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Monday, November 17, 2008, 08:00
When did the St Anne’s ferry stop working?
Nina Young, Brislington.
In 1959, after a footbridge was built across the river by the Board Mills.
WHO was the last of the Wills family to work for the company?
Ken Cornish, Bedminster.
That was Christopher Wills, the great- great-grandson of H O Wills.
He retired as sales research manager in 1969.
Sir John Wills, of Langford, who died 10 years ago, aged 70, was a chartered surveyor who had severed his connections with the company.
Did Hartley’s once have a jam factory in Brislington?
Keith Williams, Knowle.
No, the factory was in Liverpool.
But its great rivals, Robertsons, which makes Golden Shred, had a factory in Brislington from 1914 until the Eighties.
It was said, at one time, to be the biggest jam factory in Europe.
Tesco now occupies the site.
Where is Pen Park Hole? Can you go down it?
Andy Denning, Horfield.
This mysterious, water-filled cavern stretches 200ft underground between the Wayfarer pub and Filton golf course at the Charlton end of Southmead’s Pen Park Road.
Captain Sam Sturmy, who was lowered by ropes into the cave in 1682, thought (mistakenly as it turned out) that it was an old Roman lead mine.
Four days later, he died of a fever.
The next people in, was a group of Kingswood miners.
Then, in 1775, the Reverend Tom Newman, a 26-year-old canon from Bristol Cathedral, decided to explore the cavern with two girls and a companion.
But while holding on to an ash tree above the cave to measure its depth, a branch snapped and the clergyman plunged tragically to his death in the lake below.
The limestone cavern – formed by rising geothermal waters – has recently been explored by the Axbridge caving group, which was impressed by its enormity.
For safety’s sake, the cavern is no longer accessible to the general public.
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