My Bristol favourites: Madge Dresser

Dr Madge Dresser is an associate professor in social and cultural British history at UWE. Recent projects include co-editing the book Slavery and the British Country House for English Heritage and appearing on various BBC broadcasts on slavery and black history. Madge is currently editing and co-writing Women and the City: Bristol 1400-2000 (Redcliffe Press). Future plans include finishing a project on Anglo-American slavery networks, and beginning a project on the oral history of Somalis in contemporary Britain.

Here are Madge’s top-five Bristol favourites:

Central Library
“Why do I love the Central Library? Let me count the ways. Its cafe offers the best sandwiches in town, its children’s library has a fantasy ship designed with imagination and flair and its marble staircase and entrance hall make you feel you are somewhere that matters. But it’s the upstairs that has most won my heart. The main reading room with its high ceilings and wooden desks still offers a rare atmosphere of repose and occasion yet it is a supremely democratic space, open to everyone. Over the years I’ve been admitted to the inner sanctum of the Old Library – a room which contains a treasure trove of old books and newspapers and the magnificent wooden carved fireplace by the genius craftsman Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721). It’s researcher heaven. The importance of the sources held in the library are as under-rated as its overworked and dedicated staff. Special caresses should be lavished on Dawn Dyer, a librarian whose knowledge and passion qualify her as a national treasure.”

Eastville Park
“There’s a heron on the lake and you can follow the Frome all the way to Snuff Mills (below) from Stapleton Road, passing by Wickham Court where Oliver Cromwell and Fairfax were reputed to have met. On the Eastville side, people play football and cricket and it’s a site for and music concerts, Asian festivals and people who like to fish. There are also the remains of a 30s lido which if there were any justice in the world would be restored for public use. I love to walk from Fishponds to Stapleton Road and drink in the green.”

Royal Fort
“When I was a film student I scripted a fantasy shot in this eighteenth-century confection of a building. The film featured a living male statue painted gold but it was the interior which was the star of the show. Its magnificently delicate plasterwork – all flying cranes and extravagant foliage – grace the ceiling and the walls, and the gilded railings of its staircase shout ‘Rococco’ in the most genteel way. Now part of the music department of Bristol University, it’s set in a lovely landscaped park where I later used to trundle my son in his pushchair. I subsequently found its original owner was the merchant and banker Thomas Tyndall who had investments in the slave trade and whose family were slave agents in Jamaica. Georgian elegance juxtaposed with brutal beginnings. How intriguing is that?”

John Wesley’s New Rooms
“Next time you are going to M&S for a sarnie, go next door to John Wesley’s New Room. Wesley, who founded the Methodist movement when a Church of England divine, rode 100,000 miles on horseback evangelising the poor when most clerics thought them beneath contempt. You can see his statue in the forecourt. An eloquent speaker whom women adored, he was a man of extraordinary contradictions – at once Tory and radical. He was into the latest health regimes, continuous introspection, anti-slavery and of course salvation. His less-conflicted brother Charles wrote 6000 hymns for the cause. You can feel their presence in the beautiful simplicity of the chapel and especially in the upstairs study where he spent so much of his time in Bristol. Lots of archives there too which the public can access. They sometimes do coffee as well.”

St John the Baptist Church
“St John’s Church is set in the city wall just at the end of Broad Street. First built in the 14th century, it’s redundant now, but occasionally open to visitors thanks to The Churches Conservation Trust and well worth a visit for its gloomy atmospherics. Just outside the city wall was Jewrie Lane; the site of the city’s first medieval Jewish ghetto (before all Jews were expelled from England in 1290). You can walk along Leonard Lane which follows the path of the old city wall and get some feel for how cramped, dark and dirty medieval Bristol must have been.”