. h e r i t a g e o p e n d a y s . o r g . u k .

hotel, so this might be your onlychance to look inside at thecourtroom and (hopefully) the hold-ing cells as well.

Bristol’s former main fire stationin Silver Street closed down manyyears ago, and it’s now a youth centrewhere all manner of brilliant creativework goes on. You can go inside onDOD, whether to admire all themusic, film, art and performancework of the youngsters or look forevidence of its former role, includingpractice tower and those poles whichfiremen used to slide down.

Bristol Central Library has been inthe news a lot lately over hugelycontroversial plans to hand part ofthis Grade I listed building over to the

Cathedral School for its new primaryschool. On DOD the Library will beoffering behind-the-scenes tours(about 90 minutes a time, lots ofstairs, so not suitable for people withmobility problems) which will in-clude the chance to look at the re-markable ‘Bristol Room’ wh i chincludes fittings – including an 18thcentury fireplace by the great Grin-ling Gibbons – which came from Bris-tol’s former library.

This year is also the 400th an-niversary of the opening of Bristol’sfirst public library. Bristol has one ofthe oldest public library services inthe world.

We ’re assuming that you have longsince visited the Redcliffe Caves on aprevious Doors Open Day, though ifyou haven’t now’s your chance. Thisis probably the single most popularDOD attraction, with hundreds ofvisitors wanting to see these old minewo rk i n g s.

Further along Harbourside is theUnderfall Yard, which this year isexhibiting plans for the future of thesite. This will involve taking overbuildings which are currently emptyor being used by the council, whichno longer needs them.

The idea is then to create a largerworking area where there will beoffices and workshops, most of theminvolved with boat-making and as-sociated trades. So they don’t justwant to preserve an important part ofBristol’s port heritage, but also en-sure that people will still be workingwith ships and boats, and the docksd o n’t just become a parking place forhouseboats and pleasure craft (or“white plastic gin palaces” as onegrizzled old dock denizen once de-scribed them to me).

something which you won’t see veryoften anywhere any more. Next to theswimming pool is a corridor of slip-per baths which haven’t been used, ormuch seen, in years. These date backto the times when most people didn’thave baths in their homes and sowent to public baths every so often tohave a proper wash. These “slipper”baths – so called because you slip intothem – were once very common inB r i t a i n’s towns and cities but fell intodisuse once most people got indoorplumbing.

The ones at Dean Lane date back tothe 1930s when the Bristol South

amazing success story they havebeen.

But this is Bristol Times, so let’sstick with the history. Lots of historicbuildings are open as usual, and evenplaces which are normally open tothe public will be putting on talksand/or behind the scenes tours.

There isn’t enough room here tomention everything, so instead let usmake a small number of recommend-ations and observations.

First, churches. All the usualplaces are open, along with a fewwhich normally have more restrictedopening hours. And of course thegreat thing about DOD is that most

“ ...............................................................

They are all wonderful, allfascinating in their own differentways and I simply encourageeveryone to go to as many aspossible

Author Penny Mellor............................................................................

Bathing establishment was builtfor the ever-expanding communityaround. They were built on the site ofa former colliery owned by the Smythfamily of Ashton Court, and werepart of the same bequest of land to thecouncil as Dame Emily (as in DameEmily Smyth) Park.

The slipper baths were last used inthe 1960s, but are still there in acorridor alongside the pool building.They were open to the public on lastye a r ’s DOD, but as this happened atthe last minute, they didn’t have a lotof publicity. Nonetheless, they did getsome visitors. Sara Wex of theFriends of Bristol South SwimmingPool, who organised the opening, toldBristol Times: “We have had so manywonderful – and moving – storiesalready. One from a lady who had her,today we would say ‘hen do’, in theslipper baths. Then there was thehusband and wife who described tome that the pool used to be boardedover with wooden boards in winterfor rollerskating and that the wifeused to remove splinters from herhusband’s (then boyfriend’s) bottom!

“I’m sure there must be dozensmore stories to be told, we would loveto hear them.”

If you’re on Facebook, search forthe Friends of Bristol South Swim-ming Pool or follow @aqua_chat onT w i t t e r.

T here’s a tendency for some folk tothink that DOD is mostly aboutplaces in the middle of town, but ofcourse there are loads of interestingthings further out, and which,frankly, are easier to drive to.

The Glenside Hospital Museum ofthe Mind is one of the most remark-able museums in the whole region,and as it’s normally only open for a

couple of days each week, this is agood opportunity to go and take alook. It’s housed in the former chapelof what was once Bristol’s main psy-chiatric hospital, and traces the his-tory, some of it quite disturbing, oftreatment of mental disorder in Bris-tol from the times when it was knownas a “lunatic asylum” through tomore recent times. During the FirstWorld War it became a hospital forwounded soldiers and the artist Stan-ley Spencer worked here for a while.

Kings Weston House is also on theoutskirts and is privately owned, al-though it’s being restored so some ofit can be used for weddings, meetingsetc. DOD is a good opportunity to seethis impressive 18th century man-sion and learn a little more about thefascinating stories of the folk whoused to live there. There are extensivegrounds to wander as well. The KingsWeston Action Group is a very en-ergetic community group dedicatedto uncovering the site’s history andpreserving it.

Penny Mellor diplomatically re-fuses to be drawn on which are herown personal favourite places.

“They are all wonderful, all fas-cinating in their own different waysand I simply encourage everyone togo to as many as possible.”

Bristol Doors Open Day is on Sat-urday, September 14, from 10am to4pm, admission is free. Leaflets de-tailing which buildings are open areavailable from local libraries andother public buildings. Or seew w w. b r i s t o l d o o rs o p e n d ay. o rg .� Inside Bristol: 20 Years of DoorsOpen Day be Penny Mellor is pub-lished by Redcliffe Press at £10. Allthe pictures in this article are takenfrom the book.

From page 1

� How the other half lives it up; the dining room at Merchants’ Hall, thehome of the Society of Merchant Venturers, on the Promenade, Clifton

� A behind-the-scenes

tour at BristolR e c o rdO ff i c e

� Where the folk of Bedminster used to keep clean before insideplumbing came along. The Slipper Baths at Bristol South Pool

Page 3: Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

EPB-E01-S4

EPB-

E01-

S4

2 Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013 3Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013w w w. bristolpost.co.uk w w w. bristolpost.co.uk

New book tomark 20 yearsbehind scenesacross Bristol

Heritage Open Days 2013

curious about those places which wec a n’t normally get into. If you walkpast an interesting-looking buildingevery day – you might even have doneit for years – then of course you wantto see what’s inside.

This year, DOD marks its two dec-ades with a new book from RedcliffePress – Inside Bristol: 20 Years ofDoors Open Day by Penny Mellor. Ittells the story behind the event andprofiles 31 of the buildings whichhave taken part down the years.

The idea originated in the early1990s. Tessa Jackson, who was thendirector of the Arnolfini, had come towork in Bristol following a spell inGlasgow helping organise activitieswhen it was European Capital of Cul-ture in 1990. Part of that had involvedopening venues to the public.

At the same time, the Council ofEurope was encouraging civic organ-isations across the continent to dosomething similar. So while DoorsOpen Dayis going on in Bristol, thereare usually ‘Heritage Open Days’going on across the country, usuallyon the same weekend (see panelbelow).

So there you go. Not everythingcoming out of Europe is a bad idea.

Bristol, though, has always stoodslightly aloof from the rest of thecountry, preferring to keep its own,unique event.

This year there are many of theusual favourites. Among the contem-porary buildings there’ll be theever-popular Aardman AnimationsHQ and the Bristol Heart Institute. Ifyo u ’re into all things green, thenHorizon House on Deanery Road,close to the Central Library, is sup-posed to be the state-of-the-art when itcomes to environmental buildings.And while we’re on matters green,d o n’t forget the sewage works out at

Avonmouth, where they are makingfertiliser from Bristol’s, um, wastematter and using the gases it pro-duces to power the plant.

Still with Avonmouth, you can getcoach tours of the Avonmouth andRoyal Portbury Docks, but bookingfor this is essential – call 0906 711 2191(calls charged at 50p per minute).Obviously there’s a lot of historyhere, though what they’ll want you tosee is all the modern stuff, and theways in which they’re trying to createa sustainable port for the 21st cen-tury. But this is a great chance tounderstand just how important thedocks are to Bristol and what an

Get involved | Bristol Doors Open 2013

will have some people on hand to tellyou some of the building’s back-ground story.

This is an excellent opportunity, forinstance, to look around St John’s,aka St John on the Wall, at the end ofBroad Street. Famously, it was built,quite literally, into the city walls, andhas a fascinating, rather spooky me-dieval crypt. As you wander aroundthis, bear in mind that this is only oneof the many medieval undergroundspaces and cellars that are actuallyall over town.

While you’re in the neighbour-hood, don’t miss Christ Church, theopulent 18th century church that wasone of the favourite places of worshipfor the High Anglican great and good

back in the day. This is a glorious,bright, richly-adorned place … Andthen take the short walk to Wesley’sNew Room in Broadmead and con-trast its stark, Nonconformist aus-terity. Comparing these two places ofworship tells you everything youneed to know about the huge gulf inwealth and status which once existedbetween rich and poor Bristolians.

Still in the same neighbourhood,the one must-see this year is theGuildhall in Small Street. This wasbuilt in the mid 19th century as Bris-tol’s Assize Court and functioned asthe Crown Court until a couple ofyears ago. Now the courts have allbeen moved across the road and thebuilding is set to become a five-star

For more on the Underfall Yard seethe big article in last week’s BristolTimes.

If you’re in that general direction,d o n’t forget Bristol Record Office,which is offering behind-the-scenestours. The BRO has miles of shelvingwith archives and documents datingback to the middle ages, some of themabsolutely priceless. Note, though,that these have to be pre-booked. Call0117 922 4224 or email b ro @ b r i s t o l .go v. u k .

