Earl's Mead

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Earl's Mead (Earlsmead, Earles Mead, Erlesmead or Erlysmede) was an historic district, estate and major thoroughfare in what is now central and east Bristol. The area was noted as an asset of St James Priory [1] in the mid thirteenth century [2] and the name was in use until the twentieth. The meadows around the river at were a noted location in the city of Bristol’s civic calendar by 1682 for annual fishing [3] in the River Froom (sic) and ‘mighty feasting’ by the mayor’s party at Earl's Mead [4] , before being gradually developed and redeveloped for light industrial, residential and retail [5] .

Contents

Frome Bridge in Wade Street, 1821, Braikenridge Collection M2909.700x700.jpg
Frome Bridge in Wade Street, 1821, Braikenridge Collection

The "principal house" of the district was Earl's Mead House [6] , variously occupied by the Whittingham family - including military leader Sir Samuel Ford Whittingham and Sarah, wife of Bristol MP Richard Hart Davis and mother of Colchester MP Hart Davis [7] – and the Godwin family including influential Victorian architect-designer Edward William Godwin [6] .  Earl’s Mead was featured in the song of the Antient Society of St. Stephen’s Ringers [8] (est c1470 [9] ) and in letters by John Wesley founder of Methodism referencing early methodists. John Audley, described by Pennsylvania founder William Penn as a "first and most eminent" Quaker [10] preached in the open fields at Earl's Mead [11] .

In 1480, Earl's Mead ran from the present day Broadmead shopping district to Baptist Mills. Earl's Mead Street (or Erlys Mede Stret) was the main road into Bristol on the Bristol City Council map depicting Bristol of 1480, running from the present day Horsefair and then following the line of what is now Newfoundland Road/Way and the lower end of the M32 [5] . The housing estates known as Earl’s Mead until the twentieth century gradually became known as part of St Paul’s and Baptist Mills, later St Jude’s, St Werburgh and St Agnes [5] . Part of Earl’s Mead is now Riverside Park and the surrounding area where regeneration is planned as part of the Frome Gateway development.

Geography and extent

Earl's Mead were wetlands and pasture fields around the lower Bristol Frome.  The area was recorded for flooding on various occasions and is still an area at risking of flooding. The flood of 1889 hit the area especially hard and became a focus of middle-class philanthropists pressing the Bristol corporation to take action, as well as helping with rectifications and fundraising [12] .

In 1815, the area was surrounded by open countryside with Earl Street, Earl's Mead, having open views of the Duchess of Beaufort’s house described by local estate agents [13] . A later map depicting William Worcester’s 1480 Bristol only shows the western edge of Earl’s Mead, around present day Cabot Circus car park, Houlton Street and the western parts of Wellington Road and Clement Street. This map shows a beggar’s well to the immediate north west of the Earl’s Mead boundary, corresponding to today’s Moxy Hotel [5] . Millerd's more detailed map of 1673 shows the western extent of Earl’s Mead as reaching nearly as far as ‘The Meeting House’, or present day Quaker’s Friars [14] . This is described in Bristol City Council open monument data as “between the River Frome and the Castle Mill leat, extending from the Narrow Weir to the Roaring Bridge” (around present day Wellington Street). [15]

By Roque's 1742 map, the western edge had shifted to present day Houlton Street, entirely contained between the River Frome to the south and Newfoundland Lane (now Road/Way) to the north [5] . Depictions of the 1610 Map of Kingswood places Earl’s Mead with a similar western border as Millerd, running east to Baptist Mills; again entirely north of the River Frome [16] .  In 1808 title deeds for Ashley Row (now Lower Ashley Road in St Werburgh) state the land it was built on was called Earl’s Mead [17] . Later in 1872 plans to build Byron [18] and Dermot Streets were also cited as Earl’s Mead, although these streets are on the west side of Newfoundland Road [19] .

The 1828 Ashmead map describes the area as being in the outparish of St Paul, but shows a substantial Earl’s Mead House just south of the River Frome, on Pennywell Lane (now Road) [5] .  In 1830 plans to build Hill Street and Dale Street (currently the Cabot Circus car park) on land known as both Earles Mead and as Newfoundland in St Paul [20] .

