Futures Past - St Luke’s Gazette - Edition 2
- GVHeritage Groups
- Dec 4, 2024
- 3 min read
by the St Luke's Heritage Group for Futures Past
✨ What’s Inside Edition 2 of the St Luke’s Gazette… Step Into Another Chapter of St Luke’s Remarkable Past
Edition 2 continues the exciting momentum of the St Luke’s Heritage Project, offering another vivid journey into the lives, struggles and spirited communities that once filled St Luke’s Road and Crescent. This issue opens with a moment of change in the present: the sad (and hopefully temporary) closure of the Star and Dove — a place that has supported and hosted so much of the project’s early work. Alongside this, a new burst of colour arrives in the form of TRESA’s latest mosaic installation, joyfully celebrating Totterdown’s diverse community (page 1).
From there, the edition steps straight into one of St Luke’s most nostalgic traditions: skittles. Once, St Luke’s Road boasted eight pubs from top to bottom, three of them equipped with lively skittle alleys. Page 1 brings this era back to life with photos of traditional “Bristol style” skittles and memories of brave “stickers” who risked life and limb dodging flying wooden balls in the name of neighbourhood glory. It’s a warm invitation for readers to share their own stories of the golden age of skittling in Totterdown.
Then, turning the page brings one of the most dramatic stories in the Gazette so far: the life of Dr David Albert Daudney, the man without whom St Luke’s may never have existed. Page 2 traces his extraordinary journey — from printer’s apprentice, to religious author, to famine relief worker in Tipperary during the peak of the Great Hunger, where he earned deep admiration for his compassion and courage. His arrival in East Bedminster in 1858 changed everything: using his publishing skills and personal charisma, he rallied support to build St Luke’s Church (consecrated in 1861), a new day school, and the ragged school and soup kitchen on William Street that once served the area’s poorest families. The images on page 2 — the ragged school, the demolished church site, and the old William Street buildings — make his legacy tangible.
Edition 2 then widens its view to explore the broader context of why Totterdown was once hailed as “exceedingly salubrious” (page 3). Amidst the choking smog, overcrowding, disease and extreme poverty of Bristol’s low-lying inner districts, the hilltop streets of St Luke’s offered fresh air, elevation and a welcome distance from industry. Yet life here was no paradise — child labour, sweated work and grinding poverty were woven into the daily routines of many households. Census “audits” reveal the world of railway workers, builders and artisans alongside box-makers, seamstresses and piece-workers trying to make ends meet.
Finally, the edition turns its spotlight on the “sweated trades” that shaped the lives of so many women and families in St Luke’s. Page 4 showcases artwork from Hillcrest Primary inspired by the tools and skills of dressmakers, tailoresses, corset-makers and milliners — alongside a powerful excerpt from The Song of the Shirt, a poem immortalising the suffering of Mrs Biddell, a seamstress pushed to desperation. Archival photos on this page — corset makers in Weare Street (1894), the Carr family of Oxford Street (1905) — bring these trades vividly to life.
The statistics are stark: between 1871–1881, 74 St Luke’s Road residents worked in clothing trades; by 1901–1911, 23 residents of St Luke’s Crescent were box-makers. These numbers tell a story all their own — of crowded rooms, long hours, piecework, and incredible determination.
Edition 2 closes by reconnecting past to present: photos of the research group poring over documents at the Star & Dove, and an open invitation for friends, neighbours and newcomers alike to contribute ideas for how best to bring all these unfolding stories to life.
With its mix of human drama, social history and the voices of everyday people, Edition 2 deepens the mystery, warmth and richness of St Luke’s — and invites you to be part of the story.
