page_title: History of Bristol
section_title: 18th and 19th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: History of Bristol / 18th and 19th centuries
caption_attribution_description: English: View of Bristol Bridge across the harbour from Welsh Back. Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in March 2003 and released to the public domain.
context_page_description: Bristol is a city with a population of nearly half a million people in south west England, situated between Somerset and Gloucestershire on the tidal River Avon. It has been among the country's largest and most economically and culturally important cities for eight centuries. The Bristol area has been settled since the Stone Age and there is evidence of Roman occupation. A mint was established in the Saxon burgh of Brycgstow by the 10th century and the town rose to prominence in the Norman era, gaining a charter and county status in 1373. The change in the form of the name 'Bristol' is due to the local pronunciation of 'ow' as 'ol'.
  Maritime connections to Wales, Ireland, Iceland, western France, Spain and Portugal brought a steady increase in trade in wool, fish, wine and grain during the Middle Ages. Bristol became a city in 1542 and trade across the Atlantic developed. The city was captured by Royalist troops and then recaptured for Parliament during the English Civil War. During the 17th and 18th centuries the transatlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution brought further prosperity. Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol, supported the American Revolution and free trade.
context_section_description: The Bristol Corporation of the Poor was established at the end of the 17th century and a workhouse, to provide work for the poor and shelter for those needing charity, was established, adjacent to the Bridewell. John Wesley founded the very first Methodist Chapel, The New Room in Broadmead in 1739, which is still in use in the 21st century. Wesley had come to Bristol at the invitation of George Whitfield. He preached in the open air to miners and brickworkers in Kingswood and Hanham.
  Kingswood is the site of a recent archaeological excavation 2014) which uncovered the diversity of artisans living in the area at the time.
  Bristol Bridge, the only way of crossing the river without using a ferry, was rebuilt between 1764 and 1768. The earlier medieval bridge was too narrow and congested to cope with the amount of traffic that needed to use it. A toll was charged to pay for the works, and when, in 1793, the toll was extended for a further period of time the Bristol Bridge Riot ensued. 11 people were killed and 45 injured, making it one of the worst riots of the 18th century.
  Competition from Liverpool from 1760, the disruption of maritime commerce through war with France (1793) and the abolition of the slave trade (1807) contributed to the city's failure to keep pace with the newer manufacturing centres of the North and Midlands.  The cotton industry failed to develop in the city; sugar, brass and glass production went into decline. Abraham Darby left Bristol for Coalbrookdale when his advanced ideas for iron production received no backing from local investors.  Buchanan and Cossons cite  "a certain complacency and inertia [from the prominent mercantile families] which was a serious handicap in the adjustment to new conditions in the Industrial Revolution period."
  The long passage up the heavily tidal Avon Gorge, which had made the port highly secure during the Middle Ages, had become a liability which the construction of a new "Floating Harbour" (designed by William Jessop) in 1804–09 failed to overcome. Nevertheless, Bristol's population (61,000 in 1801) grew fivefold during the 19th century, supported by growing commerce. It was particularly associated with the leading engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the Great Western Railway between Bristol and London, two pioneering Bristol-built steamships, the SS Great Western and the SS Great Britain, and the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
  The new middle class, led by those who agitated against the slave trade, in the city began to engage in charitable works. Notable were Mary Carpenter, who founded ragged schools and reformatories, and George Müller who founded an orphanage in 1836. Badminton School was started in Badminton House, Clifton in 1858 and Clifton College was established in 1862. University College, the predecessor of the University of Bristol, was founded in 1876 and the former Merchant Venturers Navigation School became the Merchant Venturers College in 1894. This later formed the nucleus of Bristol Polytechnic, which in turn became the University of the West of England.
  The Bristol Riots of 1831 took place after the House of Lords rejected the second Reform Bill.  Local magistrate Sir Charles Wetherall, a strong opponent of the Bill, visited Bristol to open the new Assize Courts and an angry mob chased him to the Mansion House in Queen Square.  The Reform Act was passed in 1832 and the city boundaries were expanded for the first time since 1373 to include "Clifton, the parishes of St. James, St. Paul, St. Philip, and parts of the parishes of Bedminster and Westbury". The parliamentary constituencies in the city were revised in 1885 when the original Bristol (UK Parliament constituency) was split into four.
  Bristol lies on one of the UK's lesser coalfields, and from the 17th century collieries opened in Bristol, and what is now North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. Though these prompted the construction of the Somerset Coal Canal, and the formation of the Bristol Miners' Association, it was difficult to make mining profitable, and the mines closed after n
caption: Bristol Bridge seen across the Harbour
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTD", "Image Model": "C3100Z,C3020Z", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "v374-74", "Image DateTime": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "284", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4084", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5070", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/650", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "1", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "33/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "886", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}