This report was originally distributed to members of the Bristol Record Society as a .docx email attachment in September 2022
1 After the success of the Bristol Record Society’s (BRS) Annual General Meeting in October 2021 which was a “blended event”, with some members attending in person at Bristol Archives and others attending virtually by means of Zoom, the Council is looking forward to a similar event this year on 19 October at Bristol Archives at 5.30pm.
2 The Council met twice during this period and in September 2022 was made up of the following members: Jonathan Barry (General Editor), Richard Coates, Allie Dillon (City Archivist), Sophie Evans (Heritage Development Librarian, Bristol City Council), Jonathan Harlow, Evan Jones (General Editor for Digital Publication), Roger Leech (General Editor), Peter Malpass, Benjamin Pohl, Steve Poole, John Reeks, Richard Stone (Treasurer), Kathleen Thompson (Secretary).
3 It was with great regret that the Council accepted the resignation of Professor Peter Fleming as Council member in December 2021. Peter was formerly a General Editor and made an important contribution to the BRS and to the history of the city. The Council unanimously agreed to award a life membership to Professor Fleming and has dedicated a digital version of Libelle of Englyshe Polycye that appears on the Society’s website to him.
4 Dr Benjamin Pohl, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History in the University of Bristol joined the Council in December 2021. Dr Pohl is a specialist in Norman and Anglo-Norman history and historiography, with a special interest in the history of the book, historical writing and cultural memory.
5 In April 2022 Dr Jonathan Harlow stood down as Treasurer and was succeeded by Dr Richard Stone. Dr Harlow has given many years’ service in this role and also for a period as Secretary, and BRS owes him a great debt of gratitude for all his work.
6 Professor Steve Poole of UWE joined the Council in May 2022. Professor Poole is Director of the Regional History Centre at UWE and a specialist in the history of the Bristol and Somerset region as well as, more broadly, in eighteenth and early nineteenth century popular protest, political movements, criminality and visual culture.
7 Sophie Evans, Heritage Development Librarian, Bristol City Council joined the Council in May 2022 in succession to Mrs Jane Bradley, Local Studies Librarian.
Publications
8 The 2021 publication (volume 74) Atlantic Venture Accounts of Eighteenth Century Bristol, edited by Alison Brown and Jonathan Harlow and a supplementary volume 74A featuring the journal of the Lloyd voyage with Pocock’s illustrations appeared in June 2022. This was the first volume supplied to members as a PDF. In addition, 47 members chose to have a paperback version of either vol. 74 or 74a or both.
9 The 2022 publication (volume 75) is:
The Minute Books of the Bristol Library Society, 1772-1801 edited by Max Skjönsberg and Mark Towsey
10 E-publication on the BRS website is now a major part of the Society’s programme and some works (Occasional Digital Publications) appear only in this format. In total since the last AGM approximately 12,400 pages have been digitized at a cost of about £1930.
11 All the older BRS volumes have now been professionally digitized, including two occasional publications from the 1980s: David Large’s Radicalism in Bristol in the nineteenth century and Joseph Bettey’s Church and community in Bristol during the sixteenth century. All the Society’s volumes items (other than the recent ones on embargo) are now on archive.org, which will give the Society a better sense of which volumes get the most ‘individual user’ views.
12 The following digitised works also have been made available:
Joseph Bettey, Bristol Observed: visitors impressions of the city from Domesday to the Blitz (Bristol: Redcliffe Press, 1986).
Bristol Committee of the British Association, Bristol and its Environs: Historical, Descriptive and Scientific (London: Houlston and Sons, 1875).
This is a particularly old and rare volume and was therefore digitised in colour and at higher resolution (289MB pdf). The Council acknowledges with thanks Jonathan Harlow’s donation of the printed copy used in digitisation.
Laurence Cowen, Greater Bristol by Lesser Columbus (Bristol, 1893).
A humorous guide to Bristol that nevertheless contains a lot of valuable social and economic history based on a journalist’s observations of factories he visited while researching Bristol’s main industries.
John Latimer, The Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century (concluded), 1887-1900 (Bristol: William George’s Sons, 1902).