In 1862, the Bristol Town Clerk reported the findings of a meeting of the town Finance Committee on planned creation of sewers and roadworks at Earlsmead, the area to then be made available for building purposes. The clerk described Earlsmead as "the piece of ground immediately adjoining St Clement's Church. The church and schools stood on a part of Earlsmead" [21] . By the time of the 1874 Ashmead map, the area was mainly residential with streets including Morton, Elton, Clement, Monk and Albion, along with Newfoundland Road and Newfoundland Gardens. The small number of non-residential buildings including St Clement’s Church and school, a hat factory and a school off Newfoundland Road. [5]

By 1894, the remaining open space was developed for the Corporation Depot on Wellington Street [5] and the remainder of the controversial Newfoundland Gardens was redeveloped for residential St Agnes Road [22] . Residential Canton Street and Eldon Road were in place by this time; plans for development of these in 1881 described the land as 'First Earls Mead'. Following redevelopment for housing the district was still called Earl’s Mead: in 1882 EW Godwin wrote in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, “the district is still known as ‘Earl's Mead’, and the principal house in the neighbourhood, which was for some time my residence, is still called ‘Earl's Mead House’.” [6]

Bristol City Council established a district-level office on Wellington Street, known as the Earlsmead Depot, that at times included the City Housing Department [23] and Surveyors Office [24] now joinery [25] .

South of the River Frome

Contemporaneous maps indicated that Earl’s Mead existed between the Frome and Newfoundland Road [5] .  City Council sources also described the historic Earl’s Mead as being crossed by Pennywell Road, on the south of the Frome [14] . The Itinerarium of William Worcester describes Earl’s Mead as the land bordering the River Frome.

Place names south of the Frome included the Earlsmead Tannery on Eugene Street, Earl’s Mead Joinery Works on Pennywell Road, and Earl’s Mead House and later Earlsmead Stores on Pennywell Road. Deeds in the first half of the nineteenth century indicate houses on Pennywell Lane, south of the Frome, that were previously known as Earl’s Mead. By 1874 Earl’s Road at the south of Pennywell Lane had been renamed Earlsmead Terrace. [5]

Decline of the Earl's Mead era

There is no evidence of the name being used to describe the wider district beyond the 1920s. By this time various buildings and streets carried the name Earl’s Mead. The area has been significantly redeveloped since that time [5] . The only known standing buildings in the Earl’s Mead district before the twentieth century from are parts of the soon to be redeveloped Wellington Street council depot, which was last recorded as called Earlsmead Depot in 1990 [26] , and the adjoining number 5 Elton Street which is part of Wogan Coffee [5] .

South of the Frome there are old walls potentially from the former Earlsmead Tannery [27] , later called J Scadding timber yard, now vacant for redevelopment. Apart from on Eugene Street no buildings from the period remain in the area between the River Frome and Pennywell Road.  Byron Street, west of Newfoundland Road at present day St Werburgh, are still standing, as are a small number of houses on the former Ashley Row (now Lower Ashley Road). [5]

History

Earl's Mead's naming is not clear but is probably for its early owner illegitimate son of King Henry I: Robert Fitzroy, 1st Earl of Gloucester [14] and half-brother of the Holy Roman Empress Matilda. Alternative accounts for naming include for Leofwine Godwinson [28] or Sweyn Godwinson [29] , brothers of King Harold.

In Anglo-Saxon times the area later known as Earl’s Mead, on the western edge of Kingswood Forest [16] , sat adjacent to the hypothesised pre-Norman settlement and fortification in the district that would become Bristol Castle [30] . By 1066 this set of riparian wetland pastures was owned by William the Conqueror as part of the royal estate, Barton Regis hundred; by 1086 half of the hundred had an unnamed Bristol church as a tenant [31] . By the time of the first known mention of Earl’s Mead in the mid-1200s it was administered as part of St James Priory lands [2] .

In Millerd's map, the road known as Erlys Mede Stret is called Newfoundland Lane, running along the northern edge of Earl’s Mead. The map shows The Whitstry, elsewhere described as Earl’s Mead Lodge [15] , bordering the area, and a pest house adjacent along Newfoundland Lane. This was later found to sit a greater distance away [32] .