Down in Dean Lane in Bedminsterat the Bristol South Baths is a fas-cinating historic hangover, and

� No prizes for guessing which local animation firm’s HQ this is

� If you’ve been doing BristolDoors Open Day for all 20 years, orif you’ve seen everything on offerthis year, don’t worry. There areplenty of other places openingelsewhere this weekend to satisfyyour curiosity.

Heritage Open Days take placefrom Thursday, September 12 toSunday, September 15 at locationsright across England, with loads ofvenues across our own region.

T h e re ’s at least half a dozenplaces in Bath, including specialtours of the tunnels at the RomanBaths. There’s quite a lot in South

Gloucestershire as well.One here that will be of great

interest to some is the Oldwood Pitat Rangeworthy. On Sat September14 and Sun September 15members of the SouthGloucestershire Mines ResearchGroup are running tours around thesite of the old mine. The history ofthe site will be explained to visitors,both on guided tours of the siteand in a variety of displays ofinformation and artefacts. Thetours are all above ground; theground is uneven and can bemuddy, so sensible footwear is

advisable. There will also berefereshments available.

More details are atw w w. s g m r g . c o . u k / o l d w o o d .

Heritage Open Days weekendalso offers a rare chance to visitwhat (in Bristol Times’s opinionanyway) is one of the mostintriguing places for miles around,the Banwell Bone Caves.

The Caves are welcoming visitorson Sat, September 14 and Sun,September 15 from 10.30am to4.30pm, and if you’ve never lookedaround them it’s well worthconsidering a visit.

The Caves’ story goes somethinglike this: Over thousands of years,animals living in the area died anddecayed, and their bones werewashed into caves. This wealth ofbones was discovered a fewhundred years back and the sitewas bought by a bishop inVictorian times for turning into a19th-century religious theme park.

Why? Well obviously, thechurchmen reasoned, these werethe bones of animals which hadperished in the Great Flood ofNoah’s Ark fame. My Lord Bishopinstalled fake pagan artefacts (as

Seen it all before? Then try a heritage open daythe non-believers had died for theirwickedness), a wood and, at theother end of the estate, a tower. .

The house and land are privatelyowned and not often open to thepublic, but this is a chance to gointo the caves, see the thousandsof accumulated bones, climb thetower and wander the woods.

Admission is free, thoughdonations towards the upkeep ofthe site are most welcome.Refreshments will also be available.

Bear in mind, though, that theHeritage Open Days offer plenty ofother venues, too. And even ifyou’re going to spend the Saturdayvisiting places in Bristol, most ofthese outside the city are open onthe Sunday.

For further information, and a fulllist of all the other places opening,see w w w. h e r i t a g e o p e n d a y s . o r g . u k .

hotel, so this might be your onlychance to look inside at thecourtroom and (hopefully) the hold-ing cells as well.

Bristol’s former main fire stationin Silver Street closed down manyyears ago, and it’s now a youth centrewhere all manner of brilliant creativework goes on. You can go inside onDOD, whether to admire all themusic, film, art and performancework of the youngsters or look forevidence of its former role, includingpractice tower and those poles whichfiremen used to slide down.

Bristol Central Library has been inthe news a lot lately over hugelycontroversial plans to hand part ofthis Grade I listed building over to the

Cathedral School for its new primaryschool. On DOD the Library will beoffering behind-the-scenes tours(about 90 minutes a time, lots ofstairs, so not suitable for people withmobility problems) which will in-clude the chance to look at the re-markable ‘Bristol Room’ wh i chincludes fittings – including an 18thcentury fireplace by the great Grin-ling Gibbons – which came from Bris-tol’s former library.

This year is also the 400th an-niversary of the opening of Bristol’sfirst public library. Bristol has one ofthe oldest public library services inthe world.

We ’re assuming that you have longsince visited the Redcliffe Caves on aprevious Doors Open Day, though ifyou haven’t now’s your chance. Thisis probably the single most popularDOD attraction, with hundreds ofvisitors wanting to see these old minewo rk i n g s.

Further along Harbourside is theUnderfall Yard, which this year isexhibiting plans for the future of thesite. This will involve taking overbuildings which are currently emptyor being used by the council, whichno longer needs them.

The idea is then to create a largerworking area where there will beoffices and workshops, most of theminvolved with boat-making and as-sociated trades. So they don’t justwant to preserve an important part ofBristol’s port heritage, but also en-sure that people will still be workingwith ships and boats, and the docksd o n’t just become a parking place forhouseboats and pleasure craft (or“white plastic gin palaces” as onegrizzled old dock denizen once de-scribed them to me).

something which you won’t see veryoften anywhere any more. Next to theswimming pool is a corridor of slip-per baths which haven’t been used, ormuch seen, in years. These date backto the times when most people didn’thave baths in their homes and sowent to public baths every so often tohave a proper wash. These “slipper”baths – so called because you slip intothem – were once very common inB r i t a i n’s towns and cities but fell intodisuse once most people got indoorplumbing.

The ones at Dean Lane date back tothe 1930s when the Bristol South

amazing success story they havebeen.

But this is Bristol Times, so let’sstick with the history. Lots of historicbuildings are open as usual, and evenplaces which are normally open tothe public will be putting on talksand/or behind the scenes tours.

There isn’t enough room here tomention everything, so instead let usmake a small number of recommend-ations and observations.

First, churches. All the usualplaces are open, along with a fewwhich normally have more restrictedopening hours. And of course thegreat thing about DOD is that most

“ ...............................................................

They are all wonderful, allfascinating in their own differentways and I simply encourageeveryone to go to as many aspossible

Author Penny Mellor............................................................................

Bathing establishment was builtfor the ever-expanding communityaround. They were built on the site ofa former colliery owned by the Smythfamily of Ashton Court, and werepart of the same bequest of land to thecouncil as Dame Emily (as in DameEmily Smyth) Park.

The slipper baths were last used inthe 1960s, but are still there in acorridor alongside the pool building.They were open to the public on lastye a r ’s DOD, but as this happened atthe last minute, they didn’t have a lotof publicity. Nonetheless, they did getsome visitors. Sara Wex of theFriends of Bristol South SwimmingPool, who organised the opening, toldBristol Times: “We have had so manywonderful – and moving – storiesalready. One from a lady who had her,today we would say ‘hen do’, in theslipper baths. Then there was thehusband and wife who described tome that the pool used to be boardedover with wooden boards in winterfor rollerskating and that the wifeused to remove splinters from herhusband’s (then boyfriend’s) bottom!

“I’m sure there must be dozensmore stories to be told, we would loveto hear them.”

If you’re on Facebook, search forthe Friends of Bristol South Swim-ming Pool or follow @aqua_chat onT w i t t e r.

T here’s a tendency for some folk tothink that DOD is mostly aboutplaces in the middle of town, but ofcourse there are loads of interestingthings further out, and which,frankly, are easier to drive to.

The Glenside Hospital Museum ofthe Mind is one of the most remark-able museums in the whole region,and as it’s normally only open for a

couple of days each week, this is agood opportunity to go and take alook. It’s housed in the former chapelof what was once Bristol’s main psy-chiatric hospital, and traces the his-tory, some of it quite disturbing, oftreatment of mental disorder in Bris-tol from the times when it was knownas a “lunatic asylum” through tomore recent times. During the FirstWorld War it became a hospital forwounded soldiers and the artist Stan-ley Spencer worked here for a while.

Kings Weston House is also on theoutskirts and is privately owned, al-though it’s being restored so some ofit can be used for weddings, meetingsetc. DOD is a good opportunity to seethis impressive 18th century man-sion and learn a little more about thefascinating stories of the folk whoused to live there. There are extensivegrounds to wander as well. The KingsWeston Action Group is a very en-ergetic community group dedicatedto uncovering the site’s history andpreserving it.

Penny Mellor diplomatically re-fuses to be drawn on which are herown personal favourite places.

“They are all wonderful, all fas-cinating in their own different waysand I simply encourage everyone togo to as many as possible.”

Bristol Doors Open Day is on Sat-urday, September 14, from 10am to4pm, admission is free. Leaflets de-tailing which buildings are open areavailable from local libraries andother public buildings. Or seew w w. b r i s t o l d o o rs o p e n d ay. o rg .� Inside Bristol: 20 Years of DoorsOpen Day be Penny Mellor is pub-lished by Redcliffe Press at £10. Allthe pictures in this article are takenfrom the book.

From page 1

� How the other half lives it up; the dining room at Merchants’ Hall, thehome of the Society of Merchant Venturers, on the Promenade, Clifton

� A behind-the-scenes

tour at BristolR e c o rdO ff i c e

� Where the folk of Bedminster used to keep clean before insideplumbing came along. The Slipper Baths at Bristol South Pool

Page 4: Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

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4 Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013 5Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013w w w. bristolpost.co.uk w w w. bristolpost.co.uk

Cinema managerwas murdered inbungled robbery,or so we believe...

National Service

THE Light That Failed isnot one of RudyardKipling’s most famousstories, but it was wellliked in its day, and wasfilmed twice. It’s thestory of an artist, Dick

Heldar, who is losing his eyesight as aresult of an injury sustained in one ofB r i t a i n’s long-forgotten Victorianwars in Africa. He is struggling tocomplete his masterpiece, a portraitof a girl, before he goes completelybl i n d .

A film version was made in Hol-lywood in 1939 starring Ronald Col-man and Ida Lupino. It was wellreceived by the critics, but it didn’tappear on British cinema screensuntil 1946.

Film distributors considered it toodepressing for wartime Britain. Butwhen it played Bristol’s Odeoncinema in 1946, it pulled in de-cent-sized audiences.

On the evening of Wednesday, May29, it was showing to a full house –around 2,000 people.

The Odeon was much bigger inthose days; what is nowadays theH&M store was then the cinema foyer.As well as a huge single auditorium,it also had a restaurant.

The film started showing at 6.25pm.Early on in the film, the gunshotswhich would blind Dick Heldar rangout on the screen.

