Local History Day: AVON UNDERGROUND
Report by Bob Lawrence and Jonathan Harlow,
pictures by Mike Leigh
On March
19th and a beautiful spring day, President Roger Angerson and UWE
representative Dr Peter Fleming welcomed an audience of some 140 to this our 15th
History Day held in association with the Regional History Centre at St Matthias
campus.
The
format was a new one for us, four sessions each of two 30-minute speakers and a
generous question time, all under the eye of a strict chairman; and, with the
ready cooperation of all the speakers, it worked very well.
Vaults
& Cellars
Alan
Gray, a lifelong caver, took us on a guided tour (his 482nd) of the
Redcliffe Caves. The history went back to at least 1341 when the Berkeleys
installed a hermitage, and the succession of incumbents who manned it for two
centuries, through the 18th and 19th century warehousing
history (which did involve elephant tusks and palm oil, though, definitely, not
slaves) and into the brutal modernisation of the area in the 1960s. We toured
both above and below ground, and this enabled us to appreciate not only the
extent of the complex in relation to the surface development, but also the
various connections: the foundation piers of some of the larger buildings, the
shaft for hoisting merchandise; the pioneering shot tower; the Midland Railway
tunnel with its fine brick arching; the bomb crater walled off in more mundane
brickwork. The tour was well illustrated with maps, pictures and postcards
recording many features no longer visible and contemporary photographs which
well displayed the geological structure, the gypsum stalactites and the thick
deposits of ‘black stuff’ – not coal but manure. Alan’s passion and humour made
this a memorable experience.
Professor
Roger Leech took up the tale with a survey of some of the more traceable of the
142 cellars which had so caught the attention of William of Worcester in the
1480s - and some already a couple of centuries old then. But historic as many
are, we are not solely dependent on old records and archaeological drawings.
Some are still in use and old doorways and pillars may still be seen. Moreover
there is great continuity in use: in the old days the smaller front cellar
fronting the street was often used for liquor retail space with the larger back
space for storage; and today those which are still accessible are as often as
not wine bars. Above ground too – part of what is now the Llandoger Trow was
formerly a wine warehouse (or ‘cellar’ in the terminology of the time). But
there are not as many survivals as there should be. There was an impressive and
rather moving photograph of a whole street of cellarage exposed by the
Luftwaffe, but here as so often municipal reconstruction of the 1960s – without
benefit of development archaeology – made away with even more. Thank goodness
for those, like the speaker, who preserve and recreate this heritage at least
in our minds.
Mines
& Quarries
Steve
Grudgings told the story of How Bristol’s Coal was Won. The first local mines
opened in Kingswood in the 13th century, and the last closed at Harry Stoke in
1963. Once the early shallow deposits were exhausted, control of the industry
moved from the men with picks to the investors with the capital to sink in deep
mines. It was worthwhile: the typical life of a good colliery was 100 years,
with profits around 40-50%. In 1890, local mine owner Handel Cossham was the
largest employer in the West of England.
Using
photographs taken at Frog Lane Colliery, Coalpit Heath by J.C. Burrow in 1906,
Steve Grudgings showed the various stages of coal production. One fifth of the
workforce were hewers, who dug coal at the coal face. They normally worked in
pairs, and had a short life expectancy. Large lump coal fetched the best price,
and coal faces were driven upwards, so that gravity could be used to move the
loaded coal drams. Veerers dragged the drams to the bottom of the shaft (ponies
were used to a limited extent underground in the Bristol coalfield, and no
women at all), where they were lifted to the surface. The photographs and
Steve’s knowledgeable commentary vividly presented the tasks and the technology
of this once vital industry.
Neville
Redvers-Higgins was one of those involved in the ten-year archaeological survey
of the 54 acres of stone quarries at Combe Down, Bath. (The published report
should be available in July 2011.) This had to be completed before the Welsh
miners brought in to stabilise the workings
should have obliterated the evidence.
The stone
at Combe Down is oolite, the same as at the better-known Box and Corsham mines,
but there are no lofty caverns at Combe Down. The mines were dug from the late
17th century onwards, and access was driven
in downwards from the open quarries in Combe Vale to the south. The roadways
were 3-4 metres wide, and horses were used from the 19th century to
move the stone. It was difficult to get large pieces of cut stone, and 50-80%
was wasted.
This was
archaeology in reverse as it were, the further down the later, but it was
archaeology: with careful attention to the marks of the tools on the stone, the
changing fashion of the pillars which were left and the graffiti all helping to
establish the dating. The presentation concluded with a dazzling dizzying laser-image
guided tour of the aptly named Grand Canyon working.
