East Dundry is a south-facing hamlet some 160 metres above sea level in a sheltered valley of Dundry Hill just south of Bristol. The hamlet is in the parish of Dundry and about two kilometres east of its village church. The iron-age Maes Knoll tump and tumuli are evidence of long occupation of the valley. The original settlements probably owed their existence to the quarrying of the local Dundry stone, which is found at Cardiff Castle and was used in mediaeval Bristol. Nearby Dundry, was originally a Roman fort built as part of the local defences against the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons. The hamlet today has some 16 houses including two active farms – there were five active farms until the 1950s, then mostly supplying milk to Bristol. Most buildings are built from the oolitic limestone quarried locally, probably mostly by the sites of the houses. Until 1930, the inhabitants were almost entirely farmers and farm workers: gradually since then the hamlet has become a dormitory village for Bristol. East Dundry Lane in the 1920s was the first to be tarred into the hamlet. Bristol, with its centre only 6 kilometres away, had mains water, electricity, gas, dial telephones and mains drainage by the 1930s – but the Second World War and its ten years of ensuing austerity stopped all extension of these facilities to places such as East Dundry.
A week or so before war was declared, several London children were evacuated to East Dundry: for instance two were billeted to Spring Farm, two to The Dingle and some to The Rookery. Later in the war, refugees from the bombing of Bristol stayed for instance in Spring Farm. Two land girls helped in Walnut Farm and two in Spring Farm. Bombs and shrapnel fell in East Dundry: bombs fell in the bull pen of North Hill Farm on 3 January 1941. Incendary bombs fell in the hamlet, for instance in the farmyard of Spring Farm. Two East Dundry men were responsible in a rota every night as fire watchers for the hamlet. See Dundry for more about war damage and the Home Guard in all Dundry including East Dundry.
Electricity
Negotiations with the Electricity Board started with a meeting in Walnut Farm in 1952 and installation in 1953 of an 11 kV supply from across the valley in 1953.
Water supply
The houses and farms built before about 1890 are all geologically close to the division between clay and the higher layer of Dundry hill’s oolitic limestone – this allowed wells to be sunk for them, with a reliable supply. The farmhouses North Hill Farm and Walnut Farm were built in the late 19th century on the hamlet’s higher and flatter land – more suitable than the steeper land of the original farms, such as that at the current North Hill Cottage. These two higher farms were served by separate hydraulic rams from the late 1800s until the late 1950s. For instance North Hill Farm had a pipe from the spring below Upton Farm to a ram next to the valley-bottom stream and a narrower pipe up through Nuthill field to North Hill Farm – much higher than the Upton Farm spring. Mains water was only supplied to the hamlet in 1957/8 after negotiations since 1952.
Gas supply
Gas was first supplied in the 1960s when a gas main to Chew Magna was routed through East Dundry passing from Bristol along the track north of North Hill Farm, down the hamlet’s lane to Cross Cottage, down in the field at the west end of Cross Cottage’s garden, along the road past Spring Farm and up the track towards Rattledown Farm. In a few years every joint of this relatively high-pressure-gas steel pipeline had to be resealed when the supply was converted from town to natural gas. Later the pipeline was reduced in pressure to minimise gas losses and only served East Dundry.
Telephones
East Dundry telephone subscribers were originally served by a network of poles and overhead open-wire cables all the way some 6 kilometres from the Chew Magna manual telephone exchange. Due to the Second World War and the following austerity, two houses often shared one of the few available lines with party lines. In the late 1950s Bristol’s automatic “Strowger”Bedminster exchange 66xxxx numbers served the hamlet, changing later to 63xxxx and yet later 963xxxx. Subscriber Trunk Dialling with the local code of 0BR2 became available on 5 December 1958 to a few UK cities. The dialling code progressively changed to 0272 and then 0117 with 9-digit Bristol numbers. During the lead up to Christmas 1962 there were light falls of snow. Around Christmas Eve, after a slight thaw, freezing started again with significant snowfalls during Boxing Day, later to be known as ‘The Big Freeze of 1963’. The previously partially-melted light and fluffy snow formed dense solid ice on the thin copper telephone lines increasing their weight. This and fresh snowfalls stretched the copper wires until they reached the ground. The multiple overhead open-wire phone lines were after the winter replaced by a single multi-core cable buried in the fields north of East Dundry Lane and the poles removed.
Broadband
A broadband cable was installed in 2019.
Tithes
The Tithe Acts of 1936 and 1951 established the compulsory redemption of English tithes by the state where the annual amounts payable were less than £1, so abolishing the bureaucracy and costs of collecting small sums of money. This applied to East Dundry as elsewhere.