And it’s passed into local legendthat the shots in the film masked the

sound of real gunshots in the cinemamana g er’s office. The earliest refer-ence to this is a newspaper reportthat there were five shots on thesoundtrack followed by a sixth in theoffice. Though in fact two bulletswere fired.

Between 6.40pm and 6.45pm, thesupervisor of the cinema’s cafeteriaentered the office of the manager,Robert Parrington Jackson, to askhim if he was ready for his tea.

She went into shock as she foundhim lying on the office floor groan-ing, and bleeding from a wound in thehead.

The police were called and detect-ives came running from Bridewells t at i o n .

Two uniformed constables guardedthe office door, but the screening con-tinued. Aside from a message flashedup on the screen asking if there was adoctor in the house, the audienceknew nothing until they came out ofthe show.

Robert Parrington Jackson died atthe BRI the following morning of agunshot wound to the head. He hadnot regained consciousness.

He was 33 years old, and quite aglamorous figure. In his time he hadtried his hand at acting, car racingand had briefly been a radiopresenter. He had taken over the run-ning of the Odeon in 1939, but almostimmediately had left for wartime ser-vice in the Royal Navy.

He had only been back in his old job

� This US Army issue Colt .45 was found in South Wales and had been usedin the murder of a young girl. At first it was believed to have been used inBristol too, but another gun of the same model was found in Bristol threemonths after the murder. Below, murder victim Robert Parrington Jackson

Officially unsolved | Odeon scene of 1946 crime

Bristol’s Odeon cinema has just celebrated its75th birthday, but besides being one of Bristol’sbest-loved cinemas, it’s also the site of possiblythe city’s most notorious murder of the 20thcentury. Eugene Byrne reports on a case which,officially at least, remains unsolved to this day

for a few weeks when he died. He wasmarried with a wife and four-year-oldson.

Superintendent Fred Carter ofBristol Constabulary took charge ofthe case and started looking for am o t ive.

Shortly before being shot, Jacksonhad put the takings from two showsinto the office safe. In total, this wasabout £800, a huge sum in 1946, theequivalent of several tens of thou-sands today.

Yet the keys to the safe were still in

BOOKS. You can prop uptables with ’em, youcan chuck ’em at flies,and you can even read’em. Marvellous things.Wo n’t heard a wordagainst them.

I like them so much that I buy lots,preferably old ones from secondhandshops. “What do you want all themfo r ? ” Mrs Latimer regularly com-plains. “T hey’re all the same. They’reall just lumps of paper with words in.Why don’t you just keep one and I’llorder a couple of skips for all there s t ? ”

“P s h aw ! ” I reply (I’m learning tospeak historical.) “Pshaw! They allhave words in a different order to oneanother. That’s what makes them sointeresting. Why, you might as wellcomplain that my Wagner and HeavyMetal CDs are all the same becausethey all make the same horriblenoise!”

“I was about to get onto that,” sheusually replies.Bristol’s Secret Royalist Code

My most prized secondhand book-shop find of recent months is a copy ofAr rowsmith’s Dictionary of Bristolfrom 1906, a snip at fifteen quid.

Despite its great age, it’s a toiletbook. You know, something for dip-ping into and reading a bit at a time.It’s split up into little alphabetic-ally-organised gobbets of informa-

� NOWADAYS there is afolk-memory of the 1940s and 50sbeing a time when Britain waslargely crime-free, when peoplewent to bed without locking theirdoors.

Yet whatever nostalgic ideas wemight have, crime shot up duringthe war; rationing and the blackoutoffered ample opportunities for thecriminally-minded.

There was a rise in youth crime. Atthe time people observed that thiswas surely because boys weredeprived of fathers and other maleauthority figures and role modelsbecause they were all in the armedf o rc e s .

Another factor was the easyavailability of firearms, particularly inthe immediate postwar years. Manyweapons were stolen from theforces, while others were broughthome by returning servicemen assouvenirs.

Bristol police never assumed thatthe use of an American gun in themurder of Parrington Jacksonmeant the killer was necessarily anAmerican.

They took the theory that it mighthave been a deserter from theBritish armed forces much mores e r i o u s l y.

One of their first moves in theinvestigation was to request a

nationwide trawl of railway stationsand bus stations for deserters.

And yet into the 1980s andbeyond, it was commonly said thatBritain should bring back NationalService to reduce youth crime.

National Service ended in 1963,and not long afterwards politiciansand pundits blamed the rise of1960s youth culture, with itsmaterialism, promiscuity anddisrespect for authority, on itsabolition.

Yet crime continued increasingthrough the ’40s.

The early 1950s did see a smallfall in crime rates, but overall figuresremained much higher than in the

1930s, when there had been noconscription. In 1950, a total of461,435 offences were recorded inEngland and Wales; in 1955 it was

A golden age of law and order?

� National servicemen on parade

Reward on offer for any secretmeanings of George Ridler’s Oven

tion from ‘Agricultural Shows’ to‘Zoological Gardens’ and it has pic-tures in.

It’s loads of fun. There’s a wholepage devoted to the city’s most im-portant organs, for instance (the bestones were at the Colston Hall and theVictoria Rooms apparently).

Another three pages tell us aboutstreet sweeping and sewerage, andt h e re ’s a two-page table on the cabfares you should expect to pay.

From the look of things you couldgo out on the tiles in Bristol in 1906,get stinking drunk, have a slap-upfaggot-and-pea supper, cab it homeand still have change from half ac row n .

It’s full of odd little bits. Here’s alocal drinking song from the 1600s,Bristol accent and all:

My Dog is good to catch a HenA Duck or Goose is vood for Men;And where good Company I spy,O thether gwoes my dog and I.When I have dree zixpences under

my Thumb,O then I be welcome wherever I

come;But when I have non, O then I pass

438,085. But by 1960 it had risen to743,713. So there was a huge rise incrime while National Service wasstill going on.

Ja ck s o n’s pocket, and the money inthe safe was untouched.

Police also ruled out any possib-ility of suicide almost immediately.Aside from the fact that there was nogun beside his body, he had beenlaughing and joking with the staff

shortly before he was shot.Two shots had been fired. One

missed. Both came from a US Armyissue Colt .45 automatic pistol, and asearch for the weapon was launchedimmediately. For a time it wasthought that the same gun had beenused in the murder of a 12-year-oldgirl in South Wales.

A few days after the killing, ananonymous note to the police gavethem a description of a possible sus-pect. Aged 30-35, clean-shaven, aboutfive foot seven tall, medium build,dark suit, white shirt, dark tie.

Police also said they were lookingfor a second suspect, a possible ac-complice, a younger man who hadbeen seen looking shifty and nervousin the Odeon restaurant just beforethe murder.

Police questioned one man in Bris-tol, while at their request anotherman – a former American soldier –was questioned by US military policein Britain. Both men were cleared, nocharges were made and the trail wentcold.

The murder weapon was foundlater in the summer. It had beenthrown into a water-tank, one of themany which had been set up aroundtown during the war to ensure watersupplies for firefighters during theBlitz and which had still not beendismantled.

The police maintained that theywere looking for two men, and thatthe most likely motive for the killingwas robbery. But in the years thatfollowed, all sorts of stories andtheories were traded around town.

The most common of these werearound the theme of the glamorousmana g er’s love-life. It was rumouredhe’d been shot by a jealous lover, orthe boyfriend of an usherette who hadbecome pregnant by him.

In the mid-1970s, a man living in

b y,'Tis Poverty pearts good Company.If I should die, as it may hap,My Greauve shall be under the good

Yeal Tap;in voulded Earmes there wool us

lie,Cheek by Jowl my Dog and I.The song is called George Ridler’s

Ov en and was popular with an or-ganisation called the GloucestershireSociety, founded in 1657 just as peoplewere getting really fed up with Crom-we l l ’s rule. The Society workedsecretly for the restoration of themonarchy, and aside from Royalistsits numbers may have includedRoman Catholics.

Over the years after the monarchyreturned, the Society transformedinto a charitable organisation, andundoubtedly an excuse for its mem-bers to flee their families and getdrunk on a regular basis.

The song supposedly has somesecret royalist meaning buried in it,but we don’t know what it is. Throughthe miracle of modern digital tech-nology (I put it on Facebook) I askedsome academic historians to spot thehidden meanings, but they didn’thave a clue either.

This column is offering the usualreward* to anyone who can decodethe secret meanings of G e o rgeRidler’s Oven …

(* ie nothing.)

� IT’S always a happy day atLatimer Towers when The RegionalHistorian flops down on the mat.(NB: It’s a magazine, not a person.)

The Regional Historian isproduced by the University of theWest of England’s Regional HistoryCentre (RHC) and comes out asoften as they can manage it, usuallytwice a year or so.

It’s essential reading for anyonewith an intelligent interest in thehistory of Bristol and surroundingcounties. There’s news, bookreviews and several articles.

So this latest issue, for instance,includes features on the use ofBristol-made clay pipes in the slavetrade and how Bath’s “night soil”was dealt with in the 18th centurybefore proper sewers came along.

The mag normally costs a fiver,but if you become an associatemember of the RHC – it’s open toall and just costs a tenner – you getit free, along with discounts or freeadmission to RHC events.

For more information, seehttp://tinyurl.com/regional-histor y.

IF you’ve never visited Berkeley Cas-tle, put that right soon. If you’relooking for an excuse to visit again,h e re ’s two:

First, from September 15 to 30they’ve got lots of floral and producedisplays around the castle, plus aharvest-themed children’s trail. TheBerkeley family have a long traditionof celebrating the Harvest Festival.

Second, they’re now displaying aship model which was found in acupboard last year. This is a scalereplica of the hull of the Severn, a44-gun fifth-rater built for the Navy inBristol in 1786. The model would havebeen used as a guide in the shipyardwhere, of course, many workers,however skilled, could not read.

The scale is one quarter inch to thefoot, so workers would be able toensure the timbers were cut to theright length.

Berkeley Castle already has a col-lection of maritime paintings andmemorabilia, as several of the Berke-leys were in the Royal Navy down theg enerations.

