Tyntesfield, near Wraxall, North Somerset   This is the view from our picnic spot when we had a day out at Tyntesfield just outside Bristol recently. Tyntesfield is now a National Trust property , but was once the home of Bristol MP George Abraham Gibbs.  George Abraham Gibbs (1873–1931) was the Conservative MP for Bristol West between 1906 and 1928. That meant he was in Parliament during the women’s suffrage campaign, and one of Bristol’s MPs at the height of suffragette militancy in the city. Gibbs, though, was opposed to women’s suffrage, and in 1910 voted against the Conciliation Bill which would have enfranchised some women. However, unlike his more unfortunate Liberal counterparts, he did not have to endure heckling and interruptions at his meetings, arson attacks on his homes, or thrashings such as the one suffragette Theresa Garnett gave Liberal MP Winston Churchill in Bristol in 1909. This was because the target of WSPU militancy was the government and its min...

Frederick William Rogers (1859–1927), who ran a firm of Bristol stone masons, and Blanche Mary Rogers (1866–1951), were married at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol in 1889. They were supporters of the non-militant Bristol and West of England Women’s Suffrage Society. On one occasion, Mrs Rogers went to a meeting at the home of the Misses Duncan at 16 West Mall when she read a sketch by Miss M Duncan with the intriguing title “ Latest intelligence from the planet Venus” .   However, when Annie Kenney came to Bristol to set up the Bristol and West of England branch of the WSPU in 1907, Mrs Rogers was one of the many Bristol suffragists who offered practical and financial support to the WSPU. Annie Kenney held a meeting in Mrs Rogers’ house in August 1908. When the Bristol WSPU put on two suffragette plays at Princes Theatre in 1910 – How the Vote was Won (by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St John) and A Pageant of Great Women by Cicely Hamilton – Mrs Rogers played Madame Chri...

In 1894 Reverend Clement Reginald Tollemache (1835–1895) moved to The Villa, Batheaston with his wife, Frances Josephine, and three daughters, Mary, Grace and Aethel. The family had been living in Brighton, where the Reverend Tollemache had settled after ministering in India for some years. His daughters were all born in India. In Batheaston, Reverend Tollemache gave ministerial assistance at St John’s and St Catherine’s churches. However, he did not enjoy his new home for long, and died in November 1895.   In 1903 the eldest of the three sisters, Mary, married Bernard Charles Spencer Everett, a canon at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Grace (1871–1952) and Aethel (1874–1955) remained in Batheaston. Here their lives took an arguably much more exciting turn than that of their sister in the quiet precincts of The Cloisters at Windsor Castle. In 1907 Aethel Tollemache and her friend and neighbour Mary Blathwayt of Eagle House, Batheaston went to a meeting in the Victoria ...