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Kingswood

The Underground Men: A Personal View of the Kingswood Colliers

This article was written in Spring 1981 and published in Avon Past issue No 4 (the journal of the Avon Archaeological Council and the Avon Local History Association (ALHA). This article was very much...

Survivor of Ravensbruck: Stefania Ekner, nee Biegarczyk, 1921-2001

Family History research often leads to something entirely unexpected. In 2014, my first cousin Jack GREGORY was due to attain a milestone birthday. What to give a 90 year-old-man? The majority of us who...

Killed in a Coalpit – Lives of the Kingswood Colliers. JUST WHEN YOU THINK THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO ADD…………

At the “Book Launch” at Kingswood Heritage Museum on 29 November 2016 Mr Roger Curtis who was at the event, sent me this picture (above) believed to be at Hanham Pit, showing his grandfather,...

The Pillinger Family History in Four Volumes

How it all started for me! This is the history of the Pillinger Family that I began to unearth nearly 50 years ago when I stumbled across a gravestone in St Luke’s churchyard in...

A Victorian Girl

The Victorian Girl is the Cinderella story in reverse. Mary Britton, previously Leighton, was a dear old soul, who was “in Service’ in Downend from leaving school until her late marriage to Samuel Britton....

‘Non-affectionate’ memories of H.H. & S. Budgett

As told to me by the late Leslie Phillips, 1905-1995. Leslie said “I worked for H.H. & S. Budgett from October 1927 to May 1928. I was their first graduate entrant, having come straight...

Kingswood Index

Beware Family History! In the early stages of my research, nearly fifty years ago, long, long before computers, even before the majority of parish registers found their way into archives offices, when appointments had...

Monumental Inscriptions: Whitfield Tabernacle, Kingswood

The following names were inscribed on gravestones at Whitfield Tabernacle, Kingswood. As sent to me, provenance and date unknown. These are the known people whose gravestones are set to be relocated” THOMAS BRITTON 1893...

King Cholera in Bristol, 1832

Bristol was still reeling from the aftermath of the Reform Riots of 1831 with the condemned rioters in gaol awaiting their tragic fate, when a new peril appeared over the horizon: the Cholera Morbus,...

The Budgetts of Kingswood Hill

“The Budgetts”, originally written about forty years ago, was my first attempt at the story of a family and therefore I call it part of my “Juvenilia”. It arose out of a conversation with...