ABSTRACT

Clifton Hill House is one of a number of larger houses in the suburbs of 18th-century Bristol which one can associate anecdotally with the slave trade that now dominates our thinking about the Atlantic world in that period. The provision of purpose-built housing for industrial workers was on an even smaller scale. Purpose-built housing is recorded only in the context of industries where housing was essential to attract workers, in the 17th century sugar-refining, and in the 18th century brass-making — both were intimately connected with the Atlantic trade. Even with a few additions this quantity of purpose built industrial housing would account for a minute proportion of Bristol’s expansion from the 1690s onwards. The archaeological resource can provide data not simply for occupations and industry, but also for the changes in society wrought by the provision of new housing, in turn enabled by the Atlantic trade.