Taking shelter from the terror of the air raids
IT was lovely to see the response in Bristol Times (Oct 6) with regard to the photo of the air raid shelter in my garden.
Yes, it did have alterations by way of a window and a side opening for housing mother’s chickens – but the make/model it was remains a mystery!
Before moving to this house, we lived nearby and at that house we did have an Anderson shelter which my father made a good job of making a very comfortable bedroom where my mother, sister and myself would take ourselves every night to sleep while the raids were taking place around us.
My mother and I would lie there trembling as we heard the bombs whistling down but my sister would be sound asleep. She was more frightened of the spiders than the bombs!
Meanwhile, my father was a dedicated Air Raid warden in the locality. My brother would be in the house under the stairs while my grandmother would be in the living room under the table. My eldest sister was in the Wrens at this time.
As a matter of interest, the target they were trying to attack was a cannon on Purdown known as Purdown Percy.
The day after the raid the vicar of
Eastville Methodist church would come round and visit the residents to see if all was well.
The raids eased off but I would have recurring nightmares for a long time after. Looking back, we were lucky because everyone in our family and our street survived.
However, I did know the group of young people who were tragically killed when the bomb dropped on Eastville Park.
Upper Eastville
BTLET/Oct 20/Inn H M Brace
DO any of the older readers of Bristol Times remember the Old Coaching Inn at Maiden Head?
This old inn once stood on the Wells Road, opposite the Carpenters Tavern, Dundry.
Does anyone know the history of it?
David Shelton Bishopsworth
Editor’s reply: We know of no coaching inn at the hamlet of Maiden Head, though the Carpenters Arms is still there.
Any readers got any suggestions?
Slavery and servitude
THERE is no documentary evidence that slaves were brought back to Bristol in large numbers
and sold off.
Liverpool has written evidence that their slave ships brought them
back there, as there were advertisements for slave auctions between 1750 and 1792.
No such evidence exists for Bristol. The detail of the Black people in Bristol is backed up by records which Eugene Byrne quotes.
They are in small numbers and are regarded as servants in some instances.
The reason is that slavery was banned in England in 1102. There were several cases in which the court upheld this, one in 1569 and another in 1700 where Sir John Holt the Lord Chief Justice ruled: “As soon as a man sets foot in England he is free”.
Due to this ruling, by 1774 between 10,000 and 15,000 slaves in England gained freedom because of English common law.
During the 18th and 19th centuries there were great many white servants, or people in service as they were often called. It’s very debatable the difference between slave and
servant in those times.
Regarding the kidnapping of Africans, this could have happened in a few cases, but it would not be sufficient to fill a ship with several hundred people.
A recent TV programme recorded an Ashanti woman giving a full explanation of how the Chiefs sold members of their tribe into slavery, for guns and other goods.
There are records of iron pots and pans, knives and cloth exchanged for slaves.
The inter-tribal wars produced most of the slaves. They were taken to the forts as shown in the TV programme, and held there for transshipment.
Black people sold black people into slavery.
The reason the forts were on the coast was because it was far too dangerous for Europeans to go into the interior of Africa.