"Wealthy Bristolians have always escaped the pressures of city life for the peace of rural South Gloucestershire. Country estates frequently changed hands as fortunes were made and lost and fashionable mansions were built with the profits of trade, including the Slave Trade. Sarah Hands has traced the story of Over Court from its medieval origins".
'In this paper Weller demonstrates that, chiefly with "examples from the parishes in and around Bristol and Somerset, that the older church buildings we see today, whilst for the most part still possessing a Medieval structural core, have undergone varying degrees of transformation, sometimes including partial or occasionally total demolition, during the Victorian Age"'.
'There is a considerable Welsh presence in contemporary Bristol. Welsh accents are often to be heard in the city's streets, and that presence has doubtless grown since the building of the two Severn bridges. This is by no means a modern phenomenon, however, and in this article, Peter Fleming explores the experiences of the Welsh in Bristol during the reign of the Welsh king of England, Henry VII'.
'What follows is a kind of murder mystery, but not a whodunit. The identity of the man who carried out the crime, while indeed a mystery, is probably unknowable and actually unimportant. There is little room for doubt as to the identity of the man who gave him the order. The real mystery lies with the identity of the victim. In attempting to solve the mystery, we shall enter the kaleidoscope of faction and violence that was high politics during the Wars of the Roses, and make the acquaintance of one of fifteenth-century England’s foremost alchemists'.
After the original Bristol Guildhall, which played host to the Law Courts, was pulled down by Bristol Town Council in 1841, Trevor Pearce considers the style, setting and decoration of the new building designed by City Surveyor R. S. Pope in a historical context. In addition, Pearce considers the aspects of the building in terms of being an expression of Bristolian identity.
'There were 18 parish churches crowded in and around the walls of medieval Bristol. Churchwardens' accounts and other sources show that these churches continued to be well-maintained throughout the 16th and 17th centuries , in spite of the destruction of many furnishings of great beauty and value during all the upheavals of the Reformation'. Joseph Bettey looks at the maintenance of parish churches in the Bristol area, and how congregations approached physical alterations to the skin of the building.
The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar,begun in 1478/9 by the town clerk, Robert Ricart,contains the first fully developed chronicle to be produced in an English provincial town.The book represents a considerable investment of time, money and intellectual effort. Its conception was unusually ambitious, and it was the product of a prosperous, sophisticated and self-conscious urban community. Peter Fleming provides a new look on this important document, as well as providing insight on the context of its creation.
This is the first in an occasional series in which a document relating to the history of Bristol and its region is reproduced and discussed. The aim is to provide discussion points, not to provide the last word on the issues raised. Peter Fleming investigates a number of sources relating to the growing population of 'non-Bristolians' migrating to the city, and how they were perceived.