The Severn was wrecked at Gran-ville Bay, Jersey, on December 21,1804, and the Berkeley Castle folkwould love to hear from anyone withany ancestors who were involved inbuilding the ship, or serving on her.

Meanwhile, if you fancy an outingup the road to Berkeley, all the info isat www.berkele y-castle.com.

Cheers then!

A boat-iful day at Castle

Get in touch: Email [email protected] or write toBristol Times, Bristol Post, Temple Way, Bristol BS99 7HD

� There c e n t l y

d i s c o v e re dmodel ship the

Sever n

Bristol’s Salvation Army hostel, FredJesser, called the Po s t . He said that hehad given information to the police atthe time of the murder and it was histheory that the popular manager waskilled because he was over-familiarwith his staff.

“Jacko was the sort of bloke whowould always greet his usherettes,waitresses and kiosk girls with a hugor a kiss,” he told a reporter.

“It was nothing more than well-meant fun but I believe it led to one oftheir boyfriends becoming jealous.Something happened to one of thegirls in the kiosk and although Jackohad nothing to do with it, he ap-parently got the blame.”

A twist on this was that some saidthat actually women didn’t like himat all. He was rude, arrogant and aserial groper. One former usherette,interviewed in the press about 20years ago, said he was a horribleman. “He used to think of himself as areal lad.”

One of the detectives working onthe case was also interviewed 20years ago, and said that the policenever took the jealous lover seriously.T hey’d looked into it, of course, butthere was nothing there as far as theywere concerned.

And then there were the ghost stor-ies. The cinema was haunted by themanager, but he only ever appeared tofemale members of staff. In the 1990s,the then-manager told a localmagazine that the ghost had ap-peared to a cleaner late at night. Itwas a hot summer evening, the clean-er said, but suddenly the auditoriumwent freezing cold, she saw a man,and then he wasn’t there.

The ghostly aspect came to abizarre head in the late 1990s whenthe Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, aminor TV celebrity investigator ofthe paranormal, visited the cinemawith an exorcist.

Finally, in 1993, there came a res-olution of sorts … That year, a mannamed Jeff Fisher walked into a po-lice station in Cardiff and announcedthat his father was the killer.

Billy Fisher, known as ‘The Fish’,had been a petty crook in the 1940s.He and his mate Dukey Leonard hadtravelled to Bristol from South Walesthat day in 1946 with the intention ofrobbing the cinema.

They had panicked, he said, whenthe manager walked into his officewhen they were trying to open thesafe, and ‘The Fish’ had shot him.

He confessed his crime to his sonwhen he was on his deathbed in 1989.Jeff Fisher told the police he believedthat his father may have murderedmore than once.

Officially, however, the case re-mains unsolved.

� The Odeonand Union Street in

the 1930s. Thestreet would havelooked different in1946, with a lot of

bomb damage Latimer’sDiary

Page 5: Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

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4 Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013 5Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013w w w. bristolpost.co.uk w w w. bristolpost.co.uk

Cinema managerwas murdered inbungled robbery,or so we believe...

National Service

THE Light That Failed isnot one of RudyardKipling’s most famousstories, but it was wellliked in its day, and wasfilmed twice. It’s thestory of an artist, Dick

Heldar, who is losing his eyesight as aresult of an injury sustained in one ofB r i t a i n’s long-forgotten Victorianwars in Africa. He is struggling tocomplete his masterpiece, a portraitof a girl, before he goes completelybl i n d .

A film version was made in Hol-lywood in 1939 starring Ronald Col-man and Ida Lupino. It was wellreceived by the critics, but it didn’tappear on British cinema screensuntil 1946.

Film distributors considered it toodepressing for wartime Britain. Butwhen it played Bristol’s Odeoncinema in 1946, it pulled in de-cent-sized audiences.

On the evening of Wednesday, May29, it was showing to a full house –around 2,000 people.

The Odeon was much bigger inthose days; what is nowadays theH&M store was then the cinema foyer.As well as a huge single auditorium,it also had a restaurant.

The film started showing at 6.25pm.Early on in the film, the gunshotswhich would blind Dick Heldar rangout on the screen.

And it’s passed into local legendthat the shots in the film masked the

sound of real gunshots in the cinemamana g er’s office. The earliest refer-ence to this is a newspaper reportthat there were five shots on thesoundtrack followed by a sixth in theoffice. Though in fact two bulletswere fired.

Between 6.40pm and 6.45pm, thesupervisor of the cinema’s cafeteriaentered the office of the manager,Robert Parrington Jackson, to askhim if he was ready for his tea.

She went into shock as she foundhim lying on the office floor groan-ing, and bleeding from a wound in thehead.

The police were called and detect-ives came running from Bridewells t at i o n .

Two uniformed constables guardedthe office door, but the screening con-tinued. Aside from a message flashedup on the screen asking if there was adoctor in the house, the audienceknew nothing until they came out ofthe show.

Robert Parrington Jackson died atthe BRI the following morning of agunshot wound to the head. He hadnot regained consciousness.

He was 33 years old, and quite aglamorous figure. In his time he hadtried his hand at acting, car racingand had briefly been a radiopresenter. He had taken over the run-ning of the Odeon in 1939, but almostimmediately had left for wartime ser-vice in the Royal Navy.

He had only been back in his old job

� This US Army issue Colt .45 was found in South Wales and had been usedin the murder of a young girl. At first it was believed to have been used inBristol too, but another gun of the same model was found in Bristol threemonths after the murder. Below, murder victim Robert Parrington Jackson

Officially unsolved | Odeon scene of 1946 crime

Bristol’s Odeon cinema has just celebrated its75th birthday, but besides being one of Bristol’sbest-loved cinemas, it’s also the site of possiblythe city’s most notorious murder of the 20thcentury. Eugene Byrne reports on a case which,officially at least, remains unsolved to this day

for a few weeks when he died. He wasmarried with a wife and four-year-oldson.

Superintendent Fred Carter ofBristol Constabulary took charge ofthe case and started looking for am o t ive.

Shortly before being shot, Jacksonhad put the takings from two showsinto the office safe. In total, this wasabout £800, a huge sum in 1946, theequivalent of several tens of thou-sands today.

Yet the keys to the safe were still in

BOOKS. You can prop uptables with ’em, youcan chuck ’em at flies,and you can even read’em. Marvellous things.Wo n’t heard a wordagainst them.

I like them so much that I buy lots,preferably old ones from secondhandshops. “What do you want all themfo r ? ” Mrs Latimer regularly com-plains. “T hey’re all the same. They’reall just lumps of paper with words in.Why don’t you just keep one and I’llorder a couple of skips for all there s t ? ”

“P s h aw ! ” I reply (I’m learning tospeak historical.) “Pshaw! They allhave words in a different order to oneanother. That’s what makes them sointeresting. Why, you might as wellcomplain that my Wagner and HeavyMetal CDs are all the same becausethey all make the same horriblenoise!”

“I was about to get onto that,” sheusually replies.Bristol’s Secret Royalist Code

My most prized secondhand book-shop find of recent months is a copy ofAr rowsmith’s Dictionary of Bristolfrom 1906, a snip at fifteen quid.

Despite its great age, it’s a toiletbook. You know, something for dip-ping into and reading a bit at a time.It’s split up into little alphabetic-ally-organised gobbets of informa-

� NOWADAYS there is afolk-memory of the 1940s and 50sbeing a time when Britain waslargely crime-free, when peoplewent to bed without locking theirdoors.

Yet whatever nostalgic ideas wemight have, crime shot up duringthe war; rationing and the blackoutoffered ample opportunities for thecriminally-minded.

There was a rise in youth crime. Atthe time people observed that thiswas surely because boys weredeprived of fathers and other maleauthority figures and role modelsbecause they were all in the armedf o rc e s .

Another factor was the easyavailability of firearms, particularly inthe immediate postwar years. Manyweapons were stolen from theforces, while others were broughthome by returning servicemen assouvenirs.

Bristol police never assumed thatthe use of an American gun in themurder of Parrington Jacksonmeant the killer was necessarily anAmerican.

They took the theory that it mighthave been a deserter from theBritish armed forces much mores e r i o u s l y.

One of their first moves in theinvestigation was to request a

nationwide trawl of railway stationsand bus stations for deserters.

And yet into the 1980s andbeyond, it was commonly said thatBritain should bring back NationalService to reduce youth crime.

National Service ended in 1963,and not long afterwards politiciansand pundits blamed the rise of1960s youth culture, with itsmaterialism, promiscuity anddisrespect for authority, on itsabolition.

Yet crime continued increasingthrough the ’40s.

The early 1950s did see a smallfall in crime rates, but overall figuresremained much higher than in the

1930s, when there had been noconscription. In 1950, a total of461,435 offences were recorded inEngland and Wales; in 1955 it was

A golden age of law and order?

� National servicemen on parade

Reward on offer for any secretmeanings of George Ridler’s Oven

tion from ‘Agricultural Shows’ to‘Zoological Gardens’ and it has pic-tures in.

It’s loads of fun. There’s a wholepage devoted to the city’s most im-portant organs, for instance (the bestones were at the Colston Hall and theVictoria Rooms apparently).

Another three pages tell us aboutstreet sweeping and sewerage, andt h e re ’s a two-page table on the cabfares you should expect to pay.

From the look of things you couldgo out on the tiles in Bristol in 1906,get stinking drunk, have a slap-upfaggot-and-pea supper, cab it homeand still have change from half ac row n .

It’s full of odd little bits. Here’s alocal drinking song from the 1600s,Bristol accent and all:

My Dog is good to catch a HenA Duck or Goose is vood for Men;And where good Company I spy,O thether gwoes my dog and I.When I have dree zixpences under

my Thumb,O then I be welcome wherever I

come;But when I have non, O then I pass

438,085. But by 1960 it had risen to743,713. So there was a huge rise incrime while National Service wasstill going on.

Ja ck s o n’s pocket, and the money inthe safe was untouched.

