Bristol Then & Now – Capern’s Bird Food factory

Bristol Then & Now – Capern’s Bird Food factory

Image by brizzle born and bred
Bristol Then & Now – Capern’s Bird Food factory

image top: This building, right in the centre of picture, was originally a series of derelict warehouses, including a sugar refinery. Bird Food Factory. Now it’s been revamped in true Hotel du Vin style – casual but stylish – and visitors come in via an elegant cobbled courtyard with a fountain and goldfish pool, and arrive in a reception area where a 100ft red brick chimney is a reminder of the industrial past.

This well-known firm of bird-food manufacturers was founded in 1879 by Mr. F. Capern, of Weston-super-Mare. He was a chemist by profession, but an aviculturist by inclination, and he enjoyed some little fame as an ornithologist throughout Somerset. As a result of his knowledge of birds, many friends and customers sought his advice concerning the correct feeding of their birds, and their treatment in illness. His fame grew and the supplying of bird-foods became a profitable side-line. A few years later it had increased to such an extent that Mr. Capern decided to devote the whole of his energies in this direction.

He moved to Bristol in 1889, and so great was the amount of business that another move became necessary in 1897. The present premises were then taken over, but have been so greatly enlarged during the past thirty years as to be almost unrecognizable. The result is that the "House of Capern" is now the largest in Great Britain, dealing solely with bird foods and medicines; and the factory is probably the best-equipped of its kind.

Some time in the 1930s, Caperns commissioned from Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd of Staffordshire, a series of promotional items made in Wedgwood’s famous jasper wear.

image bottom: Same view as above 2012 – When the 40-bedroom Hotel du Vin opened in Lewin’s Mead at a cost of £4.5 million, it signalled the end of 15 years dereliction for the old sugar warehouse which the hotel had bravely opted to make its Bristol home.

The award-winning hotel has succeeded brilliantly in transforming a blighted corner of the city into a great place where everyone wants to go – one of the most sophisticated and upmarket restaurants in town.

There’s certainly a lesson there for all the budding town planners and architects who want to make a name for themselves. In the 18th century Lewin’s Mead, along with the Christmas Steps area, was fashionable with merchants and members of the Corporation.

Then, in mid-Victorian times, it went downhill and became the haunt of down-and-outs and street urchins.

Then, at the beginning of the last century, it became an industrial area noted for its engineering works, printers, a brewery, a dry salter and a timber merchant.

The story of the 1728 building’s sugar warehouse origins is eloquently told in the entrance to the hotel’s courtyard but I wonder how many people around today remember when, for over 50 years, it was Capern’s Bird Food factory?

Originally just a Weston-super-Mare chemist with an interest in ornithology, Fred Capern pioneered the manufacture of clean bird seed for domestic pets.

His Charles Street, off Stokes Croft factory, moved to the old sugar warehouse in 1896 and stayed there until 1956 when it moved to Yatton.

It was Capern’s that added the ornate hood to the doorway in 1922 (and which is still there today) and gave the plain warehouse its gentrified Georgian look.

Then & Now

Two photographs depicting the same view, one taken a period of time after the other, give us an instantaneous impression of ‘ then ‘ and ‘now ‘. Some comparisons show old views that are instantly recognisable, where the natural passage of time and technology has made only slight changes.

Other views illustrate major change and it can be difficult to comprehend that an area has altered so much. Unless you have lived through a change and can remember what was there before, there is often no reason to question what building was replaced or how the area functioned in the past.