Avon Local History & Archaeology
Books / Books
Since 2009, ALHA has published a series of small books on aspects of Avon history. We have now published 37 titles, some of which are now out of print. Books are about 42 pages in length, and are written by experts in their field.
Alderman Thomas Proctor
An account of the fertiliser business led by Thomas Proctor, who was active in Bristol politics and philanthropy and donated his house in Clifton as an official residence for the lord mayor of Bristol....
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Change and continuity east of Tudor Bristol
Kathleen Hapgood 978 1 911592 22 8 Barton Hill, Bromley Heath, Downend, Eastville, Easton, Fishponds, Greenbank, Hillfields, Kingswood, Mangotsfield, Redfield, St George, Speedwell, Soundwell, Stapleton and Whitehall: all today thriving districts of Bristol. But all that area east of old Bristol Castle was countryside in the sixteenth century. Kathleen Hapgood (author of ALHA No.7 T...
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Chemistry in Bristol into the Early Twentieth Century
Brian Vincent and Raymond Holland 978 1 911592 18 1 Chemistry only emerged as a science in the later 18th century. Since then, it has transformed our understanding of the natural world, our medical care, and our products and processes. The knowledge and experience of the two authors well qualifies them to tell us how this story played out in Bristol over some 150 years. Brian Vincen...
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Cossham memorial Hospital, Bristol
A history of a hospital in east Bristol founded in 1907 with money left by Handel Cossham, local mine owner, philanthropist, mayor of Bath, and Liberal MP. The hospital was a general hospital in the voluntary sector until 1948, then in the NHS. From the 1980s it was confined to various combinations of specialties, and is now a diagnostic centre....
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D Edward Long Fox: radical and mental health pioneer
Dr Edward Long Fox (1761-1835) was born into a quaker family in Cornwall. He came to Bristol in 1785. He engaged in local politics, and led an inquiry into the Bristol Bridge riots. He pioneered a humane approach to the treatment of mentally ill people. He built an asylum at Brislington with innovative features and 'romantic' landscape gardens, and a therapeutic spa at Knightstone, Weston super ma...
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For the Benefit of the Children: the Battle for a Board School in Keynsham, 1870 - 1893
Elizabeth White 978 1 911592 06 8 Keynsham in the late nineteenth century seemed just the place for a free non-denominational Board School under Forster’s 1870 Education Act. But Vicar Gray campaigned successfully against this, and at the same time expanded the Parochial Schools which continued to provide all the primary schooling for the children of the poor in Keynsham until 1954. Her...
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From Catholic Devotion to Puritan Piety; Responses to the Reformation in the Avon Area 1530 - 1603
Joseph Bettey 978 1 911592 11 2 In 1530, England was an orthodox Catholic country whose King had been proclaimed Defender of the Faith by the Pope. By 1603, it was a fiercely Protestant country, where Catholics were forbidden to worship and the Queen was subject to a papal fatwa. In this book, Dr Bettey traces the various responses of the people in the Avon region as they withstood or ran...
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Morning Stars of the Reformation: Early Religious Reformers in the Bristol Region, by Joseph Bettey
978 1 911592 08 2 The original Morning Star of the Reformation was John Wycliffe, whose teaching prefigured much that would become mainstream Protestantism a century later, especially the direct relation of Christian to God through the words of the Bible and not through priests. Despite repression, his followers, known as Lollards, remained active in the South West until overtaken or subsum...
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Public Health in Victorian Bristol: the work of David Davies, medical officer of health
booklet no.19 in ALHA books series...
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Rails in the Avon Gorge
An account of the many railways that operated in the Avon Gorge since the 1830s. Details include routes, promoters, costs, traffic, individuals involved, and technical details of operations....
Supplied by: Avon Local History & Archaeology Product Ref: ALH-13964945
Resident apothecaries in Georgian Bristol
Michael Whitfield 978 1 911592 31 0 For the first 120 years of Bristol’s hospitals, an Apothecary was their only full-time medical practitioner. Although Apothecary rated low in the medical hierarchy, many went on to become MD or to run very lucrative private practices. This is about the work they did, and the men who did it....
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Richard Smith: Bristol surgeon and medical collector 1772 - 1843
Michael Whitfield 978 1 911592 26 6 Richard Smith lived in one of the great ages of culture, learning and debate in Bristol. He was a contemporary and colleague of the great Thomas Beddoes. Robert Southey was his neighbour, and Humphry Davy and Samuel Coleridge lectured in his time. Smith himself was a very successful practising surgeon, a lecturer, a notable collector of medical records ...
