The 1901 Census lists the Reformatory School for Girls separately from the Refuge for Penitent Women. The former lists a Superior and 35 nuns, 13 female staff, and 103 school girls aged from 5 to 18 years old. The latter lists 162 female residents, almost all of whom worked in the laundry; their ages ranged from 14 to 73 years. They came from all over Britain, with a relatively small proportion from Bristol.

A photographic postcard (see below) entitled Arno’s Court, Bristol is thought to be Edwardian in date (i.e. 1901 — 1910), and was taken one sunny afternoon in winter. The view indicates that the photographer was positioned at or close to the present-day entrance to the park on King’s Road, suggesting that the high boundary wall with its gate posts were already present albeit behind the camera.

This boundary wall, incidentally, has clearly been repaired at various times, and contains some dressed stone of a quality superior to that required by such a structure, indicating the reuse of previously hewn masonry. It also includes isolated blocks of iridescent slag produced by William Reeve’s smelting works in the mid 18th century — relics of an early attempt to recycle industrial waste (the same material was used to build the nearby complex now known as The Black Castle).

In the foreground of the postcard of the park are twenty uniformed young ladies, presumably nuns, arranged in informal groups on the short grass.

The photograph shows a complex of barns and outhouses that are absent from the 1887 Ordnance Survey map, and which are now almost completely demolished. They all appear to be within a walled enclosure immediate southwest of the convent’s lodge.

Although most had tiled roofs, one small barn that was situated wholly within the present-day children’s play area was thatched. The walls of some of these buildings are still standing just outside the play area, and some of the stonework retains vestiges of whitewash or white paint. What appears to be the cellar of another of these buildings, adjacent to the Redcliffe Sandstone outcrop, is now protected with a covering of railway sleepers.

An acacia tree that was already large in the postcard, is still thriving (the large and somewhat lopsided tree in front of the original 18th century part of Arno’s Court, on the right of the picture).

The postcard also shows a metal fence running parallel with the high stone wall that separates the park from the convent buildings. Sections of this iron fence survive inside a privet hedge, and the space between the fence and wall is used as a path, which is likely to have been its original purpose. The path currently terminates abruptly at the Cemetery of the Holy Souls, and the boundary hedge (post 1887) that runs south of this junction is also privet and may date to the same landscaping plan that created the path.

Holy Souls is a Roman Catholic cemetery and, despite persistent rumours that nuns are buried under the Hotel’s front car park, it may have been used by the convent, which was, as we have seen, also Roman Catholic. If so, the mood of those who originally trod this path may have been solemn. Incidentally, although there are many stories of ghostly nuns seen in the Hotel, no such stories have been recorded in respect of the park.

The convent suffered bomb damage during the Second World War, and in 1941 it was estimated that two-thirds of the complex had been destroyed in the air raids. In March 1941 six sisters, seven auxiliaries and all eighty girls of the Reformatory School (now renamed an Approved School) were evacuated. In 1943 the decision was taken to sell Arno’s Court, and the convent officially closed in 1948.



Acknowledgements

Postcard of Arno's Court in around 1910 published with kind permission of Jonathan Rowe, chairman of Brislington Conservation and History Society.

Text from pages 14 - 16 of A History of Arno's Court Park, by Ken Taylor, published by Arno's Park Action Group, 2007.



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