By 1746, maps showed a Rope Walk along the narrow section of Earl’s Mead from Narrow Weir to the Frome bridge at Wade Street then known as Traitor’s Bridge, for Nathaniel Wade. [33]

Earl's Mead north of the Frome remained part of St James parish until 1798 when it was separated into the new parish of St Paul. In 1828 this area was mainly open fields [5] . There was a public house by the river called Mother Day’s on Earl’s Mead, opposite Earl’s Mead House, according to a letter to the newspaper in 1829 from "a solicitor and brother ringer" [34] . The letter recalls a popular song The Golden Days of Good Queen Bess , connected with the St Stephen's Ringers [8] .

By the turn of the century Earl's Mead was densely developed mainly for housing with some light industrial at the southern end around Houlton Street and Wellington Road [5] . In the intervening time a field of allotment squats called Newfoundland Gardens caused social concern and was cleared for housing including St Agnes Road [22] .

In the early twentieth century the district name persisted in both describing the area and in the names of a local Earlsmead football team [35] and Earlsmead scout group [36] . By the Second World War the district name Earl’s Mead had fallen out of use in favour of St Paul’s [5] , with a number of local buildings, streets and businesses retaining the Earlsmead name until as late as 1990 [26] .  By the 1970s almost the whole area had been cleared for retail, light industrial and Riverside Park in St Jude’s.

Associated buildings and sites

Legacy

Earl's Mead was used locally in the present tense as late as 1990 as the Bristol City Council Earlsmead Depot on Wellington Street [26] . Veronica Smith’s Street Names of Bristol (2001) discusses Earl’s Mead, BS2 [28] . The Antient Society of St. Stephen’s Ringers is still operating in 2026. According to Maurice Fells in The Bristol Year: Ancient and Modern Traditions (2003) the society still sang the The Golden Days of Good Queen Bess ceremonially [39] . It is unknown whether the lyrics still refers to Mother Day’s or Earl’s Mead.

In 2006, the BBC ran a public consultation on the search for a name for what would eventually be called Cabot Circus. Earlsmead was one of the public suggestions published on the BBC website [40] .

Earls Mead, BS16

A residential street north of Eastville Park, Earls Mead was built after 1949 [5] ; like the historic district it is adjacent to the River Frome (Bristol) as well as its tributary Fishponds Brook [41] .  The housing estate containing Earls Mead was opposite the former Stapleton Workhouse [5] , which itself replaced the Pennywell Road Workhouse adjacent to the historic Earl’s Mead district.

Stapleton Workhouse later became Blackberry Hill Hospital until closure in 2007, with redevelopment for housing starting in 2017 and ongoing in 2024 [42] . Pennywell Road Workhouse was replaced by the Vestry Hall, now apartments [5] .

Future plans

Much of the historic Earl's Mead district is due for regeneration as part of the major Frome Gateway development. Bristol City Council’s Frome Gateway Story draws particular attention to the historic Earl’s Mead but does not note what role the Earl’s Mead name will have in the redeveloped district [14] .

