HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE AROUND FISHPONDS

Fishponds as its name suggests gets its name from two ponds, which were formed by old quarry pits that filled with water, and was once a small village on the outskirts of Kingswood Forest, with the father of Hannah More being the local schoolmaster.
One of the main buildings in the area is the old prison at Blackberry Hill, constructed to house French prisoners captured during the Napoleonic wars early in the 18th century. This building became The Bristol Union Workhouse and is now part of a hospital complex.

Dominating the skyline as one drives down the M32 is the Dower House of Stoke Park, rebuilt in 1760 by Norborne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, the last of the Stoke Gifford Berkeley’s who became Governor of Virginia USA.
On his death in 1770 his sister Elizabeth and husband, the fourth Duke of Beaufort inherited the manor and its vast estates.

The Duke of Beaufort sold Stoke Park in 1907 to one Rev Harold Nelson, a great philanthropist who together with wife Katherine founded Stoke Park Colony for children in need of “Care and Control”.
The great house remains looking down in noble splendour on the Star Hill monument and the Duchess’s Pond, surrounded in a truly pastoral setting by grazing sheep, its fabric now housing luxury flats boasting one of the best views of Bristol and beyond.

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