Bristol Story
Eugene Byrne and Simon Gurr
Having read it
★★★★☆
Pretty decent and full of plenty of information, although I would say, in its last half, as more recorded history was available, it got a bit heavy going. (The comic format and type style and size were not necessarily the right format for the content; a larger page size would have helped, or a more complementary visual format and layout that used a comic strip approach, but didn’t rely on it!)
Still, despite that, it was informative about how Bristol became Bristol!
A good passage
There are few written records and we mostly have to rely on what archaeologists can tell us after examining things found in the ground.
Hmmmm... Either late Roman or Early Sainsbury’s...
A second good passage
In Bristol, fullers were also known as ‘tuckers’. If your surname is Tucker, then it’s possible that some of your ancestors made a living from jumping up and down on cloth in a bag of wee. Isn’t that nice?
A third good passage
The cloth industry was still important, and Bristol merchants were now trading more widely, with Italy, the Middle East, Holland and Scandinavia. From the Canary Islands can wine and a fabulous new treat that everyone wanted – sugar. The wine trade with France, Spain and Portugal was still hugely important, when it wasn’t being interrupted by wars. A sweet wine known as sack, from Spain, first appeared in Bristol in the 1500s. It came from the area around Jerez in Spain, which Bristolians would pronounce as... Sherry!