Know your Bristol Stories Avonmouth and Shirehampton Avonmouth and Shirehampton in the First World War Wars linger long after they conclude, in family histories and archives, and in the shapes of the places in which we live. Look, ref lect, and perhaps also allow yourself to imagine, and you can start to see it clearly. Bristol was dramatically reshaped by twentieth century warfare. Some of this is obvious the ruined churches and the modern city centre provide dramatic testament to the air raids of 1940-41. Less immediately obvious a product of the war are the large housing estates built in the aftermath of the First World War. Ten thousand homes were built between Prime Minister David Lloyd-George’s pledge to build ‘homes for heroes’ in 1918, and the end of the 1920s. Such estates as Hillfields, Knowle, Shirehampton and Sea Mills redefined Bristol, and led to a massive relocation of its inhabitants. All of those families were touched by the war, at home or overseas. Our aim was to support Local Learning and its partners in Shirehampton and Avonmouth as they attempted to uncover traces of local private histories of the First World War. The search was made in national and local archives, but also through public events where we displayed what had already been learned, and asked people to contribute more that they might have. These brought us into collaboration with people living in the homes that now cover the Remount Depot, or in which the descendants of families who worked in Avonmouth’s mustard gas factory now live. A word about our funders ‘Know your Bristol Stories’ was funded by a grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, as part of the ‘Research for Community Heritage’ scheme designed to provide support for community projects supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund through its ‘All Our Stories’ programme. Related work continues as the AHRC funded ‘Know your Bristol on the Move’ project: https://knowyourbristol.blogs.ilrt.org/ This is history for the record, but these were people who lived in and shaped the city on whose streets we now walk. Residents contributed postcards , photographs and documents, and brought in horse-shoes, badges, and even a bayonet. They came along with stories. Exploring these experiences has involved augmenting substantially the formal record on the City Council’s Know Your Place community mapping resource. But just as important has been working with school children locally and the Bristol Old Vic to explore those just still-within-reach ‘lives beneath our feet.’ Know your Bristol Stories is a collaboration between University of Bristol researchers, Local Learning CIC, Horfield Organic Community Orchard, Bristol City Council, and The Quantock Hills AONB Service, as well as the University’s Centre for Public Engagement. For more information on public engagement initiatives at the University contact the team via http://www.bristol.ac.uk/public-engagement/, follow us on twitter @cpe_bristol, or Centre for Public Engagement University of Bristol, Senate House, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TH E [email protected] T +44 (0)117 331 8313 The ‘Know Your Place’ resource can be accessed at www.bristol.gov/knowyourplace. It was created by Peter Insole in Bristol City Council’s City Design Group in partnership with Andrew Ventham at the Council’s Corporate GIS team and part funded by English Heritage. Except when noted, all images were contributed by participants at our public events. The team would like to thank Nate Eisenstadt for helping with this booklet, and Zara Kwok at Dirty Design. Professor Robert Bickers, ‘Know your Bristol Stories’ co-ordinator Avonmouth and Shirehampton WWI Stories The Avonmouth area of Bristol played a vital role during the First World War and yet with the centenary commemorations of this conf lict fast approaching the understanding of this role amongst the community had been reduced to rumour and hearsay within just 100 years. The discovery of a plan of the Shirehampton Remount Depot at Bristol Record Office by Local Learning (www.locallearning.org.uk) provided the opportunity to unearth some of the area’s World War I stories. The Remount Depot was established in 1914 as part of the national effort to ensure an adequate supply of horses and mules for the war effort. Shirehampton was one of the largest of many depots distributed across the country. Through community events we collected stories from living relatives who had some connection to the remount depot. Perhaps a grandfather or great uncle was stationed at Shirehampton or in one case a local 98 year old’s earliest memories were of growing up in one of the army huts that had later been converted to temporary housing. Members of the public brought along horse shoes that they had found in their gardens and we were able to show them that this was probably because a stable or shoeing shed once stood where their house is now. One particularly attractive artefact brought along to an event was an embroidered Army Remount Service emblem that had been created by a relative while convalescing at the nearby auxiliary hospital during the war. Members of the community also undertook their own research, visiting local collections and the Imperial War Museum accompanied and assisted by a university researcher who helped to uncover information about the remount service. School pupils undertook their own geophysical survey of part of their school field and identified evidence that suggests that the remains of foundations of the remount depot’s veterinary station survive beneath their school. All these stories, including copies of letters that were sent from one soldier stationed at Shirehampton in 1916, were used by Avonmouth Primary School to create their own play. Working with Bristol Old Vic, this dramatic tour of the Remount Depot was performed to a local community audience on part of its former site. Through the project a shared understanding about the important WWI heritage of the area has developed and has contributed to WWI layers of information and stories on the web resource Know Your Place, bristol.gov.uk/knowyourplace The sharing of research skills by university staff during the project helped the community to understand the