Bristol
Bristol is a city and ceremonial county in South West England. It is located on the River Avon, and bordered by Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south with a short coastline on the Bristol Channel to the west. The county includes the majority of the Bristol conurbation, however, the urban area of the city extends into the neighbouring districts of South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset, and North Somerset.
The county is almost entirely urbanised and had an estimated population of in, making Bristol the most populous city in the region. For local government purposes the county is a unitary authority area governed by Bristol City Council. The council is a member of the West of England Combined Authority, which allows it to collaborate with South Gloucestershire Council and Bath and North East Somerset Council.
Iron Age hillforts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the rivers Frome and Avon. Bristol received a royal charter in 1155, but was historically divided between Gloucestershire and Somerset until it became a county corporate in 1373. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities, after London, in tax receipts. A major port, Bristol was a starting place for early voyages of exploration to the New World. At the height of the Bristol slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2,000 slave ships carried an estimated 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas. The Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock.
The city's modern economy is built on the creative media, electronics, and aerospace industries; the city-centre docks have been redeveloped as cultural and heritage centres. There are a variety of artistic and sporting organisations and venues, including the Royal West of England Academy, the Arnolfini, Ashton Gate and the Memorial Ground. The city has two universities: the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England. It is connected to the world by Bristol Airport; to the rest of the Great Britain via and mainline rail stations; by road by both the south-west to West Midlands M5 and the London to South Wales M4.
Toponymy
The name derives from the Old English Brycgstow, meaning "assembly place by the bridge" or simply "site of the bridge", presumably in reference to a crossing over the Avon. The final 'L' is an unetymological addition that first appears in the 12th century, which may be due to the unique "Terminal L" found in the Bristol dialect. An older form of the name survives as the surname Bristow, which is derived from the city.History
finds, including flint tools believed to be between 300,000 and 126,000years old made with the Levallois technique, indicate the presence of Neanderthals in the Shirehampton and St Annes areas of Bristol during the Middle Palaeolithic. Iron Age hill forts near the city are at Leigh Woods and Clifton Down, on the side of the Avon Gorge, and on Kings Weston Hill near Henbury. A Roman port, Portus Abonae – abbreviated to Abona in the Antonine Itinerary, existed at what is now Sea Mills ; another settlement was at the present-day Inns Court. Isolated Roman villas and small forts and settlements were also scattered throughout the area.Middle Ages
Bristol was founded by 1000; by about 1020, it was a trading centre with a mint producing silver pennies bearing its name. By 1067, Brycgstow was a well-fortified burh, and that year the townsmen beat back a raiding party from Ireland led by three of Harold Godwinson's sons. Under Norman rule, the town had one of the strongest castles in southern England. Bristol was the place of exile for Diarmait Mac Murchada, the Irish king of Leinster, after being overthrown. The Bristol merchants subsequently played a prominent role in funding Richard Strongbow de Clare and the Norman invasion of Ireland.File:Robert Ricart's map of Bristol.png|thumb|alt=Fifteenth-century pictorial map of Bristol, radiating from the town centre|Robert Ricart's map of Bristol, drawn when he became common clerk of the town in 1478. At the centre, it shows the High Cross, moved in 1764 to the Stourhead estate.
The port developed in the 11th century around the confluence of the Rivers Frome and Avon, adjacent to Bristol Bridge just outside the town walls. By the 12th century, there was an important Jewish community in Bristol which survived through to the late 13th century when all Jews were expelled from England. The stone bridge built in 1247 was replaced by the current bridge during the 1760s. The town incorporated neighbouring suburbs and became a county in 1373, the first town in England to be given this status. During this period, Bristol became a shipbuilding and manufacturing centre. By the 14th century, Bristol, York and Norwich were England's largest medieval towns after London. One-third to one-half of the population died in the Black Death of 1348–49, which checked population growth, and its population remained between 10,000 and 12,000 for most of the 15th and 16th centuries.
