People’s History

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

Edition 43

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
Adam Quarshie

Music

Blazing the fire: Sound system culture through the generations

Adam Quarshie
Adam Quarshie

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

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

People's History

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.

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

People's History

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

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

People's History

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

Adam Quarshie
Adam Quarshie

People's History

From dubious mermaids to harsh prison conditions: how Fred Little documented Bristol a century ago

The Easton-born photographer’s work provides a unique, and sometimes vividly reimagined, perspective on how our city looked during the early years of the 20th century.

Michal Grant
Michal Grant

Area in Focus

A woman and a man stand smiling in the hall of a community centre

How St Paul’s residents fought to make the Malcolm X Centre a space for the community

The Malcolm X Centre on Ashley Road is one of Bristol’s most well-known and treasured community venues. What’s less well remembered is the struggle local people went through to lay the foundations for that status.

Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins

People's History

A home for the ‘Hypochondriac, Mad and Distracted’: remembering the ‘madhouses’ of Fishponds

For more than 100 years, a family firm profited handsomely from running mental health facilities in Fishponds – sometimes using shocking and bizarre practices. A new book uncovers the startling history of ‘Mason’s Madhouse’.

Mike Jempson
Mike Jempson

People's History

‘An intolerable anachronism’: it’s 60 years since the last hanging took place in Bristol

On 17 December 1963, the final judicial execution in our city brought a long history of local executions to an end. We look back on what happened in Horfield in 1963, and the campaign to end the death penalty.

Eugene Byrne
Eugene Byrne

People's History

Image of former Bristol police chief John Henderson Watson surrounded by his constables

The Bristol police chief embroiled in corruption who died with a razor in his hand

John Henderson Watson had a long and distinguished police career and was Bristol’s chief constable for 14 years – before his career ended in scandal and his disappearance.

David Hewitt
David Hewitt

Bristol History Podcast

Image of Arthur Rackham's 'Fairy Procession', originally for a 1908 edition of Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream

Listen: Sabrina, goddess of the River Severn

Nicola Haasz discusses the origin myths of Sabrina, goddess of the River Severn, and the cultural responses the river has elicited through history.

Tom Brothwell
Tom Brothwell
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