Police also ruled out any possib-ility of suicide almost immediately.Aside from the fact that there was nogun beside his body, he had beenlaughing and joking with the staff

shortly before he was shot.Two shots had been fired. One

missed. Both came from a US Armyissue Colt .45 automatic pistol, and asearch for the weapon was launchedimmediately. For a time it wasthought that the same gun had beenused in the murder of a 12-year-oldgirl in South Wales.

A few days after the killing, ananonymous note to the police gavethem a description of a possible sus-pect. Aged 30-35, clean-shaven, aboutfive foot seven tall, medium build,dark suit, white shirt, dark tie.

Police also said they were lookingfor a second suspect, a possible ac-complice, a younger man who hadbeen seen looking shifty and nervousin the Odeon restaurant just beforethe murder.

Police questioned one man in Bris-tol, while at their request anotherman – a former American soldier –was questioned by US military policein Britain. Both men were cleared, nocharges were made and the trail wentcold.

The murder weapon was foundlater in the summer. It had beenthrown into a water-tank, one of themany which had been set up aroundtown during the war to ensure watersupplies for firefighters during theBlitz and which had still not beendismantled.

The police maintained that theywere looking for two men, and thatthe most likely motive for the killingwas robbery. But in the years thatfollowed, all sorts of stories andtheories were traded around town.

The most common of these werearound the theme of the glamorousmana g er’s love-life. It was rumouredhe’d been shot by a jealous lover, orthe boyfriend of an usherette who hadbecome pregnant by him.

In the mid-1970s, a man living in

b y,'Tis Poverty pearts good Company.If I should die, as it may hap,My Greauve shall be under the good

Yeal Tap;in voulded Earmes there wool us

lie,Cheek by Jowl my Dog and I.The song is called George Ridler’s

Ov en and was popular with an or-ganisation called the GloucestershireSociety, founded in 1657 just as peoplewere getting really fed up with Crom-we l l ’s rule. The Society workedsecretly for the restoration of themonarchy, and aside from Royalistsits numbers may have includedRoman Catholics.

Over the years after the monarchyreturned, the Society transformedinto a charitable organisation, andundoubtedly an excuse for its mem-bers to flee their families and getdrunk on a regular basis.

The song supposedly has somesecret royalist meaning buried in it,but we don’t know what it is. Throughthe miracle of modern digital tech-nology (I put it on Facebook) I askedsome academic historians to spot thehidden meanings, but they didn’thave a clue either.

This column is offering the usualreward* to anyone who can decodethe secret meanings of G e o rgeRidler’s Oven …

(* ie nothing.)

� IT’S always a happy day atLatimer Towers when The RegionalHistorian flops down on the mat.(NB: It’s a magazine, not a person.)

The Regional Historian isproduced by the University of theWest of England’s Regional HistoryCentre (RHC) and comes out asoften as they can manage it, usuallytwice a year or so.

It’s essential reading for anyonewith an intelligent interest in thehistory of Bristol and surroundingcounties. There’s news, bookreviews and several articles.

So this latest issue, for instance,includes features on the use ofBristol-made clay pipes in the slavetrade and how Bath’s “night soil”was dealt with in the 18th centurybefore proper sewers came along.

The mag normally costs a fiver,but if you become an associatemember of the RHC – it’s open toall and just costs a tenner – you getit free, along with discounts or freeadmission to RHC events.

For more information, seehttp://tinyurl.com/regional-histor y.

IF you’ve never visited Berkeley Cas-tle, put that right soon. If you’relooking for an excuse to visit again,h e re ’s two:

First, from September 15 to 30they’ve got lots of floral and producedisplays around the castle, plus aharvest-themed children’s trail. TheBerkeley family have a long traditionof celebrating the Harvest Festival.

Second, they’re now displaying aship model which was found in acupboard last year. This is a scalereplica of the hull of the Severn, a44-gun fifth-rater built for the Navy inBristol in 1786. The model would havebeen used as a guide in the shipyardwhere, of course, many workers,however skilled, could not read.

The scale is one quarter inch to thefoot, so workers would be able toensure the timbers were cut to theright length.

Berkeley Castle already has a col-lection of maritime paintings andmemorabilia, as several of the Berke-leys were in the Royal Navy down theg enerations.

The Severn was wrecked at Gran-ville Bay, Jersey, on December 21,1804, and the Berkeley Castle folkwould love to hear from anyone withany ancestors who were involved inbuilding the ship, or serving on her.

Meanwhile, if you fancy an outingup the road to Berkeley, all the info isat www.berkele y-castle.com.

Cheers then!

A boat-iful day at Castle

Get in touch: Email [email protected] or write toBristol Times, Bristol Post, Temple Way, Bristol BS99 7HD

� There c e n t l y

d i s c o v e re dmodel ship the

Sever n

Bristol’s Salvation Army hostel, FredJesser, called the Po s t . He said that hehad given information to the police atthe time of the murder and it was histheory that the popular manager waskilled because he was over-familiarwith his staff.

“Jacko was the sort of bloke whowould always greet his usherettes,waitresses and kiosk girls with a hugor a kiss,” he told a reporter.

“It was nothing more than well-meant fun but I believe it led to one oftheir boyfriends becoming jealous.Something happened to one of thegirls in the kiosk and although Jackohad nothing to do with it, he ap-parently got the blame.”

A twist on this was that some saidthat actually women didn’t like himat all. He was rude, arrogant and aserial groper. One former usherette,interviewed in the press about 20years ago, said he was a horribleman. “He used to think of himself as areal lad.”

One of the detectives working onthe case was also interviewed 20years ago, and said that the policenever took the jealous lover seriously.T hey’d looked into it, of course, butthere was nothing there as far as theywere concerned.

And then there were the ghost stor-ies. The cinema was haunted by themanager, but he only ever appeared tofemale members of staff. In the 1990s,the then-manager told a localmagazine that the ghost had ap-peared to a cleaner late at night. Itwas a hot summer evening, the clean-er said, but suddenly the auditoriumwent freezing cold, she saw a man,and then he wasn’t there.

The ghostly aspect came to abizarre head in the late 1990s whenthe Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, aminor TV celebrity investigator ofthe paranormal, visited the cinemawith an exorcist.

Finally, in 1993, there came a res-olution of sorts … That year, a mannamed Jeff Fisher walked into a po-lice station in Cardiff and announcedthat his father was the killer.

Billy Fisher, known as ‘The Fish’,had been a petty crook in the 1940s.He and his mate Dukey Leonard hadtravelled to Bristol from South Walesthat day in 1946 with the intention ofrobbing the cinema.

They had panicked, he said, whenthe manager walked into his officewhen they were trying to open thesafe, and ‘The Fish’ had shot him.

He confessed his crime to his sonwhen he was on his deathbed in 1989.Jeff Fisher told the police he believedthat his father may have murderedmore than once.

Officially, however, the case re-mains unsolved.

� The Odeonand Union Street in

the 1930s. Thestreet would havelooked different in1946, with a lot of

bomb damage Latimer’sDiary

Page 6: Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

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6 Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013 7Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013w w w. bristolpost.co.uk w w w. bristolpost.co.uk

Council row and architect’s cheekgives us our beautiful unicorns

� What an impressive sight theBristol unicorns on the roof of theBristol Council House, now CityHall, on College Green are.

Apparently the story goes thatwhen the gilded sculptures, 3.6mhigh, were about to be hauled intoposition there was a rumpus in thelocal and national newspapers.

On October 25 1950 the frontpage of the Bristol Evening Postdescribed them as “gleaminglantern-jawed, wild-eyed,stiff-legged …”

The architect, Mr E Vincent Harris,had ordered them without informingthe council and, even worse, he wasnow on holiday in Italy!

Another Bristol paper said:“No-one knows, or at any rateno-one will say, who ordered theunicorns and why.”

The City Architect, J NelsonMeredith, told the press “The wholething is a complete mystery to me.Unicorns have never beenmentioned for the Council House. Ido not know who ordered them.”

The Western Daily Presscontacted sculptor David McFall inhis Glebe Place studio in Chelsea,but this threw no light on theinquiries.

Installation of the sculptures washalted until a council meetingaccepted that the unicorns hadbeen considered in the planningstages, but shelved when the Warintervened.

When Vincent Harris, who was 71at the time, came back to Bristol heexplained to the council that he hadcommissioned the unicorns, at the

cost of £2,400, in place of long andexpensive ornamental ridging thatwould have cost £600 more.

We should applaud Harris’sautocratic behaviour on thisoccasion because half a centurylater they sparkle splendidly on asunny day, and the Council Housewould be duller without them.

The unicorns are identical and areset facing each other.

McFall’s single 44.5cm model wasexhibited at the 1951 RoyalAcademy Summer Exhibition and isnow on show in the Lord Mayor’sp a r l o u r.

Why unicorns? We ask. They havebeen significant to Bristol ever sinceunicorns first appeared as

� One of the unicorns on the roof of the Bristol Council House, now City Hall, on College Green

Sculptures continue to delight 50 years on

When out of the blue, to theirastonishment, an aircraft landed onthe unfinished runway, coming to astop near to where they were.

One of the construction gangrecognised that it wasn’t an RAFplane, but a German one! Hequickly realised that he had betterdo something and drove his tractorin front of the now-stationarytwin-engine bomber, shouting to hismates: “Call out the Home Guard!”Or words to that effect.

In actual fact, the airplane was aLuftwaffe JU88 A4 of 3/KG 30.

The four aircrew got out of theplane and the pilot asked thestartled Emerald Isle worker, inFrench, “What part of France isthis?” As he did not understand thesomewhat strong-accented reply herealised that something was amiss,

Lost Germans gave RAF a fantastic prize

supporters on the city’s commonseal in 1569. In heraldry they havemany attributions, but the city chosethem to represent virtue, as the citymotto is ‘Virtute et Industria’.

Listing the Council House asGrade II* in 1981, English Heritagepraised the building as “animportant work by the mostcelebrated civic architect of the firsthalf of the 20th century”, butdescribed the unicorns as“Epstein sculptures”.

