Postcards update: locating the circus train
The Vaughan Postcard Collection now has over 500 images researched, placed and loaded onto the Know Your Place website, and our volunteers are continuing to make steady progress through their chosen fields of Bristolian interest. Recent batches to be sent out to the volunteers include postcards of the city docks, of the Avon Gorge and its railways, and another of shipping up and down the River Avon.
Yet whilst we can accurately pinpoint many of the postcards, some are less easy to locate. Take for instance the postcard here, of Marshall & Ernest Hill Entertainers of Bristol. On the reverse of the postcard there is a pencilled comment, suggesting that the photograph shows the circus family at their yard in Bedminster. But Hill’s Showyard was, at the time the photograph was taken (about 1910), in the old sawmill previously known as Organ’s Yard, off Regent Road; the image is clearly not of an old sawmill in Bedminster.
So where was this picture taken? Several suggestions have been made, the most common being that it shows Durdham Downs, near the water tower. The buildings in the far distance (far right of the postcard), and the grazing sheep, suggest otherwise. Can anyone tell us where this circus train was parked in 1910?
Hi
After reading the Bristol Post’s article about the Vaughan postcard collection I wondered if the Vaughan is Roy(ston) Vaughan dec’d of Canynge Road, Clifton? He was the husband of my mothers cousin Pat (nee Beavis) and is very fondly remembered for his avid collecting, particularly of postcards and antiques. A lovely man with an amazing knowledge and memory. After his passing I thought Uncle Roy’s postcard collection was given to Bristol Zoo but now wonder is it is in BRO.
Kind regards
Mrs T Andrews
It is the same Roy Vaughan, yes. Roy’s family very kindly deposited his collection of postcards with Bristol Record Office in 2006, and in 2009 the Record Office was able to create digital copies of the collection. It’s very exciting to be working with volunteers to research and pin these digital copies of the postcards to the maps on the Know Your Place website as, together, the collection provides an extraordinarily comprehensive view of the way Bristol looked at the beginning of the C20th. One of our volunteers who also knew Roy commented to us how Roy had wanted his collection to be researched and seen by as many people as possible, and it’s really great that recent technological developments and the Know Your Bristol On the Move project are helping this to happen.
Julian Warren, Archivist, Bristol Record Office.