Lights out! Follow the trail of Christmas Past
STUDENTS on the Masters Degree course in Architecture at the University of the West of England are working with community heritage specialists Local Learning to create a winter trail for Hillfields, to take place this Friday, December 18.
The area will be decorated with the help of local residents and Minerva Primary School in the style of Christmases Past.
Hillfields is currently celebrating its 100th anniversary after the first houses constructed there were occupied in 1920.
Local Learning and the students have been unearthing stories of the community from residents.
One theme for the winter trail was suggested by local memories of gas lamps. One local resident, Ken Pearce, could recall when the streetlights were all gas and they would be turned on and off by a man on a bike with a long pole.
Schoolchildren have made their own gas lamps from paper or have decorated silhouettes which will then be used to hang in their own windows.
Details of the trail this Friday will be available on social media. If you would like to get involved by decorating your house as part of the trail or would like more information please contact the organisers by email at hillfieldswintertrail@ outlook.com or on social media: Twitter – @HillfieldsTrail; Instagram – HillfieldsWinterTrail; Facebook – www.facebook.com/ hillfieldswintertrial
How many pennies in a mile?
Do you know how many old pennies you’d have needed to line up to make a mile of them?
No, me neither, but according to a local newspaper article from the 1920s it was 51,480. If anyone knows any better, do please write in and say.
The newspaper article was about one of the more popular forms of fundraising for the Lord Mayor’s Christmas Dinner Fund in the 1920s.
This was the direct predecessor of the present-day Lord Mayor of Bristol’s Children Appeal to provide food and presents to give some of the city’s most deprived children a decent Christmas.
The miles of pennies were organised by the local branch of the Transport & General Workers’ Union, calling on passers-by to lay down a penny (or more than one) along the kerbside. The target was regularly beaten.
The present-day appeal is needed more than ever this year, with many families in financial distress because of the pandemic and because the Appeal’s usual fundraising, such as the carol concert, has had to be put on hold.
Well not quite! There is a short carol concert on YouTube at 6.30pm this Friday (Dec 18), with Bold Brass, the Blackbird Children’s Choir and the Bristol Show Choir. Watch it at https://tinyurl. com/y5b4eadv
To find out more, and to donate online, see www.lordmayorof bristolappeal.com
Or you can send a cheque payable to The Lord Mayor of Bristol’s Children Appeal to 3 Park Crescent, Frenchay, Bristol BS16 1PD.
And don’t forget, tonight, December 15, there is a free performance to mark 100 years to the night since the world premiere of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending at Shirehampton Public Hall. A public show isn’t possible this year, but there’s a live online performance courtesy of the Bristol Beacon and the Bristol Ensemble. It’s at 7.30pm at www.bristol beacon.org/lark-100
Remember Dr Culank?
First off, tireless local historian Alan Freke needs an apology from BT. It was he who sent us the article about Bristol’s part in the foundation of Formula 3 motor racing which we ran last issue without crediting him. Sorry for the error!
Now he’s been in touch to tell us about a little booklet he’s just produced about a much-respected local doctor. But let him explain:
An article in the Bristol Times back in February by David Stephenson on the Foss family’s surgery in Clouds Hill House, St. George, mentioned in passing Dr. Culank, who was Dr. George Foss’s partner there. I have reason to be grateful to many doctors, but Dr. Culank was the first to save my life.
Early in 1943 my mother was expecting her first baby – me. However, she was very unwell, and she kept going to her doctor for help, but she told me that he said that all women feel as she did when pregnant.
But my father was not so sure, and he persuaded my mother to see his doctor, Dr. Geoffrey Culank at Clouds Hill Surgery. He quickly diagnosed that she had Pernicious Anaemia - a potentially fatal condition at that time. She was immediately admitted to Southmead Hospital, and spent the rest of her pregnancy there receiving the only known treatment – eating 1lb of raw liver a day!
I was born in August 1943, thanks to Dr. Culank’s intervention – and approximately 1½ cwt of raw liver!
As a child I have memories of visiting the Clouds Hill Surgery to see Dr. Culank, and my parents telling me I owed my life to him. This stirring of old memories prompted me to find out who was Dr. Culank?
Internet research revealed his family’s origins in Poland, and his later role as President of the Cossham Medical Society. With the help of his daughter-in-law, I have put together a biographical sketch of Dr. Culank’s life as a small booklet.
Alan has printed copies for Dr Culank’s family members, local history societies, local libraries, etc., but if readers of Bristol Times would like a copy, email him at alanfreke@hotmail.com for a free downloadable version that can be read online, or printed off as a booklet.