References

  1. ↑ Jackson, Reg (2006). Excavations at St James Priory, Bristol. Oxford: Oxbow Books. ISBN   9781842172070.
  2. 1 2 Walker, David (1998). The Cartulary of St. Augustine's Abbey, Bristol: v. 10. Sutton Publishing. ISBN   9780900197468.
  3. ↑ Garrard, Thomas (1852). Edward Colston, the Philanthropist, His Life and Times; Including a Memoir of His Father; the Result of a Laborious Investigation into the Archives of the City. Bristol: J. Chilcott.
  4. ↑ Latimer, John (1893). The Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century. Bristol: John Latimer.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 "Know Your Place". maps.bristol.gov.uk. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  6. 1 2 3 "Antiquarian Notes and Queries". Ulster Journal of Archaeology. 5: 155–168. 1857 – via JSTOR.
  7. ↑ Whittingham, Ferdinand (1868). A Memoir of the Services of Lieutenant-General Sir Samuel Ford Whittingham: Colonel of the 71st Highland light infantry. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
  8. 1 2 Roslyn, H.E. (1928). The History of the Antient Society of St. Stephen's Ringers, Bristol. Bristol: St. Stephen's Press.
  9. ↑ "The Antient Society of St. Stephen's Ringers". St Stephens Ringers. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  10. ↑ "John Audland". www.lancaster.ac.uk. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  11. ↑ Mortimer, Russell (1967). Early Bristol Quakerism: 1654-1700. University of Bristol.
  12. ↑ Richardson, Mike (2014). "The Bristol Strike Wave of 1889-1890: Socialists, New Unionists and Women. Part One: Days of Hope". Strikers, Hobblers, Conchies & Reds: A Radical History of Bristol 1880-1939: 91–124.
  13. ↑ "To be sold at Auction". The Bristol Mirror. p. 2.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Insole, Pete (2023-10-10). "The Frome Gateway Story". ArcGIS StoryMaps. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  15. 1 2 3 4 "Bristol Monuments Open Data". Bristol City Council. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  16. 1 2 Hapgood, Kathleen (2019). "Coal and the King's Deer: The Kingswood Map of 1610" (PDF). Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. 137: 215–229.
  17. ↑ "Early title deeds of No.67 Lower Ashley Road: Lease and release, 1) John Stone of Bristol, grocer; 2) Isaac Cooke of Bristol, gentleman; 3) William Birch of Bristol, merchant; 4) Devereaux Jones Bryant of Bristol, gentleman; 5) William Tanner of Bristol, gentleman". Bristol Archives online catalogue. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  18. ↑ "Byron Street, Earls Mead - Wm Dubin - 9 houses". Bristol Archives online catalogue. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  19. ↑ "Dermot Street, Earls Mead - 4 house - B.J.Gagg, T Bennett". Bristol Archives online catalogue. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  20. ↑ "Grant: 1. Joseph Hill of City of London,esq. Ann Wathen Peall of Clifton,Glos., widow 2. Charles Savery of City of Bristol,gent. 3. Thos.Chappell of the same,carpenter 4. Edw.Clark of the same,gent". Bristol Archives online catalogue. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  21. ↑ "Bristol Town Council". Western Daily Press. 2 January 1862. p. 3.
  22. 1 2 "The homes of the Bristol poor / by the special commissioner of the Bristol Mercury". Wellcomecollection.org. 1884.
  23. ↑ "Photograph of Earlsmead Depot, Wellington Road, St Pauls". Bristol Archives online catalogue. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  24. ↑ "Earlsmead Surveyor's Office [part of Housing Department]". Bristol Archives online catalogue. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  25. 1 2 Postans, Adam (2024-11-04). "Council joinery makes 'probably the best fire doors in the world'". Bristol Live. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  26. 1 2 3 4 "Bristol City Council Direct Labour Organisation". Evening Post. 14 June 1990. p. 36.
  27. ↑ "The tannery ghost? | Steve Woods". 2022-09-20. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  28. 1 2 Smith, Veronia (2001). The Street Names of Bristol. Broadcast Books. ISBN   9781874092902.
  29. ↑ Nicholls, JF (1872). "The Early Bristol Charters and Their Chief Object". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 1: 241–248.
  30. ↑ Baker, Nigel (2018). Bristol: A Worshipful Town and Famous City: An Archaeological Assessment from Prehistory to 1900. Oxford: Oxbow Books. ISBN   9781785708770.
  31. ↑ "Barton [Regis] | Domesday Book". opendomesday.org. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  32. 1 2 "September: plague hospital Bristol | News and features | University of Bristol". www.bristol.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2025-11-14. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  33. 1 2 Latimer, John (1900). The Annals of Bristol in the Seventeenth Century. Bristol: William George's Sons.
  34. ↑ "Letters". Bristol Gazette. 18 November 1829.
  35. ↑ "Football (Other Matches)". Western Daily Press. 27 November 1905. p. 9.
  36. ↑ "Boy Scout Camp". Western Daily Press. 9 May 1932. p. 7.
  37. ↑ "Earlsmead Beer Stores – Bristol's Lost Pubs" . Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  38. ↑ "Agreement - erection of poles at Quakers Friars and Earlsmead Stone Yard Clement Street". Bristol Archives online catalogue. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  39. ↑ Fells, Maurice (2003). The Bristol Year: Ancient and Modern Traditions. Broadcast Books. ISBN   9781874092988.
  40. ↑ BBC. "Your view: Renaming Broadmead". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2026-02-01.
  41. ↑ "The Big Blue Map of Bristol". Bristol City Council.
  42. ↑ admin (2024-10-17). "Blackberry Hill Archaeology: The History of Bristol's Prison and Workhouse". Cotswold Archaeology. Retrieved 2026-02-01.

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