The Seven Stars History

At it's height the Parish of Redcliffe and surrounds was home to some 200 coaching inns, ale houses and lodgings, some large enough to have had stables for a hundred horses.
This bustling community of seafarers, traders and residents was one of the busiest parts of the city.
Today (2006) apart from us at the Seven Stars only eight others remain and continue to trade. These are the Portwall Tavern, the Ostrich, the Cornubia (previously known as the Rabbit Warren), the Bell in Pruet Street, the Shakespeare in Victoria Street (formerly Temple Street), the Velindra, the Victoria (now called the Golden Guinea) and the Ship Inn on Redcliffe Hill.

The passing of time, the bombings during the war and the general development of the area have seen them all go.

Whilst all have history attached to them the Seven Stars will best be remembered for it's links to the abolition of slavery. For it was in the Seven Stars that the anti-slavery campaigner, Reverend Thomas Clarkson came in 1787 and began to put together evidence later supplied to his friend William Wilberforce and used to support the Act for the Abolition of Slavery.

Bristol was a city that had made huge sums from the brokerage of slaves and Clarkson, an English gentlemen disguised himself as a miner, blackening his face and wearing working clothes to hide his true identity.

Clarkson was befriended by the then landlord Thompson and later gave him credit in his journals for the help and support given to him "I perceived in a little time the advantage of having cultivated an acquaintance with Thompson of the Seven Stars. For nothing could now pass in Bristol relative to the seamen employed in this trade, but it was soon brought to me."

"I was determined to inquire into the truth of the reports that seamen had an aversion to enter, and that they were inveigled, if not often forced, into this hateful employment. For this purpose I was introduced to a landlord of the name of Thompson who kept a public house called Seven Stars. He was a very intelligent man, well accustomed to receive sailors when discharged at the end of their voyages, and to board them till their vessels went out again, or to find them berths in others".

Past Bristol Landlords:

1792. David Thomas
1800. John Barnes
1822 - 1828. William Heath
1830 - 1844. George Thorne
1847. Charles Norman
1848. A. Merchant
1849 - 1856. Charles Gregory
1858. William Morgan
1863. William Hann
1865. William Gough
1866. John Gardner
1867 - 1877. William Torrington
1878. J. Coles
1879. Thomas Cook
1882 - 1887. Jacob Clements
1889 - 1896. Charles Burford
1897 - 1901. George Peach
1904. A. H. Beavis
1906. William Deacon
1909. Elizabeth Britton
1914. Joseph Dutchemin
1917. George Jackson
1921. Albert Veal
1925. Benjamin Frost
1928 - 1931. Mary Ann Withy
1935. Mary Blatchford
1937 - 1953. Rebecca Watkins
Late 1950's - early 1970's Bill Sweet
1975 John M Hayley
1975-1980 Arthur Bishop
1991-2003 Sue Whiting
2004-2005 Stuart Marshall

With thanks to Bristols Lost Pubs and Kevin Brice