CLIFTON AT PLAY
Cliftonians have always liked to party but where, when, how and where has changed drastically over the centuries. Michael Pascoe, our local historian, begins a new series looking at some of the ‘in’ places people have flocked to over the centuries.
Partying began in Clifton and Hotwells in the eighteenth century. More and more visitors came to the spa, not so much to drink the waters for the good of their health, but as part of a summer social season. At first there was little to do except to go for healthy excursions down the river in boats, accompanied by musicians, or to Long Ashton for strawberries. Special ‘double horses’ were also kept so that ladies could ride pillion behind a groom up the hill to the little hamlet of Clifton or further on to the Downs.
It was here that most of the entertainment centred, although much of it such as cock fighting and bare-knuckle prize fighting, was considered only fit for gentlemen to attend. However, both sexes could enjoy circuses, horse racing and cricket matches which were often staged.
Later two "large and elegant" Assembly Rooms were built. The Upper or Old Long Room stood on the site of the present Haberfield Almshouses while the Lower or New Long Room stood opposite. The New Long Room measured 80 feet long by 34 feet wide and the beautiful ceiling was 25 feet high. It survived as part of a school until 40 years ago. The subscription to these rooms was one guinea (£1.05) or for merely "walking in the Rooms and reading the papers 5 shillings" (25p). The Rooms offered all kinds of delights, especially balls, concerts, tumblers and conjurors, plays and public breakfasts twice a week followed by cotillions and country dances "for which every person pays 1s 6d" (about 7p). The rules of the Bristol Hotwells decreed that on ball nights gentlemen should not wear swords and spurs (no doubt a relief to ladies wearing kid shoes) and the whole entertainment should finish at 11.00pm "in view of the health of the company".
GOING OUT
Going to Bristol's first theatre 250 years ago was not like going to the Hippodrome today.
The theatre stood on what is now Jacobs Wells road and was very, very small. To get to it you had to cross Brandon Hill (no street lighting in those days) and you were likely to be mugged by footpads. The theatre was built just outside the city limits in what was then Gloucestershire because in those days Bristol City Council didn't like actors and would arrest them.
Once you got to the theatre you might not get a seat because all the richer people had sent their servants on ahead to bag a place. If you couldn't get in you could go to the hillside behind the theatre and still watch the actors. Because there was no backstage area an actor who went off stage on one side but who had to re-enter on the other side had to run across the hill and you could cheer him or hiss him.
If you did get a seat there was a hole in the side wall to the pub next door and you could shout your order for drinks and be served through it even when the play was on.
The theatre was very small - so small that an actor waving his sword cut through a rope holding a ring of candles which fell down over him so that he couldn't move his arms and had to be rescued by the audience.
The theatre lasted for several years more after the opening of the Theatre Royal in King street in 1766. When it finally closed the only people who were likely to have been disappointed were the footpads left without anyone to rob.
COWS ON THE CARPET
Two hundred years ago doctors didn't have such good medicines. One Clifton doctor, Dr Thomas Beddoes, thought that he had found a cure for tuberculosis, a disease of the lungs, which was very common until about 50 years ago. He had a clinic first in Hope Square and then in Dowry Square and he lived in Rodney Place. His idea was that cows' breath would cure the sick. He used to try to persuade landlords and landladies who were letting rooms to sick visitors to the Hotwells to have cows in their bedrooms breathing on the sick patients. The owners of these lodgings were naturally not very happy about this and his experiments were not successful.
Today we remember Dr Beddoes because he employed a 19 year old Cornishman, Humphry Davy, as his assistant. Davy later went on to become a great scientist and invented a safety lamp for miners. While he was at Clifton Davy experimented with nitrous oxide or laughing gas which became the basis for the anaesthetics used in today's operations.
THE GHOST ON THE DOWNS
If you were crossing the Downs on a dark night 200 years ago you were going into bandit country. There were no street lights in those days and on a moonless night the Downs were full of thieves and robbers, footpads and highwaymen waiting to rob helpless travellers. Not many of these thieves were ever caught but when they were they were hanged on a gallows at the top of Pembroke Road which was then called Gallows Acre Lane. Their bodies were covered in tar and left hanging from the gallows in a cage as a warning to others.
One of the worst footpads who was finally caught was a Welshman, Jenkin Protheroe. Many stories are told about him. He was said to be a dwarf with long, powerful arms, a twisted body and a hideous face. Some said that he would lie down groaning and when a kindly traveller went to help him he would catch him by the throat and rob him. Others claimed that he used to beg for coins and looked so frightening they were afraid to refuse. People were so terrified of Jenkin that even after he was dead they swore that his ghost climbed down from the gallows at nightfall and haunted the Downs. In the end the his body was taken down and buried. His ghost was then no longer seen and the gallows was never used again in Clifton.
CLIFTON’S ARMLESS ARTIST