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Kingswood

Kingswood Park Bandstand

The Fantastical Kingswood Park: Then and Now

I cannot say that a visit to Kingswood Park is my first memory, but one Sunday, 9 May 1943 would easily make the top five.  I was just over a month short of my...
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St George, Hanham Abbots

“St George, Hanham Abbots”, “Pearsall of Willsbridge” and other stories. (My birthday week, June 2024, Part 2)

After an afternoon spent in the sunny gardens, musing on the misadventures of Francis Creswicke, it was an unexpected bonus to find that St George, Hanham Abbots, which is attached to Hanham Court, was...
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Entrance to Hanham Court

Francis Creswicke, an old friend: visiting Hanham Court Gardens Open Day, 9 June 2024.

When I was a stripling of about 40, I first came across Francis Creswicke aged eighty-nine on a gravestone at Bitton, my paternal home parish.[1] Now I am rapidly catching up with him, though...
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Colin Pillinger and DP Lindegaard

Colin Pillinger – The ‘rock fan’ who set his sights on Mars

9 May 1943, something was up, my cousin Joyce Comley arrived “to mind me”. She was sixteen and very grand. Children then were supposed to be “seen and not heard” which didn’t suit me...
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Coronation day, 1953

Tuesday June 2nd, 1953, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. I was 16, pleased to get the day off school, [five years of misery], and shortly due to start work at J.S. Fry &...
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Zahringer’s of Kingswood

Zahringer’s of Kingswood

This is old news, but I’m sad to see that Zahringer’s in Kingswood closed in 2022. When I lived in Kingswood from 1937-1966, Mum and Dad always took our clocks and watches there to...
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My Booklets for Sale – Proceeds to Charity

To those, like me, who prefer to read from a hard copy, I still have a few of my booklets from the days when I photocopied and bound them for interested parties. They are...
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A Party of Barnardo Girls ready for embarkation in Liverpool, 1909

‘No Place like Home’  –  Clements & Hodgetts: a Family Story

Chapter 11 of my book, ‘Killed in a Coalpit’, about the lives of the Kingswood district colliers is entitled ‘A Young Hero – Edward Albert Powell’, who was known as Ted. At the age...
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Coal miner with miners candlestick

Killed in a Coalpit – revisited

  I was recently contacted by Andrew Plaster, a fellow member of Bristol & Avon FHS who, via the Facebook Group (Bitton, Hanham, Longwell Green & Oldland Memories, (administered by Julie Johns) discovered a...
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Fireside chatter: Are there still coal men?

We had a coal fire at home at 33 Victoria Park, Kingswood. (I was born in 1937, so I’m thinking of about 1945 onwards.) Dad had already left for work at the Gas Company...
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