Two Portland Stone finials, on therear parapet of the building, of a boyand a girl riding seahorses, are alsoby David McFall.

D F .Courtney,We s t o n - s u p e r- M a re

Editor’s reply:Thanks for that! Readers may or

may not be aware of a ratherwonderful local legend associatedwith the unicorns. Architect EVincent Harris was not universallypopular in the profession. Manyconsidered his work dull, while hedetested modern architecture.

The story goes, and we have noidea if this is true or not, that one ofhis rivals lived in nearby UnityStreet. One of the great advantagesin the unicorns for Harris was notjust saving the Council £600. It wasalso that every time his enemywalked out of his front door, the firstthing he would see would be … aunicor n’s backside.

Sleepers to sit on

What a dumpthe ground was!

the standing area was a cinder track.The game kicked off and Rovers

took a two-goal lead into half time.But Halifax came out in the secondand attacked.

Halifax pulled back two goals tolevel the game, and the pressurewas now on for Rovers.

Time was running out, and it wasa nail-biting 15 minutes. Then GeoffBradford raced towards the Halifaxgoal, beating several defendersbefore firing a strong volley whichbeat their goalie.

We were ahead 3-2 and hung onfor the final ten minutes. When thereferee blew his whistle the Roversfans invaded the pitch tocongratulate their heroes.

The results from around thegrounds came through, and theRovers were safe for anotherseason. What a happy trainload ofsupporters we were when weheaded back to Bristol!

Paul GilbertClevedon

Post under floorboards

Wonder we didnot find it before

compete to send us pictures of oldcopies of the Post found in unlikelyplaces. Also feel free to take old orrecent copies of the paper to exoticforeign locations and photographyourself reading it there. Ideally we’dlike a photo of someone reading theBristol Times at the summit ofEverest, but we’ll settle for Paris,Rome or New York.

School stories

Memories ofa scholarshipgirl moved me

� I MIGHT have mentioned that Iused to visit Bristol Airport on adaily basis for nearly 30 years.

So I was wondering if you wouldlike to hear a story of the verybeginnings of flying at what wasoriginally RAF Lulsgate Bottom.

Flying started here before theWimpy bulldozers had finishedlaying down the 3,900ft, (1,200m)main runway which, with all thebuildings, cost £309,000 in 1941.

Work started on the laying downof the runway on the 11th of June ofthat year. The completed airfieldwas declared operational on the15th of January 1942.

But … At 06:10 hrs on the 24thJuly 1941, the wartime workers hadjust started work and at this time ofyear it was light, although quitem i s t y.

And drew his pistol and madehaste back towards the aeroplane,shouting instructions to his crew …

Well, they didn’t get very far asthey were hemmed by the tractor.

Shortly after the Home Guardsoldiers arrived and after a lot ofshouting and waving of (possiblybullet-less) rifles, they persuadedthe invaders to surrender.

These German chaps had beenon a bombing mission toBirkenhead docks and had becomedisorientated due to the RAFradiating electroniccountermeasures on their homingbeacon at Brest. They had mistookthe Welsh coast for Cornwall, andcrossed the Bristol Channel, whichthey thought was the EnglishChannel.

They landed on the first airfield in

� A Junkers Ju 88 bomber. The one which landed at Lulsgate was a new version, which proved extremely interesting to the RAF boffins

� I WAS very interested to read thestory by Eugene Byrne in BristolTi m e s (August 13) about thematch-fixing scam involving BristolRovers players in April 1963.

I remember it well, and how it wason the front page of The Peoplenewspaper and how it was a bigdisgrace to the club.

The story reminded me how theseason ended. Rovers were staringrelegation in the face. Our last gameof the season was away to HalifaxTown, a game we had to win toavoid the drop.

The Rovers Supporters Clubheaded to Halifax and marched fromthe station to their ground, ‘TheShay’ … What a dump it was! Theyhad railway sleepers to sit on, and

� WE have been clearing our shopon Whiteladies Rd and under thefloorboards we found an old editionof The Evening Post with the byline‘The Paper all Bristol asked for andhelped to create’

It makes entertaining reading. Wehave occupied this location for over30 years so it’s a wonder we hadn’tfound it sooner!

Best WishesMark Brigham

llis Brigham Mountain Sports(& The Snowboard Asylum)

Whiteladies Rd, Clifton

Editor’s ReplyThanks for that, Mark. Perhaps

this could be the start of anoccasional feature in which readers

� I ENJOYED reading Marion’sMemories in the Bristol Times(August 27).

I also attended Merrywoodthrough scholarship, in 1948/9.

I lived in Clifton Wood at that timeand had to catch two buses to theschool.

It was a huge, scary, step frombeing able to walk to my smallmixed primary school in PrincessVictoria Street, Clifton (now alibrary), where I was then one of theseniors and a confident young girl,to being one of the youngest in alarge all-girls school in Knowle West,where I suffered many experiencesof girls’ bitchiness to each other.

My favourite subject was musicand singing.

Marion mentioned the schooluniform. My parents, also, werequite poor – my parents had beenprofessional musicians before thewar but, when war began, my father(who was in an orchestra on thetransatlantic liners) took a job on therailways, starting as a porter andgradually working his way up tosignalman.

I, also, was very proud of myuniform. We were allowed to tuck inthe top rim of our hats just to beslightly different to others like LaRetraite and Colston Girls’ School.

However, I was embarrassed bythe summer uniform – my parentscould not afford to buy the officialdress so I wore a cast-off from aneighbour – one day, in assembly,our Head, Miss Dick-Clelland,announced that, as the swimminggala was soon to be held, any pupilwho could not wear the propersummer dress should go to heroffice – you can imagine myembarrassment – not only could Inot have the correct dress but hadto sit outside her office and thenexplain the reason why!

I am so glad that children are notbelittled like that these days.

There is now a reunion every yearfor my year called “The 49ers”, heldat The Beeches Hotel in Brislington,secretary is Molly Judge’.

Anne Colley

Picture of the Week

� THIS is another one inhonour of Heritage Open Daysthis coming weekend.

These charming piecesrepresent the Four Seasons,and they were made in Bristol,not Dresden or any of yourother fancypants crockerytowns.

Frenchay Village Museum willbe open from 2pm to 5pm onSaturday, September 14, andSunday, September 15, and willbe displaying some of its finecollection of Bristol Porcelainmade in the 1770s by RichardChampion of Moorend Farm.

His sister married PhilipDebel Tuckett, who foundedthe Tuckett dynasty inFrenchay, and the 36 pieces ofporcelain were donated to theMuseum by one of PhilipTu c k e t t ’s descendants.

Free history events

MEET the Historians is a new ini-tiative which brings together mem-bers of the public and local expertssuch as historians, archaeologists,genealogists, librarians, archivistsand fiction and non-fiction writers.

Working with the Bristol Literat-ure Festival and Bristol’s museums,the Historical Novel Society has puttogether two free events.

The first of these events – F romRoman Fact to Roman Fiction – is onOctober 19 from 2-4pm at Bristol Mu-seum and Art Gallery.

Historical novelists Manda Scottand Ben Kane, Professor Kate Rob-son-Brown of the University of Bris-tol and museum curator Gail Boylewill explore the relationship betweenRoman fact and Roman historical fic-tion. The afternoon will include aspecial introduction to the exhibitionRoman Empire: Power and People bycurator Gail Boyle (NB: there is acharge for entry to the exhibition).

From Roman Fact to Roman Fic-tion is part of a programme of activ-ities accompanying the touringexhibition Roman Empire: Powerand People (September 21 – Ja nu a r y12, 2014), when objects will be dis-played alongside objects from BristolMuseum’s own collections.

The second event – The Best Port ofTrade in Britain, Bristol’s MaritimeHistory – is on October 26, 2-4pm atBristol M Shed.

Historical novelist Julian Stock-win, Bristol author Lucienne Boyce,historian Adrian Tinniswood and DrSteve Poole, of the University of theWest of England, will offer advice onresearching Bristol’s maritime past.

Richard Lee, who founded the His-torical Novel Society in 1997, said:“We have a terrific line-up of expertswho will be on hand to talk aboutresearching local history and answerq u e s t i o n s. ”

For further details and how tobook, see the HNS Bristol and SouthWest Chapter’s website: http://tiny-u rl . c o m / m e e t - t h e - h i s t o r i a n s

Historians onhand to helpout writers

Race relations

BRISTOL Bus Boycott to RaceRelations 1963-2013 is the title ofan event at St Paul’s Learning Centreon Saturday September 14, 1pm -5pm, free.

Join Paul Stephenson OBE andco-author Lillieth Morrison for a dis-cussion about the legacy of the Bris-tol Bus Boycott.

Paul and Lillieth will be talkingabout the boycott from 2pm, followedby an informal discussion about theimpact this had on race relations.

Share your own personal storiesabout living in Bristol over the last 50ye a r s.

The event is part of the BearpitLocal Learning Project, supported bythe Heritage Lottery Fund.

The project will involve localschool children and college studentswho will create a story panel forpermanent display in the Bearpit.

For more information emailRuth@locallear ning.org.uk

B r i sto l ’s busboycott legacy

France – or so they thought! – thatthey could find.

Their aircraft was indeed a prize.This captured aeroplane was firstflown to RAF at Farnborough forevaluation, and then onto RAFCollywestern to join 1426 EnemyAircraft Flight known as‘R A F WA F F E . ’

The aircraft was painted in RAFcolours, given the registration of HM509 and joined the many othercaptured German aircraft used in avariety of purposes.

The German aircrew underinterrogation were not verycommunicative, although admittingto their navigational errors, andwere eventually dispatched to oneof the POW camps to sit out thew a r.

