Brandon Hill, this Sunday August 19, 3.00pm
From the Bristol Radical History Group…
We will be highlighting Bristol’s history of re-claiming public space on Brandon Hill, the oldest public space in Bristol, on Sunday.
We have chosen this date because it is the anniversary of a party on Brandon Hill in 1832 for the ‘great and good’ of the city, which was gate-crashed by over 14,000 uninvited Bristolians.
The party was meant to celebrate the passage of the Reform Act which granted a tiny percentage of the population suffrage (tinier than the already small and exclusive population allowed to vote.)
Most Bristolians were both unimpressed with the act and unimpressed with their exclusion from the party. The barricades were stormed, beer was stolen, barrels of pudding were wheeled away and the party was effectively taken over.