Bristol History Podcast

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 of her extraordinary achievements.

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 Stone gives strong indications that some Bristol merch...

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 festival headline slots are still dominated by...

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 daughters who bring love and laughter to him eve...

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 is well documented, but have you heard of the s...

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 used to play at the Weekenders women’s acoust...

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, as well as reflections from Jewish people li...

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 - including of course Sabrina - her associated goddess....

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 (mostly young couples) who found a direct solution...

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, infrastructural part of communities all over G...

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, uncovers the hidden histories of communities...

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 Bristol-based artist Helen Wilson Roe is the fi...

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 Pinckney. Some have just picked up a board for the f...

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 do you feel about your new city and what kind...

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 15th century monk named Thomas Rowley. We discussed t...

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,

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 first from the slave trade and later from the labour...

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 about modern day healthcare.

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 perceives to be dissident organisations. We discus...

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 people, injured over 3,000 and permanently reshap...

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 takes Carter's life and work as a starting point...

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 Johnson to discuss Princess Caraboo and to try an...

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 work of the Institute and its legacy.