Thomas Chatterton

Bristol's 'boy poet'

Thomas Chatterton was born on 20 November 1752 at the schoolmaster’s house of Pile Street School, Bristol where his late father had taught writing. In January 1753, he moved with his widowed mother, Sarah, and sister, Mary, to an elderly relation’s home on Redcliffe Hill. His mother supported the family from the pittance she earned as a seamstress and sewing mistress. Chatterton was sent to Pile Street School as a pupil when he was five years old, but he was soon asked to leave having been assessed by his teacher as too ‘dull’ to teach. He was instead taught to read by his mother at home.

In 1760, he became a blue-coated charity pupil at Colston’s School. Aged ten, he joined two of the city’s circulating libraries and became a keen and wide-ranging reader. A favourite reading spot was by the Canynges’ tomb in St Mary Redcliffe church. Aged 14, he was apprenticed as a legal scrivener (a copier of papers) to the attorney John Lambert and regularly met with literary-minded fellow apprentices in a local tavern. The group referred to themselves as the ‘Spouting Club’.

Chatterton was fascinated by the medieval period. He was inspired by the fifteenth-century manuscripts his late father had taken from St Mary Redcliffe when researching the Chatterton family history and began creating his own mock-medieval parchments. He invented the character of Thomas Rowley, a medieval monk whose varied workload allowed Chatterton to generate fictional maps, correspondence, business accounts, verse and research notes. He produced a mixture of what he claimed was original material and his transcriptions of other documents he had discovered. Some today would suggest that he was an imaginative creative writer rather than a forger.

Bristol Poetic City

2020 marks 250 years since the death of Chatterton. A Poetic City is a multi-partner, city-wide programme led by Bristol Cultural Development Partnership (BCDP) that explores the legacy of this iconic literary figure.

A Poetic City builds on existing knowledge of Chatterton’s life and times; celebrates Bristol’s current vibrant and diverse poetry scene; and aims to inspire poets of the future.

Chatterton’s story also provides an opportunity to examine a range of contemporary themes such as: artistic credulity and credibility; fake news and fake art; young artists; arts and mental health; on-going barriers to accessing culture in the city; the nature of celebrity; the resurrection of the Gothic; and the nurturing of creativity.

As part of this project St Mary Redcliffe has received National Lottery Heritage Funding to deliver a programme of activities and outcomes, which are taking place during 2020 and 2021. these include:

• A programme of community work to engage local people with the figure of Chatterton and, more, broadly, poetry and Bristol's literary heritage
• A brief to commission an artist to create public art to commemorate Chatterton, replacing the statue which was removed during the 1960s
• A new set of interpretative panels to help better tell the story of Chatterton to the church's many visitors
• An intergenerational community event

The church also hopes to open the Chatterton Room - currently only open for one day each year - to the public by offering guided tours. This activity has been delayed by Coronavirus, but we hope to be in a position to launch the tours during 2021. You can watch our new video, containing information about the Chatterton Room below.