John Hudson talks to Alveston historian Rosemary King, about her family’s roots and her new book on the village

Parish boundaries mean a lot to local historians, so Rosemary King was delighted by a discovery she made only about 20 years ago.

She has just produced a book about Alveston, the Severn Vale village in which she has lived with her husband John since 1954.

But though she loves the place, she always had the feeling of being a bit of a Jenny-come-lately – until research into her family tree revealed that her great-great-great grandparents had been married at the village church in 1761.

“I was born in Grovesend, just up the A38 in Thornbury parish, while John is from Earthcott, which is part of Alveston,” she says.

“For years I thought that we were living in ‘his’ parish – until one of our sons did a sixth-form project on our house, and we realised how little we knew.

“That got us looking into family history – and before long I discovered that my roots in Alveston go back nearly 250 years. That makes John the newcomer in our house; his family came from Somerset to farm at Earthcott only in around 1900!”

In her book she tells the story of the village in 180 photographs, old and new – with an emphasis on its people, from the Veeles in the manor in late Tudor times, to the Bristol businessmen who built grand mansions such as Alveston House and The Grove, to memorable local characters.

James Neate of the Cross Hands; Clark the blacksmith and his family; the Greenhill quarrymen; John Biddle of Forty Acre Farm, who fathered 16 children; Frank Lippiatt, who drove the county steamroller and would cycle up the main road to Gloucester to see his fiancée Emily every Sunday.

All were part of a community in which everybody knew everybody else but which could never be described as tight-knit.

Alveston always sprawled and straggled along what is now the A38, with the added dimension of the road down to Aust and Enoch Williams’s ferry to South Wales and the Forest of Dean.

In the post-war years it developed as a dormitory for workers in the Filton aerospace factories, the Severnside nuclear power stations and ICI at Avonmouth, and today residents work in numerous occupations in North Bristol and beyond.

In fact as the likes of Alveston House and The Grove make clear, it has been home to successful Bristol merchants for 200 years or more.

And an added dimension over the years has been quarrying activity along the limestone ridge that has shaped both the topography and lifestyle of the village.

Mrs King’s book, in Amberley Publishing’s very well produced “Through Time” series, stems from a collection of photographs first brought together for an exhibition staged by Alveston parish council in 1994.

Her husband John, a retired haulage contractor, was asked to organise the display, and it was so successful that the couple launched a local history society on the strength of it.

In highlighting local people, her picture captions touch on all manner of intriguing tales of skuldugggery, family drama and deeds of derring-do.

“I’d have liked to have put in more of the stories I’ve been told,” she says.

“Researching local history is like doing a Sudoku puzzle – except it’s never-ending, and there’s always another thread to unwind.”

It sounds to us as if there’s another book or two on the way.

Let’s hope so.

Alveston Through Time is by Rosemary King. Published by Amberley it costs £12.99