Gerry Davis

� To get intouch withEugene Byrneand Bristol TimesWrite to: BristolTimes, BristolPost, TempleWay, Bristol BS2OBYEmail:eugene.byr [email protected]

Page 7: Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

EPB-E01-S4

EPB-

E01-

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6 Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013 7Tu e s d a y, September 10, 2013w w w. bristolpost.co.uk w w w. bristolpost.co.uk

Council row and architect’s cheekgives us our beautiful unicorns

� What an impressive sight theBristol unicorns on the roof of theBristol Council House, now CityHall, on College Green are.

Apparently the story goes thatwhen the gilded sculptures, 3.6mhigh, were about to be hauled intoposition there was a rumpus in thelocal and national newspapers.

On October 25 1950 the frontpage of the Bristol Evening Postdescribed them as “gleaminglantern-jawed, wild-eyed,stiff-legged …”

The architect, Mr E Vincent Harris,had ordered them without informingthe council and, even worse, he wasnow on holiday in Italy!

Another Bristol paper said:“No-one knows, or at any rateno-one will say, who ordered theunicorns and why.”

The City Architect, J NelsonMeredith, told the press “The wholething is a complete mystery to me.Unicorns have never beenmentioned for the Council House. Ido not know who ordered them.”

The Western Daily Presscontacted sculptor David McFall inhis Glebe Place studio in Chelsea,but this threw no light on theinquiries.

Installation of the sculptures washalted until a council meetingaccepted that the unicorns hadbeen considered in the planningstages, but shelved when the Warintervened.

When Vincent Harris, who was 71at the time, came back to Bristol heexplained to the council that he hadcommissioned the unicorns, at the

cost of £2,400, in place of long andexpensive ornamental ridging thatwould have cost £600 more.

We should applaud Harris’sautocratic behaviour on thisoccasion because half a centurylater they sparkle splendidly on asunny day, and the Council Housewould be duller without them.

The unicorns are identical and areset facing each other.

McFall’s single 44.5cm model wasexhibited at the 1951 RoyalAcademy Summer Exhibition and isnow on show in the Lord Mayor’sp a r l o u r.

Why unicorns? We ask. They havebeen significant to Bristol ever sinceunicorns first appeared as

� One of the unicorns on the roof of the Bristol Council House, now City Hall, on College Green

Sculptures continue to delight 50 years on

When out of the blue, to theirastonishment, an aircraft landed onthe unfinished runway, coming to astop near to where they were.

One of the construction gangrecognised that it wasn’t an RAFplane, but a German one! Hequickly realised that he had betterdo something and drove his tractorin front of the now-stationarytwin-engine bomber, shouting to hismates: “Call out the Home Guard!”Or words to that effect.

In actual fact, the airplane was aLuftwaffe JU88 A4 of 3/KG 30.

The four aircrew got out of theplane and the pilot asked thestartled Emerald Isle worker, inFrench, “What part of France isthis?” As he did not understand thesomewhat strong-accented reply herealised that something was amiss,

Lost Germans gave RAF a fantastic prize

supporters on the city’s commonseal in 1569. In heraldry they havemany attributions, but the city chosethem to represent virtue, as the citymotto is ‘Virtute et Industria’.

Listing the Council House asGrade II* in 1981, English Heritagepraised the building as “animportant work by the mostcelebrated civic architect of the firsthalf of the 20th century”, butdescribed the unicorns as“Epstein sculptures”.

Two Portland Stone finials, on therear parapet of the building, of a boyand a girl riding seahorses, are alsoby David McFall.

D F .Courtney,We s t o n - s u p e r- M a re

Editor’s reply:Thanks for that! Readers may or

may not be aware of a ratherwonderful local legend associatedwith the unicorns. Architect EVincent Harris was not universallypopular in the profession. Manyconsidered his work dull, while hedetested modern architecture.

The story goes, and we have noidea if this is true or not, that one ofhis rivals lived in nearby UnityStreet. One of the great advantagesin the unicorns for Harris was notjust saving the Council £600. It wasalso that every time his enemywalked out of his front door, the firstthing he would see would be … aunicor n’s backside.

Sleepers to sit on

What a dumpthe ground was!

the standing area was a cinder track.The game kicked off and Rovers

took a two-goal lead into half time.But Halifax came out in the secondand attacked.

Halifax pulled back two goals tolevel the game, and the pressurewas now on for Rovers.

Time was running out, and it wasa nail-biting 15 minutes. Then GeoffBradford raced towards the Halifaxgoal, beating several defendersbefore firing a strong volley whichbeat their goalie.

We were ahead 3-2 and hung onfor the final ten minutes. When thereferee blew his whistle the Roversfans invaded the pitch tocongratulate their heroes.

The results from around thegrounds came through, and theRovers were safe for anotherseason. What a happy trainload ofsupporters we were when weheaded back to Bristol!

Paul GilbertClevedon

Post under floorboards

Wonder we didnot find it before

compete to send us pictures of oldcopies of the Post found in unlikelyplaces. Also feel free to take old orrecent copies of the paper to exoticforeign locations and photographyourself reading it there. Ideally we’dlike a photo of someone reading theBristol Times at the summit ofEverest, but we’ll settle for Paris,Rome or New York.

School stories

Memories ofa scholarshipgirl moved me

� I MIGHT have mentioned that Iused to visit Bristol Airport on adaily basis for nearly 30 years.

So I was wondering if you wouldlike to hear a story of the verybeginnings of flying at what wasoriginally RAF Lulsgate Bottom.

Flying started here before theWimpy bulldozers had finishedlaying down the 3,900ft, (1,200m)main runway which, with all thebuildings, cost £309,000 in 1941.

Work started on the laying downof the runway on the 11th of June ofthat year. The completed airfieldwas declared operational on the15th of January 1942.

But … At 06:10 hrs on the 24thJuly 1941, the wartime workers hadjust started work and at this time ofyear it was light, although quitem i s t y.

And drew his pistol and madehaste back towards the aeroplane,shouting instructions to his crew …

Well, they didn’t get very far asthey were hemmed by the tractor.

Shortly after the Home Guardsoldiers arrived and after a lot ofshouting and waving of (possiblybullet-less) rifles, they persuadedthe invaders to surrender.

These German chaps had beenon a bombing mission toBirkenhead docks and had becomedisorientated due to the RAFradiating electroniccountermeasures on their homingbeacon at Brest. They had mistookthe Welsh coast for Cornwall, andcrossed the Bristol Channel, whichthey thought was the EnglishChannel.

They landed on the first airfield in

� A Junkers Ju 88 bomber. The one which landed at Lulsgate was a new version, which proved extremely interesting to the RAF boffins

� I WAS very interested to read thestory by Eugene Byrne in BristolTi m e s (August 13) about thematch-fixing scam involving BristolRovers players in April 1963.

I remember it well, and how it wason the front page of The Peoplenewspaper and how it was a bigdisgrace to the club.

The story reminded me how theseason ended. Rovers were staringrelegation in the face. Our last gameof the season was away to HalifaxTown, a game we had to win toavoid the drop.

The Rovers Supporters Clubheaded to Halifax and marched fromthe station to their ground, ‘TheShay’ … What a dump it was! Theyhad railway sleepers to sit on, and

� WE have been clearing our shopon Whiteladies Rd and under thefloorboards we found an old editionof The Evening Post with the byline‘The Paper all Bristol asked for andhelped to create’

It makes entertaining reading. Wehave occupied this location for over30 years so it’s a wonder we hadn’tfound it sooner!

Best WishesMark Brigham

llis Brigham Mountain Sports(& The Snowboard Asylum)

Whiteladies Rd, Clifton

Editor’s ReplyThanks for that, Mark. Perhaps

this could be the start of anoccasional feature in which readers

� I ENJOYED reading Marion’sMemories in the Bristol Times(August 27).

I also attended Merrywoodthrough scholarship, in 1948/9.

I lived in Clifton Wood at that timeand had to catch two buses to theschool.

It was a huge, scary, step frombeing able to walk to my smallmixed primary school in PrincessVictoria Street, Clifton (now alibrary), where I was then one of theseniors and a confident young girl,to being one of the youngest in alarge all-girls school in Knowle West,where I suffered many experiencesof girls’ bitchiness to each other.

My favourite subject was musicand singing.

Marion mentioned the schooluniform. My parents, also, werequite poor – my parents had beenprofessional musicians before thewar but, when war began, my father(who was in an orchestra on thetransatlantic liners) took a job on therailways, starting as a porter andgradually working his way up tosignalman.

I, also, was very proud of myuniform. We were allowed to tuck inthe top rim of our hats just to beslightly different to others like LaRetraite and Colston Girls’ School.

However, I was embarrassed bythe summer uniform – my parentscould not afford to buy the officialdress so I wore a cast-off from aneighbour – one day, in assembly,our Head, Miss Dick-Clelland,announced that, as the swimminggala was soon to be held, any pupilwho could not wear the propersummer dress should go to heroffice – you can imagine myembarrassment – not only could Inot have the correct dress but hadto sit outside her office and thenexplain the reason why!

I am so glad that children are notbelittled like that these days.

There is now a reunion every yearfor my year called “The 49ers”, heldat The Beeches Hotel in Brislington,secretary is Molly Judge’.

Anne Colley

Picture of the Week

� THIS is another one inhonour of Heritage Open Daysthis coming weekend.

These charming piecesrepresent the Four Seasons,and they were made in Bristol,not Dresden or any of yourother fancypants crockerytowns.

Frenchay Village Museum willbe open from 2pm to 5pm onSaturday, September 14, andSunday, September 15, and willbe displaying some of its finecollection of Bristol Porcelainmade in the 1770s by RichardChampion of Moorend Farm.

His sister married PhilipDebel Tuckett, who foundedthe Tuckett dynasty inFrenchay, and the 36 pieces ofporcelain were donated to theMuseum by one of PhilipTu c k e t t ’s descendants.

Free history events

MEET the Historians is a new ini-tiative which brings together mem-bers of the public and local expertssuch as historians, archaeologists,genealogists, librarians, archivistsand fiction and non-fiction writers.

Working with the Bristol Literat-ure Festival and Bristol’s museums,the Historical Novel Society has puttogether two free events.

