It originated as a separate village, retains a High Street with a parish church and shops, and is still thought of as a village by many of its 6,867 inhabitants.[1] Although on the far northwest corner, and largely separated from the rest of Bristol by a broad swathe of parkland extending from the Blaise Castle estate, with the River Avon forming a barrier for access to Somerset, the community is still a convenient location from which to reach all parts of the city.
Shirehampton looks across the Avon towards the rural Failand Hills of Somerset. For many centuries the only direct connection with Somerset was via a small rowed ferry which crossed from near The Lamplighters pub ("The Lamps") to the village of Pill, Somerset opposite. This state of affairs continued until the completion of the M5 Avonmouth Bridge in 1974. From the limestone ridge of Penpole Point (whose name meant approximately Land's End in the Celtic language spoken here before English), there used to be far-reaching views across the River Severn to the distant hills of South Wales, but tree growth has restricted this prospect.
Prehistory
The gravel terraces above the River Avon provide some of the earliest evidence of human occupation in the British Isles. Here and around Ham Green and Pill, on the opposite bank of the Avon, humans with a Lower Palaeolithic (earliest phase of the Old Stone Age) culture (possibly of the hominid type Homo heidelbergensis) left tools and debris behind some 250–400,000 years ago.[2] For comparison, the well-known Palaeolithic sites at Waverley Wood, Warwickshire, and Boxgrove Quarry, Sussex, have artefacts from about 500,000 years ago, and Boxgrove has yielded bones of H. heidelbergensis.
History
Shirehampton was originally a detached part of the parish of Westbury-on-Trym, separated from the main part of Westbury by a part of Henbury parish, which included Kingsweston, the great house, King's Weston House whose inhabitants have had a considerable impact on Shirehampton as employers and benefactors. The area is on record as part of the estate of "Stoke", which was granted by King Offa of Mercia to the bishop of Worcester in about 795, along with the district that is now called Stoke Bishop, and there are two later Anglo-Saxon documents about the same pieces of land.[3][4]
Shirehampton was formerly a chapelry in the parish of Westbury-on-Trym,[5] in 1866 Shirehampton became a separate civil parish, on 1 October 1904 the parish was abolished and merged with Bristol.[6] In 1901 the parish had a population of 2570.[7]
The place was originally called simply Hampton, meaning "large farming estate" or "farm enclosed on several sides", and later became known as "sharny Hampton", meaning "dungy Hampton". The name was "cleaned up" by the Elizabethans to its current form.[8]
The village grew up around the lowest safe river crossing on the river Avon before it empties into the Severn. The ferry between the villages of Pill, Somerset, and Shirehampton, originally in Gloucestershire, connects a ridgeway along Kingsweston Hill (sometimes now called Abbot's Way) with the hills beyond the Avon and continues on towards Clevedon. The ferry ran until 1974, when it was superseded by the M5 bridge.
A priory of the Benedictineabbey of St Mary, Cormeilles, in Normandy, is sometimes said to have been established at Shirehampton in the early Middle Ages, and the converted fifteenth-century tithe barn in the High Street is believed to have belonged to the monastic estate. However, the place referred to in Domesday Book is certain to have been Kyre in Worcestershire, and there is no real connection between Shirehampton and Cormeilles apart from the building stones exchanged by the two communities in 1963 on the strength of the supposed historical connection.
The development of Shirehampton throughout the eighteenth century is closely associated with the history of the adjacent King's Weston House and its extensive estate. Much of the surrounding area was in the ownership of the Southwell family, owners of King's Weston and later to receive the title of Baron de Clifford. Shirehampton prospered through tourism as sightseers from Bath, Clifton and Bristol's Hotwells came to view Kings Weston and the famous views from Penpole Point.
