Object Number: K106

Collection: Fine Art

Object Name: drawing/watercolour

Title: Free Port Day in Bristol, November 13, 1848 [Colston's Day]

Artist: TOVEY, Samuel Griffiths

Description: a pencil, watercolour and bodycolour drawing on paper, showing: the celebrations og Free Port Day; the drawing gives the atmosphere of street processions in 19th-century Bristol. The crowd jostles and banners are held at all angles suggesting the progression of the parade. It is viewed from St Augustine’s Parade looking down Clare Street into Corn Street. From the left, the churches are St Stephen’s, Christ Church, St Werburgh’s and All Saints’. The crowd on the left is seen crossing the drawbridge. Bristol’s once great port had long been in decline and by the 1840s the dock and import charges imposed were very much higher than in Britain’s other major ports. The Free Port Association was formed in 1846 and a formidable public campaign was mounted to transfer the ownership and management of the Floating Harbour from the Bristol Dock Company to the Corporation (City Council). This was achieved by Act of Parliament in 1848 and the new, lower tariffs came into effect on 15 November, although the port was far from free and ‘Free Port Day’ was rather a misnomer. The day was declared a holiday, houses and ships were festooned with flags and an immense parade lasting over seven hours marched from Old Market to Clifton and back to the Council House. The procession was organised by the united trades of Bristol and was nearly one-and-a-half miles long. The local newspapers reported it extensively. Tovey shows, on the extreme right, the shipwrights’ arms with the motto ‘May Trade, like the Evergreen, be ever found Flourishing’. Their emblems included models of the steamships Great Britain and Great Western. The braziers, coppersmiths and brass founders carried emblems including a small boy in an enormous tea-kettle. He can be seen on the left, with the traditional knight in armour riding before him. Behind, another small figure waves from a large stoneware jug carried by the potters. Cannons fired all day and there were bonfires and fireworks in the evening. Most trades concluded the day with a dinner at their usual houses of resort. This drawing was engraved by J.L. Marcke to commemorate the event.