Rev Dr David Daudney - the 'father' of St Luke's...

by the St Luke's Heritage Group for Futures Past

Far Left: Rev Dr David Daudney

St Luke’s may never have become St Luke’s if it were not for this man – the Rev Dr Daudney.

We have been researching who he was & how he became so pivotal in the story of the parish & the naming of our roads.

David Daudney was born in 1811 and grew up in Portsea on the south coast. He left home to become a printer’s apprentice at 13. He later began his own printing and publishing house and became a prolific religious writer, editor & author. In 1846 he sold his business and moved to Tipperary where he was ordained and became curate to a small parish. 1846 was the second year of ‘an Gorta Mor’; the great hunger and Daudney was commended for his work helping the starving and destitute during this horrific time. He then moved to East Bedminster in 1858 to establish a mission, at first based in a wooden hall just south of York Road. He then used his writing and publishing skills, and not a little personal charisma, to campaign and fundraise for the building of a newly consecrated St Luke’s Church.

This proved a great success and in 1861 the church was opened. He didn’t stop there and went on to help establish a new day primary school on St Luke’s Road, plus a ‘ragged school’ and soup kitchen on nearby William Street for impoverished children and their parents. The poverty that he discovered in this part of Bedminster he once described as being reminiscent of Ireland. Many of his new parishioners were on the brink of starvation, wearing rags and living in empty homes after having sold what little possessions they had to feed their children, who slept on straw.

Both the church and school are now gone, like so much of Totterdown, demolished in the 1970s, but the former ragged school and soup kitchen remains and has been converted to flats.