Patrick McGrath, ‘Merchant shipping in the seventeenth century: the evidence of the Bristol deposition books, part I’, Mariner’s Mirror, 40 (1954), 282-93.
Patrick McGrath, ‘Merchant shipping in the seventeenth century: the evidence of the Bristol deposition books, part II’, Mariner’s Mirror, 41 (1955), 23-37.
C. M. MacInnes, Bristol at War (London: Museum Press, 1962).
William Matthews, Matthews’s New History of Bristol or Complete Guide and Bristol Directory for the year 1793-4 (Bristol, 1793, repr. 1898).
George Müller, Autobiography of George Müller, compiled by G. Fred Bergin (Bristol: the Bible and Tract Warehouse, Centenary Memorial edition, 1905).
W.G. Neale, At the Port of Bristol, 2 vols, Bristol: Port of Bristol Authority, 1968-70. [Vol. I Members and Problems 1848-1899, Vol. 2 The Turn of the Tide, 1900-1914.]
W. G. Neale, The Tides of War and the Port of Bristol, 1914-1918, Bristol: Port of Bristol Authority, 1976.
J. F. Nicholls, The Remarkable Life, Adventures and Discoveries of Sebastian Cabot of Bristol, the Founder of Great Britain’s Maritime Power, Discovery of America, and its First Colonizer (London: Sampson, Low, Son and Marston, 1869).
A historiographically significant work that represents the last gasp attempt to defend Sebastian’s reputation as the ‘discoverer’ (rather than his father, John), in the face mounting documentary evidence to the contrary.
J. F. Nicholls and John Taylor, Bristol Past and Present, (vo1 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, Bristol: J. R. Arrowsmith, 1881-2).
Previously only vol. III of Bristol Past and Present (Civil and Modern History) was available on line in a low resolution scan dating from 2009. All three volumes of this classic nineteenth-century history have now been e-published at a resolution forty times higher than the 2009 version, which has enabled better reproduction of the illustrations.
Rose R. Pocock, Sketches of Bristol in the Olden Time (Bristol: G. Davey, 1846).
A very rare ‘poster book’ non-destructively digitised by the University of Bristol Library Special Collections where it has been deposited.
J[ohn] W[illiams] Damer Power, Bristol Privateers and Ships of War (Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1930).
A rare item which had a print run of 100 and remains still a key work on the subject.
Edward Scott and Alfred E. Hudd (eds), “The Cabot Roll”. The Customs Roll of the Port of Bristol, AD. 1496 to 1499 (Bristol: William George’s Sons, 1897).
George F. Stone and Charles Wells (eds.), Bristol and the Great War 1914-1919 (Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1920).
The official civic history of the war
George Warner (ed.), The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: a poem on the use of sea power (Oxford University Press, 1926). As mentioned in paragraph 2 above.
James Walter White, The Flora of Bristol: being an account of all the flowering plants, ferns, and their allies that have at any time been found in the district of the Bristol coal-fields (Bristol: Wright, 1912).
Environmental history is an expanding discipline and further works on the subject are likely to be digitised.
H. J. Wilkins (ed.), The Church Register (A.D. 1559-1713) of the Ancient Parish of Westbury on Trym (Westbury and Bristol Records, III) (Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1912).
Produced as part of a series that was something of a precursor to the Bristol Record Society.
13 The Council acknowledges with thanks the generous gift of Mrs Peggy Stembridge to cover costs of digitisation activity and her return for resale of several out-of-print volumes of the Society’s publications.
14 The Council again acknowledges with thanks the contribution made by Bristol Archives to the Society’s work. Our AGM is held at the Archives, our book stock is stored there and all the Archives staff publicise the work of the Society. We are particularly grateful to the City Archivist, Allie Dillon, who continues to be an active member of the Council; Sarah Taylor, who provides support in distributing our volumes, and Anne Lovejoy, who supports our annual meetings.
15 The Council also wishes to place on record the Society’s thanks to John Roost and the team at 4Word. Not only do they produce our volumes to a high standard, but they have supported us admirably in this year of transition to e-publishing.
Council, Bristol Record Society.
September 2022
Bristol Record Society 