IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
North Devon Road, BRISTOL, BS16 2EX

St Mary's church began life as a small chapel of ease called Trinity Chapel. When the church and parish were altered in the 1860s, an large renovation and expansion were carried out. The south porch was blocked and the west tower door used instead, and perhaps the clock installed at this point. The latter is made by J.H. Allis of Small Street, Bristol. Grade II listed.

The church was rebuilt and expanded in the 1860s, with much of the work in Perpendicular Gothic Revival style. Grade II listed.

There is an OS benchmark Image on a corner stone of the chapel on the pathside face.

The graveyard contains many small tombstones, along with a few more traditional sizes.

This parish church started life in 1820. The parish of Stapleton (then outside Bristol's reach) had expanded and a new place of worship was deemed necessary. A small plot was bought in 1806 for £170 and a chapel of ease built in 1821. Consecrated on St Aidan’s Day, 31st August, 1821, it was known as Trinity Chapel. By the early 1860s, Fishponds was created a parish in its own right as the area grew quickly. Trinity Church became the Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin on 14th December, 1869; Bristol's boundaries swallowed Fishponds in 1897.

A multitude of small identical graves: I wonder if they mark the graves of the Stapleton workhouse inhabitants who used to worship here? (I cannot find confirmation of this.) Update: thanks to Hazel, who contacted me with a link to the history of Fishponds, it appears that this is indeed the case. A visitor to the church in 1847 was dismayed by the sight of the wretched workhouse children that filled the pews, and of their graves that filled the churchyard: "The churchyard seems to be almost wholly used as a Golgotha for the neighbouring poor-house, as the long ranks of little red clay-mounds, with a small inscribed footstone to each, indicated. I seldom saw a more desolate and cheerless looking resting place for the dead in my life; not a shrub or altar-tomb, that I could see, rose to vary the dismal and monotonous dreariness and flatness of the place." See http://fishponds.org.uk/fish1847.html for the rest of the contemporary account - it deserves to be read.

The trees have begun to wake up after Winter but the daffs are starting to go over.

A corner of the church grounds and part of the building that was added after WWII. A benchmark has been cut into the nearest part of the stonework - see Image

The part of the church with a benchmark is post-war. See https://www.bench-marks.org.uk/bm48028 for the entry in the Benchmark Database and Image] for a wider view.