John Hudson takes a look at a new play which has Bristol's Portland Square as its backdrop.

Five years ago Bette Burke published a factual little book about Portland Square, where she has lived for the past 23 years.

In its fashionable days, up until around 1870, it was a place of solid respectability, with a single flamboyant star among its residents in the architect and furniture designer Edward William Godwin, who fathered two children by the actress Ellen Terry.

Bette was intrigued by many of the characters who lived in what she has dubbed "Cinderella Square" – among them H.O. Wills and various other members of the tobacco oligarchy, a vicar of St Paul's church called John Bull and two German musicians named Mack and Geramhausen.

But as the years passed she became more and more intrigued by the story of two young sisters who started a girls' school in the square in 1825.

"In Cinderella Square all I could do was record the facts about them that were to hand – which were fairly sparse," says Bette, a very youthful 75.

"But I found myself often thinking about their story, and about 18 months ago I started jotting down ideas to flesh it out into a hour-long play.

The result, The Ladies Seminary, can be seen at St Paul's church - now the Circomedia circus school - at the end of the building's Doors Open Day on Saturday, September 12.

The six actors will be from Bristol's Kelvin Players, with Susan Howe directing.

Bette isn't giving much away about the plot; we'll have to go along ourselves to learn more about that.

But she admits that in her story, the sisters open the school in the wake of a family tragedy, and the action develops from there.

The tragedy is purely her supposition.

The only known facts the play is based on is that two sisters, Sarah and Emily Thomas, opened a school at No 7 in 1825, when they were aged 23 and 22 respectively.

"Just why these two young women should decide, at such an early age, to become governesses and devote themselves to teaching will never be known," says Bette.

"But what the school did was give them a home and a means of livelihood under one roof in one of the most fashionable areas of Bristol."

There were several schools in the square, but this was the largest and one of the longest-lived, with 14 boarders aged between 10 and 15 in 1841 and 12 in 1851.

A cook and a domestic servant also lived there, but non-resident teaching and household staff might also have come in.

The school continued until 1860, when the Misses Thomas retired and left the square.

"It's fair to surmise that their curriculum would have been designed to produce a woman of elegance and practical ability," says Bette.

"Deportment would have been high on the agenda, along with musical instruction, perhaps a foreign language, needlework and a little cookery."

Her storyline about tragedy bringing the sisters to the square has strong dramatic possibilities, and it might even be what happened.

Who knows?

But Bristol history throws up a very different possibility, since it was in that same year, 1825, that a Welshman called Thomas Thomas came to the city from Carmarthen and opened a soap factory in Red Lion Yard.

As the years went by the company employed Thomas's sons Christopher, Thomas Junior, Herbert and Charles – and as Christopher Thomas & Bros, based in the current Gardiner Haskins store in Broad Plain, the firm and its Puritan Soap became one of Bristol's major employers in Victorian times.

Thomas Thomas and his wife had four sons.

Is it not possible that they also produced Sarah and Emily, for whom they felt the need to find employment in more genteel surroundings than the soap works?

Christopher was 18 years old in 1825, so close to the girls' 22 and 23.

That's a secret that could doubtless be unlocked by further family research, but in the meantime, Bette Burke has produced a fascinating tale.

It's also a good reason to be in Portland Square on Saturday, September 12, when both St Paul's church and the beautifully restored Pierian Centre meeting place at No 27 will be taking part in the city's Doors Open Day.

From its glory days in the first half of the 19th century through harder times when virtually every building was a boot or shoe factory and then the disaster of World War II bombing, the square has emerged as an elegant and roomy green space amid workaday surroundings.

The opening of its central parkland and the restoration of its railings and gates with their arched iron lamp holders have made it a place in which people want to live again – in easy walking distance of Cabot Circus and scores of office buildings.

Bette and her husband Julius Burke were almost the only residents back in the Eighties – but they're not any more.

And while there are still run-down corners, Portland Square is also the address of some of the most progressive and cutting-edge businesses in town.

As for the corner site No7, where the Thomas girls had their academy, it's now what they call a Jobcentreplus.

Some of the clients milling around outside do not quite look like finishing school material – but as long as it's getting them somewhere in life, the old place is still serving a useful function.

The Ladies Seminary, presented by Susan Howe in association with the Kelvin Players, will be performed at St Paul's, Portland Square, at 5pm on September 12.

Tickets, priced £6, can be bought from the Colston Hall box office, 0117 922 3686, between 10am and 6pm.