Peter Cullimore has been in touch with us about a forthcoming book entitled ‘Saints, Crooks and Slavers: History of a Bristol House and its People’

Here is his story……..

As you probably know, the history programme ‘A House Through Time’ returns to BBC2 this year for a new series, this time in Bristol. Imagine your Georgian home in Montpelier is shortlisted, but eventually pipped at the post, in the selection process. You then do further detailed research and discover a lot more amazing stories about its past residents.

What next? You write a book about the experience, of course! All this has happened to my wife Sue and me. Our book, entitled ‘Saints, Crooks and Slavers: History of a Bristol House and its People’, is being self published with the help of a not-for-profit local publisher, Bristol Books. We think it’s the first to combine guidance for the reader on how to research their own house history with great case studies from a real example.

We hope you’ll spread the word among your members, in advance of publication this May or June (date not yet fixed). We would love to share with other history enthusiasts the stories of fascinating, but unknown, characters who’ve occupied our house in the past. (So far we’ve lived here, at 60 Fairfield Road, for 33 years.)

These people include: a French aristocrat whose parents were guillotined in the 1789 Revolution; a Quaker businessman and philanthropist, with slavery links, who was ruined by the outbreak of war while trying to build our house; the Misses Phippen, contemporaries of Mary Carpenter, who ran their own schools for girls from poor families.