Brislington United Reformed Church marks its 230th anniversary this year. On 20 May 1796, two local men obtained a licence from Dr Reginald Courtenay, the Bishop of Bristol, to open an “Independent” chapel in Brislington. The site was a small barn in Holymead Fields, where Kenneth Road is today.
The two founders were Thomas James (1768–1831), the 38-year-old village carpenter, and John Tompkins, a farmer aged 35 who had been converted at the age of 18 after reading Milton’s A Pilgrim’s Progress. Tompkins (1761–1843) was born in Brislington and lived his whole life there, working at Langton Court (the site of The Langton pub today) and Hick’s Gate Farm, Bath Road, which still stands today. In 1787, at St Luke’s, he married a Brislington girl, Siparia Harill.
Thomas James became Brislington’s first postmaster in 1818, and he, his son, and later his two spinster granddaughters ran the village post office until the 1890s, at first at The White Hart on Brislington Hill. Thomas James was also a part-builder of Brislington House Asylum (Long Fox Manor), opened in 1806. He died in 1831 aged 63 and is buried in a family plot in St Luke’s churchyard, with the inscription: “A man universally beloved and esteemed by a numerous circle of friends and his lamented family.” The family lived at Hayward House (also known as Brook House), which was demolished in 1926 and is now part of the site of Brislington Motor Services, Bath Road.
In 1827, “Zion Chapel” was built on the site of the barn in Holymead Fields. This became “The United Christian Church, Brislington” in 1881. In 1894, the building was destroyed by fire but rebuilt the same year, and in 1898 the church joined the Congregational Union. In 1901, the present United Reformed Church in Grove Park was built. “Zion Chapel” was later home to various Brislington organisations, including the Women’s Institute and Boy Scouts, and eventually became a skittle alley for the nearby Hollybush pub. The pub was demolished in 2007, along with the chapel building, to make way for Chapel Court flats.
The first permanent Brislington Congregational Church minister was the Revd Ignatius Jones (1870–1946), who served from 1902 to 1918 and lived at “Drybrook Villa”, 31 Bristol Hill. The house was named after the Forest of Dean village where he was married in 1898. The 1911 census shows him living with his wife, three children, and a live-in maid. The 18th-century mansion, The Grove, adjacent to the church, served as the church hall from 1906 to 1978, when it was converted into flats. In 1972, the church joined the United Reformed Church.
On Easter Day, 8 April 1901, 27-year-old Oliver Fellows Tomkins (the “p” was dropped over the years), great-grandson of U.R.C. founder John Tompkins, was killed and eaten by cannibals in Goaribari, Papua New Guinea. Oliver was a Congregational missionary who, along with his 59-year-old colleague James Chalmers and 12 indigenous Christian convert young men, was massacred, stripped, dismembered, and cooked with sago by members of the Korowai tribe, descendants of whom are said to be among the last cannibals in the world today. In 2001, a reconciliation ceremony was held between descendants of the tribe and the families of Oliver Tomkins and James Chalmers.
Oliver Tomkins’s nephew, the Rt Revd Oliver Stratford Tomkins (1908–1992), was named after him and later became Bishop of Bristol from 1959 to 1975. He recounted the tragic story of his uncle when preaching at St Luke’s. In 2025, Bishop Oliver’s son, Stephen, saved the memorial to his great-uncle in the Prince Street United Reformed Church in Norwich when it was converted into an entertainment venue.
And just one more thing… (if you’re old enough to remember the TV detective Columbo!): Dr Reginald Courtenay (1741–1803), the Bishop of Bristol who granted the licence for the Brislington “Independent” chapel in 1796, was the uncle of William, Viscount Courtenay of Powderham Castle, near Exeter. He was at the centre of one of the most famous same-sex scandals in Georgian Britain after he was caught in 1784, aged 16, “in some sort of posture” with his 24-year-old distant cousin, William Beckford (1760–1844), author, builder, and notorious homosexual of Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, and Bath. William Courtenay, who was also homosexual, lived the rest of his life abroad. In 1831, he established his claim to be the 9th Earl of Devon, assisted by his cousin (also William Courtenay), Bishop Reginald’s son, Assistant Clerk to the House of Lords Parliamentary Committee of Privileges, who became the 10th Earl after the 9th Earl’s death in Italy in 1835.
Jonathan Rowe, 2026
Brislington Community News 