Shirehampton became ecclesiastically separate in 1844 when the chapel of ease of St Mary, dating from at least Elizabethan times, was raised to parish church status. The original chapel building, about which nothing is known, had been replaced in 1727 and this had been rebuilt in 1827. This Gothic-style building burnt down in 1928 and was replaced by the current church, designed by Percival Hartland Thomas, which has a distinctive electronic carillon installed in 1959 with the aid of a benefaction from parishioner Mabel Creber.[9]
There are three other churches in Shirehampton: Methodist, Baptist, and Roman Catholic.
During World War I, Shirehampton was the location of a remount depot for horses.[10] This was the largest such depot in the country, with a capacity of up to 5,000 horses. These horses were mostly supplied from the US and Shirehampton was close to the new Royal Edward Dock at Avonmouth where they were landed. After some weeks of training, horses would then pass to the depot at Swaythling, from where they passed to France. 347,045 horses and mules passed through Shirehampton in the course of the war. After the war much of the materiel from the remount depot was bought by local builder Robert Stride who used it to develop Severn Beach.[11] Robert was the cousin of Jared and Jethro Stride who developed Sneyd Park.[12]
Avonmouth
Avonmouth was a part of Shirehampton parish until 1917. It developed as the main element of the port of Bristol in the later nineteenth century, attracting workers to settle there and in Shirehampton proper; it had grown so big by 1917 that it was given separate status, for both ecclesiastical and civil purposes. Shirehampton itself expanded considerably in the later nineteenth century, and was absorbed, with Avonmouth, by the city of Bristol in 1904. After World War I, the city built a great deal of social ("council") housing here, and this has largely determined the present character of the place.
Along the High Street there remains a sprinkling of the larger houses which typified the place before 1900, often (like Twyford House and The Wylands) converted to public or commercial use; some have been demolished and replaced by small infill estates (like Sunny Hill); some have been retained and surrounded by other houses (such as Penlea and the former vicarage partly retaining some of the supposed priory's construction); and some have gone altogether like the ancient house of sixteenth-century appearance, which has been lost to road widening and a row of 1960s shops.
Benefactions
Shirehampton Public Hall
As Shirehampton and Avonmouth grew, the squires of Kings Weston House, notably Philip Napier Miles (1865–1935), gave many benefactions to the district, including land for churches, war memorials and social amenities. Among these important gifts was the Public Hall of 1904,[13] whose main claim to fame is perhaps that it was the venue of the first performance of Vaughan Williams's rhapsodyThe Lark Ascending, in its original version for solo violin and piano, played by the violinist Marie Hall, a friend of Vaughan Williams from his visits to Kings Weston house, in 1920.[14] Little Park (or Shirehampton Park) was given to the National Trust after World War I, and is used as a golf course.
Amenities
Shirehampton is well provided with churches, schools, sporting facilities, shops and pubs. It has public open spaces and antiquities nearby. These include Kingsweston Roman Villa (whose ruins are visible by the roadside in the modern suburb of Lawrence Weston), Blaise Castle Estate, and Blaise Castle House Museum, in addition to Shirehampton Park. Shirehampton Football Club, based at Penpole Lane,[15] in Shirehampton and play in the Somerset County League.
Other antiquities
On the banks of the River Avon stands the Old Powder House. It was built in 1775-6 to store gunpowder, which was not allowed into Bristol docks. It is a grade II listed building.[16] The village war memorial stands by Shirehampton Road north of the golf course, not far from the site of the now dry Rush Pool, a pool formerly used by drovers bringing cattle from Wales across the Severn to market in Bristol.
Samuel Seyer (1757–1831), an early historian of the City of Bristol, is buried in Shirehampton churchyard.
Archibald Sayce (1846–1933), Professor of Assyriology at Oxford University from 1891 to 1919, was born in Shirehampton. He was an extremely productive scholar with many significant publications.
Philip Napier Miles (1865–1935), composer of music and philanthropist, lived all his life at Kingsweston House and owned much of the land on which Shirehampton and Avonmouth are built.
Gilbert Jessop (1874–1955), cricketer and later in his life a writer, lived on The Green, Shirehampton, from 1909–13.