value of their stories as well as encourage further research in the future. Pete Insole, Co-director, Myers-Insole Local Learning CIC “ When the war was over we lived in Barrowhill and we were living in the huts that the soldiers themselves used… they called them bungalows. We had no bathroom we used to have to bath in a big aluminium tub in front of the fire, very comforting. ” Edith Hathaway, née Lane, born 1915 Mapping Histories The First World War beneath our feet There’s something about the British and the horse, even when it’s a war horse. And it’s not just the cosy story of Joey in Michael Morpurgo’s childrens’ novel, because we know the reality is that the majority of military horses sent to the battlefields of France and Belgium were either killed or sold for meat after hostilities ended. But ask in Shirehampton about horse-shoes being dug up in back gardens, and the horrors of the war are replaced by a fascination to recover the history of the many thousands of animals that were herded into their stables at the Shirehampton Remount Depot. The Shirehampton Remount Depot was one of three depots constructed immediately war was declared in 1914. Built to accommodate animals shipped into Avonmouth Docks from the United States and Canada, Spain and Argentina, the depot closed in October 1919 after seeing a staggering 347,045 horses and mules pass through its gates. The depot covered the fields surrounding Barrow Hill farm, went down to the railway line, and extended north-west to what is now Avonmouth CE Primary School. It is here that we found some of our most enthusiastic community historians. On a mercifully dry day – Shirehampton during the First World War was renowned for the unpleasant and slippery state of its roads after the horses had passed through on a wet day – the Know your Bristol Stories team took the school’s Year 6 pupils on a guided tour of familiar streets and gardens. But now they were asked to re-imagine Shirehampton as a giant farm where as many as 7,000 animals were kept at any one time. Later, and showing the fruits of successful collaborative preparatory sessions, we ran a community cartography workshop in which the children drew their own map of the Depot. The map was the centre-piece of the theatre programme for the school production of ‘Their Lives Beneath Our Feet’, a play that they produced with help from the Bristol Old Vic. The principal inspiration for our young historians was Charlie Day’s diary, written when he was stationed at Shirehampton. The same material was also on display at the Know your Bristol Stories community event held in Shirehampton Village Hall where many cups of tea were made and biscuits eaten, and we were rewarded with stories of the horses and the war, with rusty horse shoes, even a few more deadly reminders – bayonets and gas masks – of the unpleasantness of war. Far from those horrors, and across the city, the Horfield Organic Community Orchard is still many years short of its centenary. On the evidence of the Open Day events, shared by Know your Bristol Stories and the Heritage Lottery Fund, a centenary seems a certain objective of the orchard’s creators. Again, maps were turned to advantage with a comparison between the 1843 Tithe Commission map and the latest, detailed orchard map produced for the project. Again, much tea and, this time, cake, was consumed in the pleasantest and tranquil of corners in Bristol. Nick Nourse, Project Early Career Researcher “ The main object of the Depot was to retain Animals from 14 to 21 days, test with Mallein, get them as clean and as fit as possible, and then pass them to Reserve units for further training. ” Col. Carter, [War Diary] Shirehampton Remount Depot (National Archives: WO 95/5466) Stories from the War Avonmouth and Shirehampton The story of the Shirehampton remount depot tells us much about the First World War and about the history of technology. The sheer number – more than 300,000 – of horses and mules that passed through it reminds us of the huge part played by animals in the war. We often think of the early twentieth century in terms of motor cars, cinemas and the rush of the modern, but it was at this time that the use of horse power peaked in Britain. Armies depended on horses in the First World War, and indeed horses were still important in the Second World War. The horse-shoes that still turn up in Shirehampton gardens testify to that history. At Shirehampton Public Hall we were shown many traces of the war from photographs to a bayonet. Visitors recalled the memories of the war passed on to them growing up, and there was no shortage of volunteers to be recorded. Over (many) cups of tea, we explored how letters and photographs from the war trigger reflections on memories and stories communicated across generations, upon the presence of the past in our lives and the upon the significance of place. Hearing people’s stories was a powerful reminder of just how close the supposedly distant past often is. Working together with the local community demonstrated the great value of collaboration in gathering, preserving and making accessible memories and mementos, but also how enhanced knowledge and understanding of the past can emerge from such partnerships. In helping recover more fully the role of horses and mules in the First World War, the Shirehampton and Avonmouth project reminds us how we often focus too much on the novel in our understanding of the history of technology. As the importance of digitising sounds and populating websites in recovering the past in Know your Bristol Stories suggests, we live in worlds where technologies old and new cohabit, reinforcing our sense of the tangled links between then and now. James Thompson, Senior lecturer in Modern British History Strand leader “ Col. Sir Herbert M Jessel, Bart, Deputy Director of the Remount Department of the War Office, paid an official visit to Shirehampton on Tuesday and highly praised all concerned in the management of the camp. The Shirehampton Remount Depôt, which is one of the four largest in the country, had played an important part in supplying horses to the army overseas. ” Western Daily Press, 3 April 1919: 5 Map (1914) courtesy of Bristol Records Office, Source: BRO Building Plans Vol 64a f56.