This week I met with Helen Meller, Professor Emerita of Urban History Nottingham University to discuss the life of Hilda Cashmore - the pioneering founder of Bristol’s Barton Hill Settlement – which she established in 1911. Helen describes Hilda Cashmore as a ‘quaker, feminist, educator and social worker’. We discussed her life in the city and some…

This week I met with Dr. Richard Stone, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol, to discuss his recent research on Bristol’s early involvement in the trade in enslaved people. It has conventionally been thought that Bristol merchants began trading in enslaved Africans from 1698. However new evidence uncovered by Dr Ston…

Your Bristol Life is back for a second series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***The Sound Of Saffron by Charlie West***Women, non-binary and trans people occupy less than 5% of the music tech industry and UK …

Your Bristol Life is back for a second series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***A Bristol Boy's Disabled Life by Richard Prior***Local lad Richard Prior is blessed with a wonderful family and two beautiful da…

Your Bristol Life is back for a second series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***A Short History Of Purple Penguin by Peter Hall***You have all heard about the Bristol Sound, and the Bristol street art scene i…

Your Bristol Life is back for a second series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***Love Her by Mary Milton***“You were in a pub environment, but it was also like being at a friend’s house,” says one musician who…

Your Bristol Life is back for a second series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***L'Chaim, My Lovers by Tom Chachewitz***Local artist and writer Tom Chachewitz presents a brief history of Jewish life in Bristol…

The Severn is the longest river in the UK and from its source in the Cambrian mountains in mid Wales, it flows down through Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire before eventually reaching the Bristol Channel. I met with Nicola Haasz, who has dedicated herself to exploring, collating and informing about the many facets of the Severn - incl…

This week I spoke with journalist and author Eugene Byrne to discuss the mass squatting movement that took place in Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War. In the context of a chronic housing shortage across the country, Bristol in the summer of 1946 saw ex-military bases at Purdown and White City in Ashton occupied by hundreds of people …

Your Bristol Life is a new series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***Bianchi's Food Group by Steven Mitchell***During Covid and post-Brexit, food, hospitality and catering became acknowledged as an essential, …

Your Bristol Life is a new series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***Old Market (REMIXED) by Tom Marshman***Old Market (REMIXED), written and performed by Tom Marshman and recorded and edited by Bernie Hodges,…

Your Bristol Life is a new series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***Henrietta Lacks by Daniel Edmund***The life-size bronze statue of Henrietta Lacks that was erected at the University of Bristol in 2021 by B…

Your Bristol Life is a new series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol's history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***Skate or Cry by Jazlyn Pinckney***In this audio documentary, five women taking space in Bristol’s skateboarding scene speak to Jazlyn Pinckn…

Your Bristol Life is a new series of five podcasts shining a light on underrepresented aspects of Bristol’s history. This BCfm series was made with the Bristol Cable, Bristol History Podcast and In The Dark.***The Bristolian Refugee by Sam Sayer***What is it like to leave your country of origin and go to a strange, faraway land to find safety? How …

This week I met with Professor Nick Groom, to discuss the life, work and reputation of the Bristolian poet Thomas Chatterton. Born in Redcliffe in 1752, Chatterton was a precocious talent. In just seventeen years of life he produced a great body of poems, plays, prose works and a collection of medieval writings that he attributed to a fictional 15t…

This week I spoke with Brycchan Carey, Professor of English at Northumbria university to discuss the life and work of 18th century Bristolian poet and milkwoman, Ann Yearsley,By Tom Brothwell

This week I met with ballooning pioneer Don Cameron. We discussed the birth of hot air ballooning in Britain, the fifty-year history of his company - Cameron Balloons, the remarkable rise of the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, and touched on some of the extraordinary feats of ballooning that Don has undertaken.…

This week I spoke with Andrew Foyle from Outstories Bristol, a volunteer community history group with an objective to gather, preserve and communicate the stories of LGBTQ people in Bristol and the surrounding area. We discussed some of the stories of LGBT people throughout Bristol’s history from the 17th century to the present day.…

