The History of Barrow Gurney

Barrow Gurney is a small but historically notable parish. It is a very old settlement that dates back to early Medieval times. The manor of Barrow Gurney appears in Domesday book of 1086 that was commissioned by King William The Conqueror. Even then it was noted for its water mill. At the time of the Domesday Book it was known as Berwe, an Old English name for a woodland grove. In the early 1200s the manor came into the possession of Eva de Gournay, who founded a nunnery on the site of the current Barrow Court. This nunnery was called Barrow Mynchin.

​

Her son Robert adopted her Gournay name and when he became Lord of the Manor of Barrow he renamed it as Barrow de Gournay, later to become Barrow Gurney.

​

In another important historical link, Robert’s great grandson Sir Thomas de Gournay was one of the murderers of Edward II and he was beheaded for the crime in 1333.

​

The nuns continued to hold Barrow Mynchin until Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monastries in 1536 the original building being converted into a large country house in 1538. The house was extended and restyled to become Barrow Court. The major upgrading of the property came in the late 1800’s when Henry Martin Gibbs bought the house and the surrounding lands. Henry Martin was the son of William Gibbs of Tyntesfield who amongst other ventures became one of the richest commoners in England by importing guano from South America.

​

The settlement in the centre of the parish existed largely as an estate village in support of the main estates in the parish, centring in the 19th and 20th centuries on Barrow Court itself.

​

By the 1860s there were 3 water mills on the small river that ran through the valley at Barrow Gurney. The mill nearest the source had a weir and a diversion leat opposite the site of the current Prince’s Motto. Upper Barrow Mill was first listed as a grist mill but later as a corn mill but it ceased working as a mill altogether in the early 1900s.

Middle Barrow Mill was a corn mill that was converted to snuff manufacture in the early 1800’s. However it probably ceased to be a mill by 1839.

​

Lower Barrow Mill was the largest and most long lived of the 3. It was still functioning as a water mill grinding corn well into the 1900s, and it is still a going concern today. Whilst it is not actually known which of the 3 mills was mentioned in the Domesday Book it is probable that it was this mill.

​

These mills were supplied with water from Elwell Brook and Cold Bath Spring which rises in a field behind the Prince’s Motto. This watercourse is known today as the Land Yeo River.

​

In 1846 the Bristol Waterworks Company, which was newly formed and chartered to solve the dire state of fresh water supply in Bristol, purchased Cold Bath Spring. Soon water piped from Barrow Gurney became one of the first supplies of external water to furnish the drinking water needs of the large Bristol population.

​

In 1847 the “Line of Works” a major engineering project bringing fresh water from springs in the Mendip Hills augmented the Barrow Gurney supply.

​

In 1852 the first of 3 reservoirs opened at Barrow Gurney to control the supply. In 1864 the second reservoir opened and in 1886 a third was added. These reservoirs are known as “Barrow Tanks”.

​

It was the work to construct the 3rd of these reservoirs that seems to have given birth to The Prince’s Motto. In 1866 Samuel Stevens, a blacksmith from Long Ashton, and Thomas Stevens, a farm labourer from Barrow Gurney, purchased 2 adjoining cottages in the centre of the village. They probably realised that the thirst of the navvies digging out Tank No 3 and their prodigious drinking habit was a major opportunity.

​

There are, in fact, stories of pints lined up the bar being consumed so quickly that they were simply refilled by dipping into a trough of ale.