Rotha Mary Clay (1878–1961), social worker and medieval historian, lived and worked in Shirehampton, at Ilex Cottage, High Street.[17]
Irene Base (1897-1982) Calligrapher & illuminator of international repute. Some works are still held in St Mary's Parish Church e.g. Illuminated Address for Nurse Catherine Court. Was featured in the International 'Who's Who'. She lived at the now demolished Elizabethan House in the High Street, but for most of her life in Station Road.
Harry Jones (writing as Hal Jons and as Harry Graham, 1912-1983), novelist, moved to Shirehampton in the early 1950s. He wrote Westerns along with a Second World War adventure and a book based partly on his experiences in a South Wales mining village in the 1920s. Almost twenty books were published between 1960 and his death, in Shirehampton, in 1983. All of Hal Jons'/Harry Graham's published works have been republished as both print books and ebooks by Burnham Priory Publications (so named because all of the books were written in either Priory Road or Burnham Road, Shirehampton).
Ethel Thomas (1925–2008), local historian, moved with her parents to Shirehampton in 1937, and to Avonmouth in 1952 when she married. She wrote five books on the history of Shirehampton and Avonmouth. See the sources section below.
Sir Robert Stephens (1931–1995), a leading English actor in the early years of Britain's Royal National Theatre was born in Shirehampton. He was one of the most respected actors of his generation and was at one time regarded as the natural successor to Laurence Olivier.
Elizabeth Kelly (Liz Tilberis) (1947–99), successively editor-in-chief of British Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, is said by most sources to have been born in Shirehampton.
The novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) is known to have visited both Shirehampton, where his mother had lived, and Kingsweston House in the 1950s, whilst researching his autobiography, but his memory seems to have been confused. He wrote of his visit in a postcard to a friend, Francis Beaufort Palmer. Waugh's mother lived at Priory House, 61 Pembroke Road. In his book A Little Learning, Waugh writes:
Her rustic tastes were formed by her childhood at Shirehampton, where she and her sister were sent from India at an age which left them no memories of their place of birth, to the care of two maiden great-aunts and a bachelor great-uncle, a retired sailor. It was by these great-aunts and in this house, the Priory [this is misleading, because The Priory was not Priory House], that my grandfather had been detected with his rosary. Shirehampton is now a suburb of Bristol. The Priory has become a vicarage [correct; the vicarage was The Priory, but a new vicarage was built in the grounds of The Priory in 1951, and neither of these was Priory House] and its meadows have been overbuilt. In my mother's childhood the place was rural and my mother was entirely happy there. All her life she looked back on that elderly ménage as the ideal of home.
In less than ten years from the book's publication in 1964, Priory House and the new vicarage had been demolished, but The Priory is still there.
Trivia
In the 1960s and 1970s a Dalek sat outside the Haven Master's building on the banks of the river Avon, just across from the Lamplighters public house.[18] The Dalek used to face up river, so that boats coming from Bristol Docks to the Severn and Bristol Channel (not to mention the Pill Ferry) would have to pass under its nozzle. The Dalek was used to raise funds during at least one Shirehampton Carnival in (probably) the very late 1960s. For 6d, children could sit inside on the plain wooden slat and twiddle the nozzle for a few minutes apiece.
Both the Dalek and the Pill Ferry (as well as 'The Cockle Lady', who used to sell cockles in the High Street during the 1960s) are featured in the not-quite-children's book, Tabitha Miggins: Ship's Cat (on the Pill Ferry), by Shirehampton author, Mark Jones (writing as Philippa Perry). Note that the photograph on the rear jacket of the follow-up book, Further Adventures of Tabitha Miggins, Ship's Cat on the Pill Ferry (this time attributed to Mark Clinton Jones), shows a painted-out direction post in Pill that points the way to the "Shirehampton Ferry".[19] This is a bit of a misnomer because it was known as 'the Pill ferry' on both sides of the river.