Here
lunch supervened. Many had booked the buffet provided by UWE’s hospitality
services, which was served in the Box and seemed to go down very well. Others
enjoyed their sandwiches in Traders or in the positively balmy fresh air. All
had time to take in the well-stocked stands and displays, representing ALHA
books, the Bristol Record Society, the Bristol & Gloucestershire
Archaeological Society, Frenchay Museum, Bristol Library, Saltford Mill, South
Gloucestershire Mines Research Group, Brislington Community Archaeology, and
Bristol &Avon FHS.
The
after-lunch session at these events, often regarded as the graveyard spot, was
fittingly assigned to Burial and Cemeteries; but the presentations were neither
solemn nor soporific.
Charles
Booth gave an illuminating account of the rationale of Arnos Vale, opened as a
cemetery in 1839, licensed as a crematorium in 1929, saved from developers in
the 1980s, and closed in 1998 only to re-open in 2010. Over that time it has
accumulated the memorials of some 300,000 persons, 170,000 interred, 120,000
cremated and sundry others remembered in, as it were, their absence.
Rather
than take us through the famous names or the grand mausoleums making up this
city of the dead, Charles discussed how it came into being. The demand came
from the filling up of cemeteries in the city, and from the number of
non-conformists who did not want or
might even be refused Anglican burial. The
garden-
or park-like layout satisfied the hygienic standards of an age of improvement,
the aesthetic taste which now looked to landscape and to Nature, and the
changing attitude to death, less the grim object of dread, and more a subject
for meditative melancholy and affectionate grief. Altogether, as he said, Arnos
Vale was the kind of place an upper-middle-class Victorian was happy to be seen
dead in. And all these wants were met by the sort of corporate organisation
which was already supplying municipal gas.
From the Combe Down high-tech expertise to Quaker simplicity!
Gwynne Stock began his burial ground
experience in 1992, at St Nicholas’s church, Bathampton.. Meanwhile, at
Bathford across the river, the Quaker burial ground was about to be demolished to make way for the
Batheaston bypass without any archaeological
involvement. Gwynne was granted permission by the Highways Agency to carry out
an un-funded, solo, watching brief, during December 1993. He was present,
at all working hours (7am – 5pm) and recorded the clearance as it happened.
The site had been in use 1703-1845, and unexpectedly, the presence of Bath
stone ashlar walled graves, some triple case coffins (inner wood coffin/lead
shell/outer case) and evidence of some textile covering, where the biocidal
properties of copper inhibited decomposition. Some large gravestones were also
present – departing from ‘commendable plainness’, towards ‘vain custom’.
Examples of local stones, recording only name and dates ‘without distinctions
between rich and poor’ were small, so that when laid flat rather than upright,
they gave rise to the story of Friends being buried standing up, which Gwynne
has yet to find. Gwynne has become more or less the official
historian of Quaker burial in these parts, and showed several of the other
sites.*
Community
Archaeology
Peter
Insole described the Sea Mills Community Archaeological Project. Sea Mills is
in north-west Bristol on the north bank of the Avon and is known as the site of
a Roman port. Excavations in the 1920s discovered a stone building, and the
lower walls of this remain. A Roman skeleton was found in the area in the
1940s. But the focus of this project was not merely to discover more but to
involve the residents in making discoveries and in learning about the history
they revealed.
Most of
the local area is now covered by housing, but an event was organised by Sea
Mills harbour, houses were leafleted to show the sort of items which might be
found and identified and geophysical instruments lent out. It was amazingly
successful, schoolchildren and pensioners alike were engaged, and enthusiastic
families went from handing in casual finds to digging into well-tended lawns
and allotments. As a result, a great deal of material both Roman and medieval
was brought in; the harbour site was relocated from the mouth of the Trym to
the bank of the Avon (where a cobbled quay was found) and the conjectured road
ways north and east were realigned – one stretch perhaps still preserved in a
footpath between the housing.
Vince
Russett set up the Yatton, Congresbury,
Claverham and Cleeve Archaeological Research Team (YCCCART www.ycccart.co.uk) in 2004, and they are
still actively investigating, recording and reporting on hitherto unknown
archaeological features in these North Somerset villages. The Heritage Lottery
Fund paid for geophysical equipment and is used by, for example, the
Congresbury Romano British Kiln Project to find the distinctive signs of pottery
kilns in fields. In combination with local wild-life volunteers the hill fort
of Cadbury Congresbury was now being cleared of undergrowth, while at nearby
Henley Hill the figure of a deity and a ring with the inscription ICONUX had
been found. The site of the original manor house at Tyntesfield had been
established, and work had been done at both Congresbury church and at Iwood
where various items had been found by detectorists. But as with Sea Mills, what
came over was not just the work that was being done, valuable as it was, but
the engagement of people in uncovering the hidden history of their home
country.
Three factors made for the undoubted success of this
Local History Day: the fine facilities at St Matthias including the catering; a
lively and appreciative audience; and above all eight well-prepared and
enthusiastic speakers.
