George Weare Braikenridge facts for kids

George Weare Braikenridge (1775–1856) was an English historian and collector. He was born in Virginia, USA, but lived most of his life in Bristol, England. In Bristol, he created a huge collection of historical items about the city. This collection is known as the Braikenridge Collection.

It includes over 1,400 drawings and watercolours of Bristol's old buildings and landscapes. These pictures are now kept at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. Other related items, like old papers, are at Bristol Central Library and Bristol Archives. The Braikenridge Collection is a very important record of how Bristol looked in the early 1800s. It helps us understand the city's past better than many other English cities.

George Braikenridge's Life

George Weare Braikenridge's father, also named George Braikenridge, was from Brislington, Bristol. However, he was a tobacco farmer and merchant in Virginia when George Weare was born in 1775. His mother was Sarah "Sally" Jerdone.

Later, his family moved back to Bristol. There, his father and he became partners in a business that sold chemicals and dyes. George Weare Braikenridge married Mary Bush in 1800. He then became a merchant, trading goods with the Caribbean islands.

Retiring and Collecting

In 1820, George Braikenridge stopped working as a merchant. He then spent all his time on his hobby: collecting old and rare items. This hobby is called antiquarianism.

In 1823, he bought a house called Broomwell House in Brislington. He added a special library to the house, designed in a Gothic style. He filled his home with many collected items. These included old stonework, carved wood, and stained glass.

Broomwell House no longer exists today. But some of his collected items are still around. He moved them to a villa in Clevedon, Somerset, which he bought in 1839. The library's special ceiling, decorated with family symbols, is one of these items.

Helping the Community

George Braikenridge was also a very generous person. He gave the most money to help build Christ Church, Clevedon. This church was finished in the same year he bought his villa, 1839. The church still has beautiful stained glass windows that Braikenridge provided.

He passed away in 1856 at Broomwell House. His collections about Bristol were given to the city after his last child, William Jerdone Braikenridge, died in 1907. A smaller collection about Somerset was given to the town of Taunton.

Famous Items He Owned

Some of his other valuable items were sold at an auction in 1908. One item was a very old container from the 1100s called a ciborium. It sold for a lot of money and is now in a museum in New York.

Another item was a special drinking bowl from the 1500s called a mazer. A third famous item was an old wooden bed, said to be the "cradle of Henry V". King Edward VII bought this cradle for himself.

Braikenridge also helped many artists. He was an important supporter of the Bristol School of artists. He also encouraged the artist Francis Danby to paint landscapes.

Braikenridge's Collections

George Braikenridge's main collecting project was based on a book. It was called History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol by William Barrett. It was common back then for people to "extra-illustrate" or "grangerise" their books. This meant adding extra pictures and papers into the book.

Bristol History Collection

Braikenridge collected so many extra items for Barrett's book that they filled 36 large folders. These items included all sorts of printed pictures, drawings, old letters, and other small papers. Braikenridge's special copy of Barrett's book, with all these added items, is now at the Bristol Central Library.

He also had another collection of over 1,400 drawings and watercolours. These showed Bristol's landscapes and buildings. He organized these pictures to match the chapters of Barrett's book. He asked many local artists to create these drawings for him. More than two-thirds of them were made by Hugh O'Neill, Thomas Leeson Scrase Rowbotham, and Joseph Manning. About 40 different artists contributed to this collection. This amazing collection is now at the Bristol Museum.

Besides the collection for Barrett's book, Braikenridge also bought more watercolours by Samuel Jackson. He also owned oil paintings and watercolours by Francis Danby. These paintings by Danby showed the mood of a place, not just what it looked like.

Somerset Collection

Braikenridge also had a similar, but smaller, collection for the county of Somerset. He started this in the 1830s. It was based on another history book, History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset by John Collinson. For this collection, most of the drawings were made by a local artist named William Walter Wheatley. This Somerset collection is now kept at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton.

Fossil Collection

George Braikenridge was also a collector of fossils. Fossils are the remains of ancient plants and animals preserved in rock. Among his fossils was the head of an ichthyosaur. This was a large sea reptile that lived long ago. He found it in 1813 in a quarry in Keynsham, Somerset.

He also found an ammonite fossil in Dundry, Somerset. An ammonite is a type of ancient sea creature with a spiral shell. This ammonite was even named after him: Normannites braikenridgii. Other geologists, like William Daniel Conybeare, knew about his fossil collection. Braikenridge was a member of both the Society of Antiquaries (for history) and the Geological Society (for geology).