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Wealth: The Longer Tour

A trip down King Street

Built in the late 1600s King Street is full of links to slavery.
Henry Webb, Captain of the slaver The Nevis Planter and Robert Walls, surgeon on the slave ship The Guinea, lived in King Street in the 1770's.
Manillas (brass bracelets used as money on the West Coast of Africa to trade for slaves) were made in Bristol, and some were dug up in King Street by archaeologists and builders.

The Merchant Venturers' House
(Slave Trail Location 17)

Merchants' Hall was the eighteenth-century headquarters of the Society of the Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol which was destroyed in the Bristol Blitz. It is on the site of the present office building called Merchant Venturers House.

The Merchant Venturers' Almhouse
(Slave Trail Location 18)

In 1696 the Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers built their almshouses here for sick and elderly sailors, and the building still survives.

The Almhouse carries the Merchant Venturers coat of arms. As sailors sailing on the slave ships to West Africa often went blind or fell ill from various fever, it is likely that some of them may have been housed in this almshouse.