This week I spoke with amateur historian Steven Carter to discuss his research on how profits from the slave trade were fed back into British industry. Focussing on Edward Protheroe - a feted coal industrialist in the Forest of Dean in the early 19th century - Steven has traced how a substantial amount of the Protheroe family wealth was derived fir…

This week I met with Dr Michael Whitfield to discuss Bristol's dispensaries. For the two hundred years or so before the creation of the NHS in 1948, the dispensaries were one of the main providers of healthcare in Britain, especially for its poorest people. We discussed how the dispensaries operated, who paid for them and what they can tell us abou…

This week I spoke with Colin Thomas and Tim Beasley of the Bristol Radical History Group to discuss the history of state surveillance in their pamphlet 'State Snooping - Spooks, Cops and Double Agents'. From the reign of Elizabeth I right up until the present day, the British state has used spies, informants and double agents to infiltrate what it …

2020 marked the eightieth anniversary of the Bristol Blitz, which saw 77 Nazi air raids on the city, with six major raids taking place in the winter of 1940-41. I spoke with Eugene Byrne of the Bristol Post to discuss the origins of the Blitz and how Bristolians coped with being bombed. We also explored the legacy of the bombing, which killed 1,299…

Angela Carter was one of the most acclaimed British novelists of the post-war period. She spent the 1960s living in Clifton amidst a flourishing 'provincial bohemia' of folk clubs, artists and radical politics. I met with Dr. Stephen E. Hunt to discuss his work on Angela Carter and the counterculture in 1960s and 1970s Bristol and Bath, in which he…

On Thursday 3 April 1817, in the village of Almondsbury just outside of Bristol, a strangely dressed young woman began attracting the attention of local villagers. In the weeks and months that followed she became a figure of national renown: but was this lady 'Caraboo' really the exotic princess that she claimed to be? I spoke with author Catherine…

At the end of the eighteenth century, 'pneumatic' (gas) chemistry was at the forefront of scientific knowledge. In 1799 the remarkable physician Thomas Beddoes opened the Pneumatic Institute in Hotwells and set about finding a cure for tuberculosis using gasses isolated from air. I spoke with author and cultural historian Mike Jay to discuss the wo…

This week I spoke with Mark Steeds and Roger Ball to discuss their new book, 'From Wulfstan to Colston: Severing the Sinews of Slavery in Bristol.' Covering over a thousand years of history, the book charts Bristol's long involvement in trading enslaved human beings. We discussed the two titular characters: St. Wulfstan, who was responsible for end…

This week I met with Professor Madge Dresser to discuss the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963. The boycott against the Bristol Omnibus Company over its racist employment policy was the first black-led protest against racial discrimination in post-war Britain. We explored race relations in Bristol around the time of the boycott, and why its legacy continu…

A brief bonus podcast with some thoughts on the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston on Sunday 7 June 2020.By Tom Brothwell

This week I spoke with Pete Insole, Historic Environment Officer for Bristol City Council, to discuss the historical mapping tool ‘Know Your Place’. We also talked about the historic development of Bristol and about planning the future of the city.By Tom Brothwell

Arriving at the end of the First World War, the 1918 'Spanish' Flu was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, killing between 40 and 200 million people worldwide. I spoke with journalist and historian Eugene Byrne - we discussed official strategies to combat the spread of the flu, as well as its local impact on Bristol.…

This week I met with Mike Slater, West-Country Occult Historian, to discuss the history of witchcraft in the West Country. We spoke about the continuance of popular belief in magic, long after official witchcraft trials had ceased. We also explored 'witch scratching', the pernicious and long-lived idea that drawing a witch's blood would remove her …

By Tom Brothwell

By Tom Brothwell

As we approach December's election, the Bristol History Podcast asks: how did we get here? To this end I spoke with UWE Professor of History and Heritage Steve Poole about what elections in Bristol looked like some 300 years ago.By Tom Brothwell

History of the late medieval and early modern periods has tended to focus on a small number of people who have left a big dent on the historical record: kings and queens, statesmen and landowners. Most people could tell you something about Henry VIII's wives or his eating habits - but how much do we know about what life was like for the ordinary me…

