The missing years (1938 to 2009)
Where the charity went, and why it kept the building
In 1938 Bristol Municipal Charities left Quay Head House for new offices round the corner. But they did not sell it, and that changes the story of the missing years.
For 54 years Quay Head House was the head office of Bristol Municipal Charities. In 1938 the trustees moved out. It has always been the point where our story goes dark, but a closer look at the charity’s own records has turned up something important.
A new office in Orchard Street
The charity did not go far. It built itself new offices at 24A Orchard Street, a few minutes’ walk away, designed by the architect W G Price in a restrained neo-Georgian style: pale limestone, a pantile roof, three storeys and seven windows across. The building is now listed in its own right.
The site has its own history. It had been a French Protestant chapel, founded in 1727 for Bristol’s Huguenot community, later used by the Plymouth Brethren. It was demolished in the 1930s to make way for the charity’s offices.
But they kept Quay Head House
The charity’s records at Bristol Archives include a series of box files on the buildings it managed. One of them is headed “Quay Head House, 1964 to 1975” (reference 33041/Mgt/1/120). The same box holds files on its Orchard Street offices and other properties.
So for decades after 1938 the building almost certainly stayed in the charity’s hands, and was let to tenants who paid rent to the trust that built it. That would explain how so much of the Victorian interior survived: a careful landlord, and a run of office tenants who had no reason to rip it out.
Who were the tenants?
That is the question. The 1964 to 1975 file should name some of them. For the years before and after, the old Kelly’s and Wright’s street directories at Bristol Central Library list who occupied each address, and planning applications from the 1980s onwards often name the occupier. We will be working through all three.
If your firm, your parents or your grandparents had an office here, you might be able to answer it faster than any archive.
Tell us who worked here, or see Help us research if you would like to dig with us.
Sources: Historic England, list entry 1202405 (Bristol Municipal Charities, 24A Orchard Street); Chapels Society, An atlas of post-Reformation places of worship within the central area of Bristol; Bristol Archives, Records of Bristol Municipal Charities, 33041/Mgt/1/120