by the West Street Heritage Group for Futures Past This artwork is produced by children at Compass Point School, who have learned about the West Street coalmine and the lives of the miners. The exhibition focuses on the pit explosion of 13th August 1891 when 10 men were killed. In 2016, the West Street Neighbourhood Group organised a two day pop up museum in the United Reformed Church Hall. 500+ people visited, many with stories and photos of their lives on and around our hi

The Sisters of Charity attached to St. John’s Church  occupied a house on West Street from where they distributed to poor families food which was donated by the regular worshippers of St John’s on “pound days’- you had to bring a pound of food.

by the West Street Heritage Group for Futures Past Outside the Malago Pit after the explosion, drawing by Anton Bantock A  previous shaft accident had killed 5 miners on 9 August 1851, and a pit explosion on 31 August 1891 killed 10.  An inquest on the latter tragedy found that the habit of the miners using naked candles instead of gas lamps was the cause.  It didn’t mention that this practice was because the lamps had to be held, whereas candles could be fixed into the miner

By the end of the century, there were eighteen pits operating in the Bedminster and Ashton Vale coalfield. 

The West Street neighbourhood remained rural in character and given over to agriculture throughout the post-medieval period (16th-18th centuries).  This was reflected in the names of pubs along the street:  The Three Horse Shoes, the Plough and Windmill, the White Horse, the Lamb.   

In 1644, during the English Civil War , Bedminster was sacked by Prince Rupert . When John Wesley preached here in the 1760s, it was a sprawling, decayed market town, with orchards next to brickworks , ropewalks and the beginnings of a mining industry.