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The Bristol Cable

A year of People’s History. 6 of the best.

By Chris Neal
People's History
The Bristol Cable
The Bristol Cable

  1. Mass Grave of Victorian Paupers Discovered in Eastville.

Who were they and what did they endure?

Issue 1.

By Chris Neal

 

2. Victorian Bristol’s radical coffee taverns – Educate, Agitate, Percolate?

The fascinating history of Bristol’s radical coffee houses.

Issue 2.

25 victorian bristolsrad coffee -feat-1

3. The Forgotten Charter of the Forests. 

The age-old battle over British land use

Issue 5.

Liane Aviram

4. The slaves who changed history.

The abolition process was greatly accelerated by the scale and frequency of slave resistance across the diaspora. 

Issue 5.

Archive_ University of Virginia

5. An unusual World War 1 Hero from Bristol. 

A war hero. But not for the usual reasons.

Issue 5.

By Bethan Mure

6. The History of Struggle at Avonmouth Docks

A site of dispute since opening in 1877 as detailed in these six events from 1923 to the present day.

Issue 6.

5- avonmouth docks-feat

Read more on: bristol cable, people's history

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Edition 43

Illustration of a grey factory building with a reflection of it in green underneath

The workers who tried to make ‘swords into ploughshares’

Andy Danford spent decades in Bristol’s aerospace and arms sectors, navigating industrial battles, political upheaval, and bold ideas for transforming weapons factories into socially useful workplaces

Adam Quarshie
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Music

Blazing the fire: Sound system culture through the generations

Sound system culture arrived with the Windrush Generation and took root in St Paul's and Easton, where speaker stacks became monuments to belonging, resistance, and Black identity.

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People's History

19th century photograph of Bristol Harbour, with large boats on the River Frome in the foreground.

Blockade runners: The grim history of the Bristol ships that helped US slave states

The American Civil War ended 160 years ago with the victory of the Union and the abolition of slavery. But many Bristolians supported the losing side and indirectly profited from enslaved labour.

Eugene Byrne
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People's History

A photograph of terraced housing and a harbour from photograph of Bristol in 1880.

How a 19th-century journalist revealed the extent of poverty in Victorian Bristol

A series of newspaper articles published in 1883 give us a fascinating insight into working-class Bristolian life at a time of severe economic depression. It was the first real instance of investigative reporting in the city.

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People's History

An 19th-century illlustration showing a group of people, imagined to be in Elizabethan England, throwing objectss at a cockerel.

Cock-throwing, dog-tossing and bare-knuckle boxing: the brutal history of Pancake Day in Bristol

Shrove Tuesday is a minor holiday at best these days. But turn the clock back, and both animals and humans in Bristol would have had a lot more than pancakes to worry about as Lent approached.

Eugene Byrne
Eugene Byrne

People's History

A women sitting on a wooden stage beside a quilt and a framed historic photograph.

‘There’s a price to be paid’: one woman’s mission to highlight historic buildings’ slave trade links

Gloria Daniel has spent years tracing the connections between the UK’s built environment and its colonial trade in humans. An exhibition at Ashton Court and a new memorial in Bristol Cathedral are pushing back on hidden injustice.

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