Where were the daisy fields?

You may have heard older people talk of the daisy fields estate. Before Bristol Corporation built the Froomshaw Road estate it was a field covered in moon daisies. They were so tall that you could play hide and seek in the field.

Many of the first people to occupy the houses were people who lived in the prefabs further along the road. As their families increased they needed a larger house but wanted to stay in the district.

When the prefabs were built to ease the post war housing shortage they were state of the art. They had fridges at a time when fridges were a luxurious rarity. Instead of messy coal fires the heating was electric fires. And they contained the first fitted kitchens.

The gardens were generous and there were open spaces scattered about the estate. The roads were named after birds and some of the present roads still bear these names.

Carol Thorne

Why is the lane at the bottom of Frenchay Hill called Chapel Lane when there is no chapel there?

At the end of Chapel Lane is a private house which was previously a Methodist chapel. Robert Johnson of Fromeshaw House was a Wesleyan circuit steward and by 1843 meetings were held in a room over his stables.

In the middle of the nineteenth century Methodists were split and the reformed Kingswood Circuit of the United Methodist Free Churches approached the Quakers for permission to use their meeting house. Instead Mr F.F.Tuckett donated a plot of land on which the chapel was built in 1887. It closed in the 1960s and was converted to a private house.

Whatever happened to Belfields Alley?

This cut through between Beckspool Road and Malmains Drive is named after Captain Belfield who lived at Malmains until 1900. He named the house after his first wife’s home.

A few years ago some new houses were built on land which was formerly the garden of Malmains with their entrance in Belfields Alley. The new residents objected to the name and asked South Gloucestershire Council to change it. They wanted to change the name completely but Winterbourne Parish Council managed to have the name Belfield retained and it is now called Belfields Lane.