Lunar landing Get your tickets for spectacular moon display
NOT strictly history, but many readers will want to know about this … tomorrow (June 23) tickets go on sale for the programme of events around the installation of artist Luke Jerram’s ‘Museum of the Moon’ at Bristol Cathedral.
Jerram’s work is well-known to Bristolians. He’s the one who installed the free pianos all over town some years back, and the giant water slide down Park Street. He also left an abandoned boat in Leigh Woods.
His fame, though, goes worldwide, and the Museum of the Moon has had a great reception. Measuring over seven metres across, it’s this massive model of the moon, complete with high-resolution Nasa imagery of the lunar surface.
Lit from the inside, the installation at previous locations has been accompanied by specially-composed music.
Having been shown elsewhere, it comes to Bristol Cathedral in August, where it will be free to visit (donations in aid of local homeless charity St Mungo’s welcome).
The Very Revd Dr Mandy Ford, Dean of Bristol, said: “The moon has held a place in the human imagination since the beginning of time and Luke Jerram’s installation invites us to share in the experience of wonder as we contemplate our nearest neighbour in space. This installation also invites us to play, to have fun, and to journey to the moon and beyond!”
There’s a big programme of events around it, including activities for children, concerts, science talks and even a ‘Beer and cheese evening,’ as well, of course, as worship services.
Tickets (some events are free) go on sale tomorrow at 10am, and some of them look sure to sell out given that numbers are limited (though they may increase later if social distancing measures are lifted). Full details at bristol-cathedral.co.uk and booking at bristolcathedral.eventbrite.com
Wayward bell ringers ousted
Bitton is to be the centre of the world (sort of) this Saturday, June 26, when bells will ring out at noon local times on four continents.
This will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Ellacombe Chimes, which were invented at St Mary’s Church, Bitton.
The ‘Chime around the World’ celebration, which crosses 11 time zones, will start in New Zealand and finish in Vancouver in Canada 17 hours later. At least 100 churches and towers will be taking part.
Closer to home, other churches taking part will be St John’s in Keynsham, Bath Abbey, St John’s Catholic Church in Bath, and the Holy Nativity at Knowle in Bristol.
Bitton Parish History Group is organising the event jointly with St Mary’s Church to mark the birthday of the chiming system designed by the Rev Henry Thomas Ellacombe, from St Mary’s at Bitton, in 1821. The apparatus, now used in bell towers across the world, enables one trusted person to ring the bells instead of six or eight bell ringers. Ellacombe originally made the invention to dispense with ‘wayward’ bell ringers.
He had a natural talent for mechanical and technical workings and had previously worked for Marc Brunel (Isambard’s father) at his engineering works at Chatham Dockyard in Kent. While his name will be well-known among bellringers, his son, Henry Nicholson Ellacombe, who eventually succeeded him as vicar of Bitton, would achieve fame as a gardener and author of popular books on horticulture.
Ellacombe’s invention, as the organisers of the event point out, has been coming in very handy 200 years on because it means that
even with Covid restrictions, church bells can still be rung.
A book, Ellacombe Chimes: Two Hundred Years (ISBN 978-1-30470761-1), has been published to mark the bicentenary and should be available from the usual online outlets soon.
For more, see www.bittonhistory.org.uk.
Great news for genealogists
If you’re one of the many people who have been researching their ancestors in recent times, there’s some great news if you have a Bristol library card. If you’ve not researched them yet, but fancy having a go, the news is even better.
Bristol Libraries have offered free access to the leading family research website ancestry.com for some years, but you used to have to go into a library and book one of their computers. Under lockdown, they started to offer free access for home users as well.
This has now been extended to the end of the year. If you have a Bristol library card and have never looked into your forebears before,
give it a try. The great thing about sites like these is that lots of people upload the results of their research, so with some of your ancestors you may well find that someone has already done all the work for you. See www.bristol.gov.uk/librariesarchives/family-history for details.
Spray it loud
None of us have seen the street art exhibition at M Shed yet (see feature, pages 4-5), but it would want to be very poorly staged indeed not to be one of the most talked-about things in Bristol this summer.
Having been a journalist in this town since the early 80s, I saw the rise and rise of Bristol’s graffiti scene. I would like to say that I saw it up close, and that Banksy’s real name is Norman Snodgrass and he was best man at my wedding, but none of that would be true.
I saw it from reasonably close, though. While many in the 80s and 90s were condemning it as mere vandalism, myself and friends were more enthusiastic. We were all, like, oh wow, this is authentic, y’know, like it’s by and for the people? It comes from the streets, yeah? That’s what we said at the time.
Now I’m a bit more sceptical, partly because I was set right by an artist friend many years later.
He was slightly younger than me, and as a teenager with artistic leanings he rather fancied having a go at it this street art lark. As he was Black, he liked it all the more because of the genre’s origins on the streets of New York.
The problem, he quickly discovered, was that as a kid from a working-class family in Southmead there was no way he could afford loads of spray cans of paint.
He explained the problem to his mates on the estate, and being good mates indeed they decided to help out.
And so it came to pass that they set out, stout of heart and steely of resolve, to help their friend, riding forth on a massive burglary spree across the plains of north Bristol. They descended upon garages and garden sheds, plundering paint, which they carried off into the night on spluttering mopeds.
The result was not a load of spray cans, but a haul of half-used tins of Dulux, and even a five-gallon can of boat paint.
It may have come from the streets, and it may be done with the most radical and creative of intentions, but many of Bristol’s earliest practitioners were white boys who came from reasonably well-off backgrounds. Nothing wrong with any of that. All I’m saying is that I know of one brilliant working-class artist who would have given Banksy and that crowd a run for their money but found that no great murals were ever produced in several different shades of magnolia.
Cheers then!