15th and 16th centuries
During the 15th century, Bristol was the second most important port in the country, trading with Ireland, Iceland and Gascony. It was the starting point for many voyages, including Robert Sturmy's unsuccessful attempt to break the Italian monopoly of Eastern Mediterranean trade. New exploration voyages were launched by Venetian John Cabot, who in 1497 made landfall in North America. A 1499 voyage, led by merchant William Weston of Bristol, was the first expedition commanded by an Englishman to North America. During the first decade of the 16th century, Bristol's merchants undertook a series of exploration voyages to North America and even founded a commercial organisation, 'The Company Adventurers to the New Found Land', to assist their endeavours. However, they seem to have lost interest in North America after 1509, having incurred great expenses and made little profit.During the 16th century, Bristol merchants concentrated on developing trade with Spain and its American colonies. This included the smuggling of prohibited goods, such as food and guns, to Iberia during the Anglo-Spanish War. Bristol's illicit trade grew enormously after 1558, becoming integral to its economy.
The original Diocese of Bristol was founded in 1542, when the former Abbey of St. Augustine became Bristol Cathedral. Bristol also gained city status that year.
17th and 18th centuries
In the 1640s, during the English Civil War, the city was occupied by Royalists, who built the Royal Fort House on the site of an earlier Parliamentarian stronghold.Fishermen from Bristol, who had fished the Grand Banks of Newfoundland since the 16th century, began settling Newfoundland permanently in larger numbers during the 17th century, establishing colonies at Bristol's Hope and Cuper's Cove. Growth of the city and trade came with the rise of England's American colonies in the 17th century. Bristol's location on the west side of Great Britain gave its ships an advantage in sailing to and from the New World, and the city's merchants made the most of it, with the city becoming one of the two leading outports in all of England by the middle of the 18th century. Bristol was the slave capital of England: In 1755, it had the largest number of slave traders in the country with 237, as against London's 147. It was a major supplier of slaves to South Carolina before 1750.
File:Bristol 1873.png|thumb|alt= An engraving showing at the top a sailing ship and paddle steamer in a harbour, with sheds and a church spire. On either side arched gateways, all above a scroll with the word "Bristol". Below a street scene showing pedestrians and a horse-drawn carriage outside a large ornate building with a colonnade and arched windows above. A grand staircase with two figures ascending and other figures on a balcony. A caption reading "Exterior, Colston Hall" and Staircase, Colston Hall". Below, two street scenes and a view of a large stone building with flying buttresses and a square tower, with the caption "Bristol cathedral". At the bottom views of a church interior, a cloister with a man mowing grass and archways with two men in conversation.|An 1873 engraving showing Colston Hall, the port and cathedral of Bristol
The 18th century saw an expansion of Bristol's population and its role in the Atlantic trade in Africans taken for slavery to the Americas. Bristol and later Liverpool became centres of the Triangular Trade. Manufactured goods were shipped to West Africa and exchanged for Africans; the enslaved captives were transported across the Atlantic to the Americas in the Middle Passage under brutal conditions. Plantation goods such as sugar, tobacco, rum, rice, cotton and a few slaves returned across the Atlantic to England. Some household slaves were baptised in the hope this would lead them to be freed. The Somersett Case of 1772 clarified that slavery was illegal in England. At the height of the Bristol slave trade from 1700 to 1807, more than 2,000 slave ships carried a conservatively estimated 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas.
In 1739, John Wesley founded the first Methodist chapel, the New Room, in Bristol. Wesley, along with his brother Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, preached to large congregations in Bristol and the neighbouring village of Kingswood, often in the open air.
Wesley published a pamphlet on slavery, titled Thoughts Upon Slavery, in 1774 and the Society of Friends began lobbying against slavery in Bristol in 1783. The city's scions remained nonetheless strongly anti-abolitionist. Thomas Clarkson came to Bristol to study the slave trade and gained access to the Society of Merchant Venturers records. One of his contacts was the owner of the Seven Stars public house, who boarded sailors Clarkson sought to meet. Through these sailors he was able to observe how slaver captains and first mates "plied and stupefied seamen with drink" to sign them up. Other informants included ship surgeons and seamen seeking redress. When William Wilberforce began his parliamentary abolition campaign on 12 May 1788, he recalled the history of the Irish slave trade from Bristol, which he provocatively claimed continued into the reign of Henry VII. Hannah More, originally from Bristol, and a good friend of both Wilberforce and Clarkson, published "Slavery, A Poem" in 1788, just as Wilberforce began his parliamentary campaign. His major speech on 2 April 1792 likewise described the Bristol slave trade specifically, and led to the arrest, trial and subsequent acquittal of a local slaver captain named Kimber.