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Schools, readers and writers in medieval Bristol
Nicholas Orme 978 1 911592 27 3 Bristol was one of England’s leading centres of education and literary culture by the end of the Middle Ages, with schools at several levels. Books were owned and used by clergy, laymen and women, and the city had its own authors, producing works on topics as various as history, topography, civic affairs, alchemy, and poetry. Nicholas Orme is emerit...
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Shapwick & Winscombe: Contrasting Communities in the Somerset Landscape
Mick Aston 978 1 911592 12 9 In Shapwick & Winscombe, the late Mick Aston tells about work on two Somerset parishes: Shapwick, on which he was engaged for ten years; and Winscombe. Shapwick was historically a classic example of a closed settlement, dominated by one or two landlords; Winscombe of the open kind, enjoying relative freedom. But despite these contrasts, there were great simila...
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Shirehampton Remount Depot (1914-27)
A history of a base established at Shirehampton, now a suburb of Bristol, to train and supply horses and mules to replace those lost at the front in World War 1. ...
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St James’s Fair, Bristol, 1137 - 1837
Joseph Bettey 978 1 911592 16 7 St James’s Fair was the first and for seven hundred years the most famous of Bristol’s fairs. At its height, it drew traders from all over England, and the rich cargoes destined for it were a magnet for pirates. Even at the end it still prospered, albeit more for pleasure than business; and it was the dubious moral character of those pleasures rather th...
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Surgery in eighteenth-century Bristol, by Michael Whitfield
This study sets sketches of half a dozen Bristol surgeons against the background of medical profession of the time. Technically surgeons ranked below physicians in status, but these men might enjoy great reputation as their apprentice lists and fees demonstrate. Nor was their work limited to surgical intervention; and the detailed and well-documented accounts of individual cases here enlarge our k...
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Susanna Morgan: Campaigning for reform in early 19th century Bristol, by Michael Whitfield
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britons were increasingly aware of many social ills; and this awareness contributed to the great wave of reforms which followed the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill. One of the most active of Bristol’s campaigners for reform was Susanna Morgan. She wrote and published on several major causes, and took an active part in new institutions. But, as a woman, she o...
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Taking the pledge: the Temperance movement in Bristol, 1830 - 1914
Alan Clarke 978 1 911592 30 3 This picture of the Bedminster Temperance Hall and Free Library, built in 1853, well brings out the strong religious tone and affiliations of the temperance movement in Bristol. Here Alan Clarke gives a fully documented account of the movement and the opposition to it – not only from the drinks industry. Although never quite achieving its aims, at the le...
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The Bath Dispensaries: healthcare for the poor before the NHS
Before the NHS, dispensaries were the main source of non-residential medical care for poor people. Michael Whitfield describes the dispensaries in Bath from the early 19th century, and draws some comparisons with the national picture. included is an index of practitioners noted in the text....
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The Blue Maids Orphanage
Mary Wright 978 1 911592 02 0 The Blue Maids Orphanage opened in 1795, a generation before Muller’s Orphanage. But it lay at the bottom of Ashley Hill with Muller’s at the top, and has been rather overshadowed by the larger and richer institution. Yet there is a tale to tell even in its relative lack of funds and the struggles of the directing committee to keep it going until eventual...
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The Butlers & the coal-tar distillery at Crew's Hole
Brian Vincent & Raymond Holland 978 1 911592 29 7 The Crew’s Hole coal-tar distillery was set up by Brunel in 1843 with young William Butler as manager. It became a family firm and remained so to 1970, while the Butlers became an important Bristol family. Here is their story. Brian Vincent, PhD, Dsc, FRSC is emeritus professor and senior research fellow in chemistry at the University...
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The Friends to Literature: Bristol Library Society 1772 - 1864
Kathleen Hapgood 978 1 911592 07 5 The Bristol Library Society took over the old Jacobean library founded by Robert Redwood and operated it until they in turn handed it over to the City Council in 1894. This account therefore illustrates the transition from private charity, via personal subscription, to the rates as the basis for public library provision; and features some of the debates ...
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The Medieval Friaries, Hospitals & Chapelries of Bristol, by Joseph Bettey
978 1 911592 01 3 In addition to three monastic houses and eighteen parish churches, four friaries and many hospitals, almshouses and chapels were crowded in and around Bristol in the later Middle Ages. This book relates how these institutions were founded, built and supported by pious benefactors; how they provided help and relief to the sick, the old, the destitute and the outcasts of soc...
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The Pass Family and the Smelting Industry in Bristol, by Brian Vincent
The Pass Family was a very successful family firm operating in Bristol until after World War II when it was taken over by RTZ. They were in the smelting business, mainly recovering metals from previous working. They were not technological innovators; but Professor Vincent’s history demonstrates the technical developments of the industry interacting with the dynamics and financial constraints of ...
Supplied by: Avon Local History & Archaeology Product Ref: ALH-35