The first of these events – F romRoman Fact to Roman Fiction – is onOctober 19 from 2-4pm at Bristol Mu-seum and Art Gallery.

Historical novelists Manda Scottand Ben Kane, Professor Kate Rob-son-Brown of the University of Bris-tol and museum curator Gail Boylewill explore the relationship betweenRoman fact and Roman historical fic-tion. The afternoon will include aspecial introduction to the exhibitionRoman Empire: Power and People bycurator Gail Boyle (NB: there is acharge for entry to the exhibition).

From Roman Fact to Roman Fic-tion is part of a programme of activ-ities accompanying the touringexhibition Roman Empire: Powerand People (September 21 – Ja nu a r y12, 2014), when objects will be dis-played alongside objects from BristolMuseum’s own collections.

The second event – The Best Port ofTrade in Britain, Bristol’s MaritimeHistory – is on October 26, 2-4pm atBristol M Shed.

Historical novelist Julian Stock-win, Bristol author Lucienne Boyce,historian Adrian Tinniswood and DrSteve Poole, of the University of theWest of England, will offer advice onresearching Bristol’s maritime past.

Richard Lee, who founded the His-torical Novel Society in 1997, said:“We have a terrific line-up of expertswho will be on hand to talk aboutresearching local history and answerq u e s t i o n s. ”

For further details and how tobook, see the HNS Bristol and SouthWest Chapter’s website: http://tiny-u rl . c o m / m e e t - t h e - h i s t o r i a n s

Historians onhand to helpout writers

Race relations

BRISTOL Bus Boycott to RaceRelations 1963-2013 is the title ofan event at St Paul’s Learning Centreon Saturday September 14, 1pm -5pm, free.

Join Paul Stephenson OBE andco-author Lillieth Morrison for a dis-cussion about the legacy of the Bris-tol Bus Boycott.

Paul and Lillieth will be talkingabout the boycott from 2pm, followedby an informal discussion about theimpact this had on race relations.

Share your own personal storiesabout living in Bristol over the last 50ye a r s.

The event is part of the BearpitLocal Learning Project, supported bythe Heritage Lottery Fund.

The project will involve localschool children and college studentswho will create a story panel forpermanent display in the Bearpit.

For more information emailRuth@locallear ning.org.uk

B r i sto l ’s busboycott legacy

France – or so they thought! – thatthey could find.

Their aircraft was indeed a prize.This captured aeroplane was firstflown to RAF at Farnborough forevaluation, and then onto RAFCollywestern to join 1426 EnemyAircraft Flight known as‘R A F WA F F E . ’

The aircraft was painted in RAFcolours, given the registration of HM509 and joined the many othercaptured German aircraft used in avariety of purposes.

The German aircrew underinterrogation were not verycommunicative, although admittingto their navigational errors, andwere eventually dispatched to oneof the POW camps to sit out thew a r.

Gerry Davis

� To get intouch withEugene Byrneand Bristol TimesWrite to: BristolTimes, BristolPost, TempleWay, Bristol BS2OBYEmail:eugene.byr [email protected]

Page 8: Bristol Times Bristol Post 10 September 13

EPB-

E01-

S4

8

DO you agree, myfriends, time seems topass so much quickeras we get older? Intheory now we are‘re t i re d ’ we shouldhave more time on our

hands but somehow it doesn’t seem towork out that way. It was early lastyear that Derek and I viewed theshow flat at Bluebell Gardens – andsomehow it wasn’t too long before wemade a decision to move.

The show flat, being on the groundfloor, had a door opening on what wasto be a winter garden. It wasn’t untilwe viewed our own apartment(chosen by Derek!) that it dawned onus we had bay windows in ourloung e.

“Oh dear,” said Derek, that will bedifficult to curtain!

“Not a problem,” I said breezily –for not only did George and I have baywindows in my flat in our basementflat in Bathwell Road, Totterdown,(horrid ones actually, with sash win-dows) but when I lived at Keynshamand gave up work to bring up mychildren, once they were both at

school I ventured backinto the work placepart-time everyyear to gain a fewwell earned pen-nies betweenSeptember andChristmaswhich enabledus to have agood Christ-mas and aself cateringsummer holi-day – and truthto tell I quite en-joyed it!

I explained to Derekthat on one occasion Imanaged to get work inDebenhams as a curtain ‘consultant’,thus reassured Derek who said “We l l ,I leave it all to you then”.

What I forgot to mention however,was that I didn’t actually make the

curtains. I only sold them at e r i a l !

Mind you, thathad its moments

too. I recall thenervous feelingI had the veryfirst time I hadto take down abolt of verypretty materi-al, unroll it ona long table

with a measureall the way

down, and havingascertained very

carefully how manyyards (it was yards then

and not metres) the customerwanted. With trembling hand I madethe first cut.

That feeling never quite disap-peared, especially when I was sellinga very expensive velvet.

The following year I managed to geta job in Mostyns but there I onlyshowed the fabric, not actually cut it.So I guess I might have slightly giventhe wrong appearance. But needsmust, as my mum used to say, and oneday when two friends and I werechatting we had a brilliant idea! Wewould go to evening classes and learnhow to make our own clothes, andperhaps even our children’s.

We enrolled for sewing classes atWellsway school and then clubbedtogether to buy a second-hand sewingmachine. It was lovely – a Singer,quite light-weight, with a top thatfolded down and, of course, a pedal.

After our enrolment we each pur-chased a pattern and some materialand with great excitement off wewent. The sky, we felt, was the limitwith our new hobby! Well, luckily mypattern was quite straightforward – ashift dress because, my friends, itd i d n’t come naturally to me.

This week inMarion’s Memories– a girl’s best friend,the sewing machine

Cloth should be cut accordingly

� Marion enjoys a cuddle with Ivy Grace, Derek’s seventh great-grandchild, making her an honorary great grandmother

My mum, when I was a teenager,would get quite tired of me, as everytime I knitted a jumper she wouldhave to sew in the sleeves.

One day, for about the umpteenthtime she told me I was neither use norornament – which I felt was a bitharsh! But try as I might I couldn’t getthe hang of it. Any way one day whenI was pedalling away and my twofriends were sewing, for some reason– and I remember it so clearly – one ofthem, Eileen, started to sing a songDerek said he had never heard of.

“Oh, the sewing machine, the sew-ing machine, a girl’s best friend!”

I knew it – I just can’t remember thefilm – but I know Barbara Huttonsang it. Before long we were allsinging it at our evening class.

I have to admit as well as being theworst knitter in my family, I wasn’twhat you would call great shakes on asewing machine – but that basic pat-tern saw me through quite a fews u m m e r s.

As my first husband used to say,whenever I came home with a coupleof yards of material “is this going tobe a shift dress with sleeves or a shiftdress without? Proudly I also learnedto make my dirndl skirts and beforelong I could also run up a pair ofshorts for son Chris.

And at last to my mum’s relief Ilearned to finish the small garments Iknitted for both Chris and Julie all onmy own! And to my credit the firsttime I had to put a zip in I discoveredI had a talent and so although my twofriends soon surpassed me in theirdressmaking skills there was still aplace for me.

Our curtains at Bluebell? Well, I nolonger have my trusted sewing ma-chine, moving was such a hassle, andsadly it takes me and Derek a longtime to thread a needle with ourageing eyes – so I must admit Iordered them online and had all ofthem professionally sewn.

I don’t know if you agree, myfriends, but as Derek sagely re-marked, what a different world itwould be today if more people tookthe same attitude to life and ‘cut theircloth accordingly’.

God Bless, love Marion.PS I thought readers might like to

see this photo of me having a cuddlewith Ivy Grace – D e re k ’s seventhgreat-grandchild. I am an honorarygreat grandmother.

Places of interest | Sea Walls

A great spot – with or without an ice cream vanTHE Sea Walls are a favourite part ofthe Downs with a lot of people. Thereare the spectacular views over theAvon Gorge, and who knows howmany millions of photos of the Sus-pension Bridge have been squeezedoff here.

Yes, a great beauty spot indeed, andas there’s usually an ice cream vanparked here too, it’s one of thoseplaces lots of people like to visit, ortake their weekend guests to.

And yet this is a place with anextremely gruesome history.

It was always useful as a vantagepoint for seeing which ships werecoming into port. But that workedboth ways; anything on the Sea Wallswas visible to passing vessels, too. Soby the 1700s it was occasionally being

used for displaying executed crim-i n a l s.

Executed felons were “g i bb e t e d ” –their bodies hung in chains – h e re.The idea was to terrify anyone con-templating a life of crime by showingthem the consequences. Thesecorpses (which may possibly havebeen coated in tar to preserve themlonger) were visible to sailors downbelow, and to people on the Downs,which in the 18th century was a re-mote area and notorious as a haunt ofro bb e r s.

Andrew Burnet and Henry Payne,who robbed and killed a man on theDowns were gibbeted here in 1744, forinstance, but the bodies were re-moved, we are told, by a gang ofIrishmen. They were later found on

the rocks of the Gorge and hung upag ain.

The other problem with the areawas that people sometimes fell off thecliffs. In 1746 one John Wallis built awall for public safety, and it wasknown as Wallis’s Wall until well intothe 19th century.

The ornate house nearby is calledTower Hirst and was built for awealthy merchant in around 1860;from here he could see his shipscoming in and out of Bristol along theGorg e.

There used to be another towernearby, but it’s now gone. It was calledCook’s Folly and was notorious onaccount of a bizarre legend whichcomes in several different versions.

The best version goes that it was

“ ..........................................................

As my first husband used tosay, whenever I came home

with a couple of yards ofmaterial, “Is this going to be ashift dress with sleeves or a

shift dress without?”

built in the 1690s by a rich merchantnamed John Cook or Cooke. He shuthimself up in this tower because hehad a dreadful fear of snakes (inanother version he’s hiding from the

plague) and took up food and supplieson a rope.

He died after being bitten by anadder which came up in a bundle off i rewo o d .