C O N T E X T 1 7 1 : M A R C H 2 0 2 2 43 Sources The Buildings of England Gloucestershire 1:The Cotswolds, DavidVerey and Alan Brooks. Peter Malpass and William Evans (2020) ‘Bishop Monk and the Horfield Question: another view’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 138. www.visionofbritain. org.uk/unit/10379544/ cube/HOUSES Anthea Jones was head of history and director of studies at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Now retired, she is the author of several books on Gloucestershire history, most recently Johannes Kip: the Gloucestershire engravings. Monk Road (left) and Shadwell Road (right) were each laid out on a trust’s land. Monk Road, in the north of Horfield, accommodated modestly affluent occupiers; the narrower Shadwell Road in the south has a more crowded layout. (Photos: Peter Malpass) The former banqueting hall had an ‘antique carved oak screen, dated 1617’. The surveyor’s note here adds to the description of the screen in The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire, ‘mostly nineteenth century but presumably incorporates much old material’. The gardens and grounds were briefly described and the shrubs valued at £50. There were two motor garages, a coach house for four coaches and another for one, and good stables. ‘The house is heated nearly throughout with water radiators supplied from boiler in cellar & lighted by acetylene gas.’ Thirteen acres (5.2 ha) were valued with the house.The total was £9,450, of which the buildings were £8,500 and the site £750; the timber was valued at £150. Such an example helps to establish a scale of values. A different type of enquiry can be illustrated from the survey of a parish on the northern border of Bristol, where development had started in the mid-19th century. Horfield ancient parish was in Gloucestershire but the manor was an endowment of the Bishopric of Bristol (created 1542).The southern part of the parish was made an ecclesiastical district of St Michael and All Angels, Bishopston; it was taken into the City of Bristol in 1897 and the rest of the parish in 1904. As a result, the 1909 records are held by Bristol Archives (except for the field books). To date, the details of 1,736 Horfield properties have been transcribed, some properties include several houses. When James Monk became bishop of Gloucester and Bristol in 1836, he set about using the Horfield endowment to create a fund for churches in the Bristol area. In 1841 he sold a substantial landholding to Anthony Mervin Reeve Storey, later Story-Maskelyne, but housing development started with his son. In 1852 Monk promoted enfranchisement of the copyholders; their conversion to freeholders was a stimulus to building development. He set up a trust to manage the bishopric’s land. The Shadwell family, holding the lease of the manor, was another significant landholder; a family trust was created in 1777 to manage this property. The 1909 survey reveals that nearly half the houses were leased by one or other of the trusts. The Rev Henry Richards, the rector of the ancient Horfield parish church, was also a substantial landowner. Bishop Monk died in 1856. It was Bishop William Thomson who created the district of Bishopston as soon as St Michael and All Angels, built by Richards, was dedicated in 1862. A small agricultural parish, 1,299 acres (525.7 ha) in 1901, Horfield’s population in 1801 was only 119. In the 1841 census there were 141 houses. The 1843 tithe map shows that a few houses had been built along the southern end of the Gloucester Road, which led from Bristol northwards and bisected the parish. By 1901 the population had increased to 13,975, by which time Gloucester Road was substantially built up; 529 houses were numbered, 258 being ‘house and shop’. Values ranged from £273 to £3,564, with the majority being over £500. The survey shows the relative social standing of Horfield’s new houses. The two trusts and private owners were willing to sell land to builders, and nearly one in five houses was owner occupied. Egerton Road had been laid out quite soon after the copyholders’ enfranchisement, leading westward from the Gloucester road. It was bishopric land. By 1909, of 120 numbered properties, and one divided into two, 36 were owner-occupied. Valuations varied between £368 and £475, with a few smaller properties and one larger one, £975. Three-storey, semidetached houses survive in the road which led almost directly to the new Bishopston church. At the west end of the road was St Bonaventure’s Friary church, value £12,540. The Horfield developments were occupied by a relatively affluent group of people as houses in Monk Road and Shadwell Road illustrate. The only poor neighbourhood was in Golden Hill; 42 houses had been numbered, and with two exceptions they were valued between £105 and £150. These were much more like the dense housing in south Gloucester. Georges and Co’s Bristol Brewery owned a house and an off-licence here, now the Gloucester Old Spot.
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