This week I met with Joe McSorley of the Avon Wildlife Trust to discuss the natural history of the West Country - from the earliest existing records of animal and plant life in the area, through the ramblings of Victorian naturalists, to today's systematic collection of scientific data. We also charted changing popular attitudes towards the natural…

This week I met with Dr. John Reeks to discuss Bristol University and its historians. The university was founded in 1909 and dominates much of the landscape of the centre of the city, with almost 24,000 students enrolled in degree courses. We discussed the history of university and the work of some of the most illustrious historians produced by the…

Bristol was born as a trading hub, and for the best part of a millennium its identity has been bound up with its status as a centre for both national and international trade. I met with Dr Richard Stone, Teaching Fellow in Early Modern History at Bristol University, to discuss the history of Bristol's overseas trade, from its foundation to the pres…

This week I met with author and journalist Melissa Chemam to discuss her book 'Out of the Comfort Zone: From Bristol to Massive Attack.' Melissa looks to Bristol's social and political history as a way of understanding its artistic output. We talked about the culture that spawned the music of Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky, as well as the st…

This week I met with Dr. Keith McLoughlin of Bristol University to discuss the remarkable story of Concorde - the first supersonic passenger aircraft. We discussed the postwar origins of the project; difficulties with financing in the 60s and 70s; and why Concorde retains such a hold over the public imagination today, more than fifteen years on fro…

This week I met with Bristol-based author and artist Benjamin Dickson to discuss his graphic novel 'A New Jerusalem' - a moving and stark tale of a family struggling to come to terms with life following the end of the Second World War. We discussed (among other things) the bombing of Bristol during the war, post-traumatic stress disorder and the bi…

This week I met with Bristol Bears' Club Historian (and verified superfan) Mark Hoskins to talk all things Bristol Rugby. We discussed the evolution of the club from its origins in the late-Victorian era and its role in the community during the World Wars, through to the pioneering captaincy of John Blake in the 1950s and the club's eventual adapta…

This week I met with Dr. Jessica Moody of Bristol University to discuss the ways in which Bristol has publicly addressed its involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade. We touched on methods of commemoration (using Liverpool as a point of comparison)and explored some of the reasons behind Bristol's changing attitude towards her slaving past.…

This week I met with author, historian and one man Bristolian institution: Mike Manson. In a whistle-stop tour through his literary career we discussed the importance of local history, the differences between writing fiction and writing history, and Mike's exploration of some of the less well known parts of Bristol's history.…

Being Brunel is one of Bristol's newest and most innovative museums. An addition to the existing SS Great Britain site, it attempts to get behind the myth and into the mind of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the country's most famous engineers. I visited Being Brunel and spoke with Head of Collections Nicholas Booth about the idea behind the projec…

The English Civil War is often reduced to a stereotype of haughty Cavaliers and humourless Roundheads. Yet in reality it was was one of the bloodiest and most disruptive conflicts in our nation's history. I met with Dr. John Reeks of Bristol University to discuss the causes, course and consequences of the war from a Bristolian perspective.…

This week I met with acclaimed historian and historical fiction writer, Lucienne Boyce. We discussed the history of the women's suffrage movement in Bristol, the continuities between the 18th century and our present day, and to what degree historical fiction can contribute to historical understanding.…

As the fifth oldest zoo in the world, Bristol Zoological Gardens has been introducing Bristolians to wild animals since 1836. I met with Dr Andy Flack, Teaching Fellow in Modern History at Bristol University, to discuss the origins of the zoo, its role in civic identity and the extent to which our attitude towards animals has (and hasn't) changed o…

This week I met with author Jane Duffus, to discuss her new book 'The Women Who Built Bristol'. This work of collective biography tells the story of some 250 women connected with Bristol, ranging from the 12th century to the present day. We discuss the origins of the project, the history of the women's suffrage movement in Bristol and Jane gives a …

This week I met with Steve Poole, Professor of History at UWE to discuss his book 'Bristol from Below' (co-authored with Nicholas Rogers). We explore the life of ordinary Bristolians in the long 18th century, discussing - among other things - riots, radicalism, arson and sodomy.By Tom Brothwell