↑ Perry, Philippa (2013). Tabitha Miggins, Ship's Cat: (On the Pill Ferry). England: Bristol Folk Publications. ISBN9780956353160. Preview.
Bates, M.R. (2003) A brief review of deposits containing Palaeolithic artefacts in the Shirehampton Area of Bristol and their regional significance. Brecon: TerraNova.
Bates, M.R, and F.F. Wenban-Smith (2005) Palaeolithic research framework for the Bristol Avon basin. Bristol City Council.
Helme, Judy (2004) Shirehampton Public Hall 1904–2004. Shirehampton Public Hall Committee.
Higgins, David H. (2004) The Roman town of Abona and the Anglo-Saxon charters of Stoke Bishop of AD 969 and 984. Bristol and Avon Archaeology 19, 75–86.
Sawyer, P.H., ed. (1968) Anglo-Saxon charters. London: Royal Historical Society.
Shire on the Web. April 1999 edition. Irene Base 'The Illuminated Address'
Smith, A.H. (1964) The place-names of Gloucestershire, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Survey of English Place-Names vol. 40).
Thomas, Ethel (1983) Shirehampton story. Privately published (2nd end 1993).
Thomas, Ethel (2002) The continuing story of Shirehampton. Privately published.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shirehampton.
The River Avon is a river in the southwest of England. To distinguish it from a number of other rivers of the same name, it is often called the Bristol Avon. The name 'Avon' is loaned from an ancestor of the Welsh word afon, meaning 'river'.
Severn Beach is a village on the Severn Estuary in South Gloucestershire, England. The eastern portal of the Severn Tunnel is on the outskirts of the village. The Severn footpath – on the sea wall – is part of the Severn Way that leads from Gloucester, Slimbridge and the Second Severn Crossing. Extensive sea defences have been constructed and this provides a popular walkway along its length. Originally, the Severn Way finished at Severn Beach, but it has been extended to Bristol.
Avonmouth is a port and outer suburb of Bristol, England, facing two rivers: the reinforced north bank of the final stage of the Avon which rises at sources in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset; and the eastern shore of the Severn Estuary. Strategically the area has been and remains an important part of the region's maritime economy particularly for larger vessels for the unloading and exporting of heavier goods as well as in industry including warehousing, light industry, electrical power and sanitation. The area contains a junction of and is connected to the south by the M5 motorway and other roads, railway tracks and paths to the north, south-east and east.
The Avon Gorge is a 1.5-mile (2.5-kilometre) long gorge on the River Avon in Bristol, England. The gorge runs south to north through a limestone ridge 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of Bristol city centre, and about 3 miles (5 km) from the mouth of the river at Avonmouth. The gorge forms the boundary between the unitary authorities of North Somerset and Bristol, with the boundary running along the south bank. As Bristol was an important port, the gorge formed a defensive gateway to the city.
The Severn Beach line is a local railway line in Bristol and Gloucestershire, England, which runs from Bristol Temple Meads to Severn Beach, and used to extend to Pilning. The first sections of the line were opened in 1863 as part of the Bristol Port Railway and Pier; the section through Bristol was opened in 1875 as the Clifton Extension Railway.
Bristol North West is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Darren Jones of the Labour Party.
Pill is a village in North Somerset, England, situated on the southern bank of the Avon, about 4 miles (6 km) northwest of Bristol city centre. The village is the largest settlement in the civil parish of Pill and Easton-in-Gordano. The former hamlets of Lodway and Ham Green are now contiguous with Pill, and the village of Easton in Gordano is nearby. The parish extends northwest beyond the M5 motorway to include the Royal Portbury Dock.
Lawrence Weston is a post-war housing estate in northwest Bristol, England, between Henbury and Shirehampton.
