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HISTORY | REMEMBERED
This page, clockwise from left: the Dutch House pre-war; Castle Park today and the ruins of St Peter’s Church, preserved as a memorial to the many people who died in the Blitz
In 1940 the Dutch House was home to an up-market clothes shop, while neighbouring businesses on the High Street included other clothes shops, stores selling hats, shoes, books and even pianos, and a range of pubs, cafés and restaurants. This was where Bristol people came to spend their leisure time. Back in 1934 dramatist JB Priestley had visited the city on a nationwide tour to assess the condition of England, and had found the place prospering on the back of its popular industries. As he described it, ‘the smoke from a million gold flakes solidifies into a new Gothic Tower for the university; and the chocolate melts away only to leave behind it all the fine big shops down Park Street, the pleasant villas out at Clifton, and an occasional glass of Harvey’s Bristol Milk for nearly everybody.’ It was to the streets around the historic centre of the city, particularly the High Street, Wine Street and Union Street that people came to enjoy themselves, and those who didn’t fancy sherry could visit the new Milk Bar on the High Street, where the staff wore American-style uniforms and served those modern culinary wonders: milk shakes and donuts. Despite the loss of numerous buildings, the High Street itself survived the war. Not so Peter Street, which ran through what is now Castle Park, parallel to the Floating Harbour. All that is left today is the shell of St Peter’s Church, preserved as a memorial to the many people who died in the Bristol Blitz; we have to use our imagination to picture the ancient and impressive St Peter’s Hospital, which stood between the church and the water, and was for more than half a millennium one of the city’s most important buildings.
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Originally built in 1402 with three bays and gables, it had been extended in the 17th century and converted into a sugar refinery, at which point the Tudor building with its decorative façade became known as the Sugar House. At the time sugar refining was hazardous and caused numerous fires in wooden buildings, but this one survived, becoming the city’s mint and then a notorious poor house. Eventually, in the 20th century (by which time it had been standing for six hundred years), it became an administrative centre, housing the city’s Record Office and Registry Office. One can imagine the horror and consternation felt by Bristol people as they emerged on the morning of 25 November 1940 to find this timeless edifice – a building almost as old as the cathedral – reduced to ashes, and the church next door a shell. Not that damage was restricted to this district. Aerial bombardment is imprecise, and while this and subsequent raids failed to disrupt activity in the city docks – or, more importantly, to breach the Floating Harbour – there was barely a street in the city that did not suffer some damage. Park Street, the Cabot Circus of 1930s Bristol, was badly affected, as one can see from the number of new buildings; it never did quite recover its prewar glory. In our daily lives we all pass places where a bomb fell, destroying a home or business. Most of the gaps have been filled in, but here and there a vacant lot remains. The churches, meanwhile, serve as a permanent memorial: Temple Church with its leaning tower; the shrapnel-scarred walls of St Nicholas; the solitary tower of St Mary le Port; and St Peter’s, in its island of green. n NOVEMBER 2015
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THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE 71