Brooklea House, Brislington and the Budgett Link

First, as the March 2025 BAFHS journal amply illustrates with its article on Ridgeway Park Cemetery, it is easy for family historians and conservationists to overlap, which is why a couple of paragraphs in the latest newsletter from Jackie Friel, the Chair of the Friends of Brislington Brook, (info.fobb@gmail.com) was of extra interest to me.

Jackie writes: “Some of you may have come across Brooklea House Steps while playing in Nightingale Valley as children. Known locally as ‘the haunted steps’, they featured in many a child’s imagination.   A few may even remember Brooklea House, which was demolished in 1950 by the Bristol Corporation. Its name is perpetuated by the Brooklea Health Centre, built in 1954, close to the site of Brooklea House.”

Brooklea House, a large Victorian Villa, was built in 1867 in wooded grounds below what was then Wick Lane. It became the home of Farnham Budgett, 1846-1914, a wholesale grocer, his wife Sylvia Sarah and children, Emily, Farnham George, William James, Florence, Nellie and Theodore, a mixture of whom can be found at Brooklea House in the censuses of 1881 and 1891. The Budgetts had left by 1901 when Alderman Alfred John Smith, the founder of St Anne’s Methodist Chapel lived there. After his death in 1920 his daughter, Mrs Parry, continued in residence with her son, Alfred Parry who Jackie identifies as “a well-known historian of Brislington”, (I feel I should have heard of him – but I haven’t!) Any references to Mr Parry gratefully received!

After this another mystery reared its head.

“In 1943, Brooklea House was requisitioned for the United States First Army Group who were based in Brislington.”

In response to my query for information Jackie kindly pointed me in the direction of Bristol & Avon Archaeology Vol 16 page 99

The section: Brooklea Estate, Wick Road, ST 621 719. (J G P Erskine, AAU) reads:

“Documentary research of the area of a proposed educational development recorded that the now demolished Victorian villa on the site had been used as accommodation for the United States First Army Group in World War II. The Group was headed by General Omar C Bradley based at Clifton College for the Overlord operation. The majority of the troops were based at Whitby Road bakery, Brislington.”

In 1972, when we first came to Clayfield Road, I was told by the previous occupant that our house was built on the former U.S. Army camp. I subsequently hoped it would be the subject of my BA dissertation c1988-9 and enthusiastically wrote to the then US Secretary of State based on the story repeated in “Brislington Bugle” asking for verification.  I received a terse reply from his office denying knowledge of the USA-Brislington involvement in WW2 as portrayed. The “Whitby Road Bakery” especially in connection with D-Day is often relayed verbally.  I’m sure I saw a few GI brides in the Saint Luke’s parish register but I’ve never found first-hand information from anybody who remembers even meeting a GI in the area. Now, a bit late it seems, “the intelligence” was living at Brooklea. I will have to go back to my notes. (My eventual dissertation though it still involved Brislington was far less ambitious.)

On the positive side, wholesale grocery ran in the Budgett family. My first research effort, outside members of my immediate family, was “The Budgetts of Kingswood Hill”.  Samuel Budgett, a much-lauded Victorian as “the Successful Merchant”, is one of the few residents of Kingswood to make it into the Dictionary of National Biography. He was a self-made man, though his brother, Henry Hill Budgett is my favourite, because he stuck up for my Kingswood colliers, who were more generally slandered as the root of all evil.

I cannot suggest a precise relationship between Farnham and the rest of the numerous Budgetts of Bristol, Aldermen, Lord Mayors etc among them, but Farnham of Brislington’s father James, was born in Stoke Lane, Somerset, the same Mendip area which is the cradle of the rest of the clan.

For more info:

The Budgetts of Kingswood Hill

I apologise that this booklet is in pdf, but it was written a long time ago during my juvenilia period.