Sea Mills is a suburb of Bristol, England, 3.5 miles (6 km) north-west of the city centre, towards the seaward end of the Avon Gorge, between the former villages of Shirehampton to the west and Westbury-on-Trym and Stoke Bishop to the east, at the mouth of the River Trym where it joins the River Avon. Sea Mills was part of the city ward of Kingsweston. Following a Local Government Boundary Commission review in 2015, ward boundaries were redrawn and Sea Mills is now split between the Stoke Bishop ward and the Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston ward.
Coombe Dingle is a suburb of Bristol, England, centred near where the Hazel Brook tributary of the River Trym emerges from a limestone gorge bisecting the Blaise Castle Estate to join the main course of the Trym. Historically this area formed part of the parish of Westbury on Trym, Gloucestershire, and it is now part of Kingsweston ward of the city of Bristol. South of Coombe Dingle is Sea Mills; to the north is Kings Weston Hill; to the west are Kings Weston House and Shirehampton Park; and to the east, Henbury Golf Club and Westbury on Trym proper.
Shirehampton railway station is on the Severn Beach Line and serves the district of Shirehampton in Bristol, England. It is 7.6 miles (12.2 km) from Bristol Temple Meads. Its three letter station code is SHH. The station has a single platform which serves trains in both directions. As of 2015 it is managed by Great Western Railway, which is the third franchise to be responsible for the station since privatisation in 1997. They provide all train services at the station, mainly a train every 30 minutes in each direction.
The Bristol Port Railway and Pier was a railway in Bristol, England.
Philip Napier Miles JP DLitt h.c. (Bristol) was a prominent and wealthy citizen of Bristol, UK, who left his mark on the city, especially on what are now its western suburbs, through his musical and organisational abilities and through good works of various kinds. He was the only son of Philip William Skynner Miles (1816–1881), a major promoter and developer of the docks at Avonmouth, who was the eldest son of Philip John Miles (1773–1845) by his second marriage to Clarissa Peach (1790–1868), and Pamela Adelaide Napier, daughter of the soldier and military historian General Sir William Francis Patrick Napier. He was therefore half-nephew of Sir William Miles, 1st Baronet, half-cousin of Sir Philip John William Miles, 2nd Baronet, both Conservative politicians, and cousin of the fashionable portrait painter Frank Miles, gentleman cricketer Robert Miles and Mount Everest explorer, General The Hon Charles Granville Bruce. He was educated at Harrow School and Oriel College, Oxford, and was selected as High Sheriff of Gloucestershire for 1916–17.
Bewys Cross is a monument consisting of the steps, plinth and truncated shaft said to be of an ancient cross of uncertain age which used to stand on the ancient seabank or seawall of the River Severn in that area of Shirehampton in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom, now known as Avonmouth. The cross is perhaps early fifteenth century; the steps may be more recent.
Kings Weston House is a historic building in Kings Weston Lane, Kingsweston, Bristol, England. Built during the early 18th century, it was remodelled several times, the most recent in the mid-19th century. The building was owned by several generations of the Southwell family. By World War I, the house was used as a hospital and then later used as a school by the Bath University School of Architecture. The building is today used as a conference and wedding venue, as well as a communal residence.
Kingsweston was a ward of the city of Bristol. The three districts in the ward were Coombe Dingle, Lawrence Weston and Sea Mills. The ward takes its name from the old district of Kings Weston, now generally considered part of Lawrence Weston. Following a Local Government Boundary Commission review in 2015 ward boundaries were redrawn and Kingsweston ward is now split between the Stoke Bishop ward and the Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston ward.
The Portway is a major road in the City of Bristol. It is part of the A4 and connects Bristol City Centre to the Avonmouth Docks and the M5 motorway via the Avon Gorge.
Bristol Rail Campaign is a Bristol-based campaign group, calling for better rail transport in the Bristol area.
The Avonmouth Light Railway(ALR) was a nominally independent railway company operating a short standard-gauge branch line from a point on what is now the Severn Beach Line near Avonmouth Docks station in Bristol to a Bristol Corporation electricity installation east of the main entrance to Avonmouth Docks. Its promoters had aspirations which were never fulfilled.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
