The Eastville Workhouse project was launched in 2012 after some members of Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) had studied an old ordnance survey map of Ashley Down and Eastville (1902). They noticed that the burial ground for the Barton Regis workhouse at 100 Fishponds Rd, Eastville, marked as 'disused' in 1902, made up part of present-day Rosemary Green just round the corner from where they lived. After two years of research, BRHG members had not only gathered significant evidence that […]
A woman before the courts in 1882 said that she preferred the gaol to Eastville workhouse as ‘in the latter she was three quarter starved and worked to death’ Before the end of the Second World War and the creation of the Welfare state and the National Health Service if you were poor and you got ill or you couldn’t find work there was only one choice for you or your family – the workhouse. The Poor law system that administered the work houses was deliberately designed to make the choice of the […]
Bristol Radical History group (BRHG) is making progress on the project to record and respect the paupers buried in unmarked ground behind the old Eastville workhouse (100 Fishponds Rd), now called Rosemary Green. A key marker of disrespect is burying people, seen as worthless in unmarked graves; their death and burial not worth marking. Despite the fact that Victorian Britain and its Empire was the ‘workshop of the world’ generating unprecedented wealth for the few, at its base was widespread […]
Planning meeting regarding Eastville Workhouse and remembering the paupers buried in Rosemary Green. Thursday 9th October 7.00pm-9.00pm. St Anne's Church, St Leonards Road, Greenbank, Bristol, BS5 6JN It has been over a month since we first met to discuss the 3,500 or so unmarked 'paupers' graves in Rosemary Green. Since then a number of people who were not at this original meeting have contacted Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) to register an interest, including some who have relatives […]
Public meeting St Anne's Church, St Leonards Road, Greenbank, Bristol, BS5 6JN Over the last two years local historians from Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) have been researching an old burial ground that lies on Rosemary Green (BS5 6LB) between Rosemary Lane and Greenbank View in Greenbank, East Bristol. It appears that upwards of 3,000 paupers from the Eastville Workhouse (originally 100 Fishponds Rd) were buried in unmarked graves on the site between 1855 and 1895. BRHG believe the […]
