Andrew Swift: Bristol turns 650

As Bristol celebrates its 650th year of being an independent county, Andrew Swift looks at the curious way in which the distant event took place…

In the past 50 years, redrawing the boundaries of England’s counties – and inventing new names for them – has become a regular occurrence. In 1974, Bristol lost its cherished county status when it became part of the county of Avon, only to regain it in 1996. Seen in the context of such changes, the 650th anniversary of Bristol’s elevation to county status in 1373 may not seem worth making that much of a fuss about. But that distant event was a total game-changer – and it came about in the most curious of ways.

As towns go, Bristol was relatively late on the scene. The first we hear of it is when some coins were minted in Brycg stowe – the place by the bridge – around 1010. Any market town could mint coins back then, and these coins are the first indication that, although small and only recently established, Brycg stowe was determined to make its mark.

It started off as a modest settlement on the north bank of the Avon, near its confluence with the River Frome. The Avon marked the county boundary, so, while Brycg stowe was in Gloucestershire, the bridge after which it was named crossed over into Somerset. As the town grew, some people decided they preferred living south of the river, so almost from the start the town straddled two counties.

In 1054, Brycg stowe was mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle; nine years later, the future King Harold used it as the base to launch a campaign against Wales. It was the Norman Conquest, though, that marked the beginning of its rise to prominence. It came under Norman control in 1068 and within a few years a motte and bailey castle had been built on its east side. Around 1120 the castle was rebuilt, extended and furnished with a monumental stone keep, making it one of the grandest fortresses in the land. With the town so well defended, it flourished as never before. Walls were built around it and the Benedictine priory of St James – now Bristol’s oldest building – was established to the north. The Abbey of St Augustine – now Bristol cathedral – followed a few years later, and in 1155 Bristow, as it was now called, received its first royal charter, making it a chartered borough.

This prodigious growth was down to its unique advantages as a port. Other harbours in the Bristol Channel, and along the south and west coasts, were prey to pirates and privateers – not to mention the French – who attacked ships, pillaged and burned, and carried away the townsfolk. Any hostile craft which managed to get as far up the Avon as Bristol, however, would, when the tide turned, have been trapped. It was the safest of safe havens, and ideally placed to trade not only with the continent, but also with Wales and Ireland – both of which the Normans, and later the Plantagenets, were keen to subdue.

Trade boomed, as Bristol cornered the market in the export of manufactured cloth and the import of wine. South of the river, Redcliffe grew rapidly as new wharves were built along the river. As Redcliffe lay in Somerset, however, it fell outside the jurisdiction of the civic authorities, and, while this suited the merchants on the south bank, it went down less well north of the river.

In the early 13th century, Bristol bridge was rebuilt, the harbour was enlarged by digging a massive trench to divert the Frome, and walls were built around Redcliffe. Growth seemed unstoppable; by the middle of the following century the only question was whether Redcliffe would ultimately eclipse the original settlement on the north bank. The rebuilding of St Mary Redcliffe as one of the grandest churches in the kingdom, which got underway around 1340, seemed to suggest the answer.

Lack of jurisdiction across the Avon wasn’t the only problem facing Bristol. Bristol’s castle was one of the most important in the country, and friction between town and castle had long been simmering. Things came to a head in the early 14th century, when high-handed tactics from the king’s officials prompted the townsfolk to build a high wall cutting the castle off from the town.

Bristol was now the greatest cloth-exporting town in England and the third largest settlement in the country, surpassed only by the ancient cities of London and York. It was, though, a town divided. If it was to capitalise on its economic success, it needed not only to resolve the issue of jurisdiction over its southern suburbs but free itself from interference by the castle. Autonomy was essential, and in 1373 the opportunity arose to claim it.

England had been fighting France, on and off, for 30 years, and the war was not going well. The ageing king, Edward III, was desperate for money to fund the campaign – so desperate that he tried to grab some of the revenue from Bristol’s borough courts. This was a direct attack on the city’s chartered privileges – and just what the burgesses of Bristol had been waiting for.

They made Edward an offer – give us autonomy and we’ll give you £400. It may not sound much today, but it was enough for Edward to declare that ‘the town of Bristol with its suburbs and precincts shall henceforth be separate from the counties of Gloucester and Somerset and be in all things exempt both by land and sea, and that it should be a county by itself, to be called the county of Bristol in perpetuity’. The charter was signed at Woodstock on 8 August 1373. All that was excluded from the deal was the castle, a royal possession which remained an island of Gloucestershire within the county of Bristol until its destruction in the 17th century.

The new county included not just the area within the town walls, but a good deal else besides – and crucially the districts south of the river. In recognition of the importance of Bristol’s maritime trade, it also included the Avon downstream from the town and the Bristol Channel as far out as Steep Holm and Flat Holm.

One benefit of this new-found autonomy was that Bristolians with business to transact at county courts no longer had to traipse to Gloucester (if they lived north of the river) or to Ilchester or Taunton (if they lived in Redcliffe). But the charter’s most important legacy was that Bristol was no longer divided, no longer beholden to the king’s officials in the castle.

To commemorate the event, the burgesses erected a High Cross where Bristol’s four principal thoroughfares – Corn Street, Broad Street, Wine Street and High Street – met. There it remained until the early 18th century when, deemed an obstruction, it was moved to College Green before being sold to Henry Hoare, who re-erected it at Stourhead where it stands to this day – not in Bristol, nor in Gloucestershire or Somerset, but in deepest Wiltshire.

One thing Edward III didn’t grant Bristol was city status. That had to wait until 1542, when, after Henry VIII had dissolved the Abbey of St Augustine, it became the cathedral of the newly-created Diocese of Bristol. But, however coveted city status may have been, it was the autonomy that came with county status over a century and a half earlier which really mattered, and which made possible so much of what was to follow.

Although it may seem, on the face of it, that a crumbling monument in a Wiltshire valley is the most tangible legacy of the charter signed at Woodstock 650 years ago, its importance goes far deeper. As calls for greater devolution of power from central government grow ever more strident, the burgesses of Bristol’s robust defence of their right to self determination still serves as an inspiration today.

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Featured image: St James Priory