Owners of No. 18 Gloucester Road

'Bev' Selman

In June 1970, the house was conveyed by George and Joan Excell to Arthur William Beverley Selman of Pullins Green.

‘Bev’ was the son of Bill and Lena Selman who were living next door at number 16.  Click here to read more about Bill and Lena

Joan Excell told us that because Bev did not have a job at the time, the Selmans asked her and George to sell the house to Bev.  Joan said that they came to ‘an arrangement’ because they liked Sheila, Bev’s wife so much and said that she came from a nice family.  Bev seems to have paid them something and then paid a sum each month.  This is largely confirmed by a document that we found in the deeds, which says that Arthur William Beverley Selman agreed to pay back to George two thousand four hundred pounds at the rate of nine pounds ten shillings per centum per annum.  It was to be paid in equal monthly sums of 30 pounds on the 19th of each month.

We were not sure what Bev's trade was but he seemed to be a trader who bought and sold all sorts of things.  As a young man he had worked for Wilkinsons, a bakery in St John Street delivering bread.  We heard later he had moved to South Bristol to run a bakery with his new wife.  When we saw him last, he was living in Hartcliffe, travelling around in a succession of converted ambulances and selling ‘antiques’ at car boot sales.  We liked Bev very much and found his stories very funny.  He also gave us one useful piece of advice that we have not yet been able to use.  Apparently if you are ever chased by the police in a car, you should find a ploughed field to run across as the police don’t like to get their boots muddy and won’t follow.  This was before they had police helicopters!

Bev did not keep the house long.  In the short time he was here he did undertake ‘some improvements’ according to his Mum who thought him perfect.  He ripped out both the old Victorian fireplaces and surrounds (probably selling them for a good price), and in the sitting room built an enormous fireplace out of Cotswold stone (which was in fashion at the time).  This fireplace filled up the whole wall from floor to ceiling and it had two solid stone piers built out from either side of the fire into the room.  It dominated the room, was not usable for open fires because of the large opening, and it was amazing how the heavy piers were supported by the wooden floors without any additional supports in the cellar underneath.  The fireplace in the dining room was on a smaller scale.  He also built a tiny fishpond, out of Cotswold stone which were presumably left over from the fireplace job.

We have traced Bev to when he was living at Gatehouse Avenue, Hartcliffe, with his wife, Jacqueline in the late 1990's.  We have just discovered that he still comes to Thornbury and we are hoping to meet with him shortly.

This page was last updated: 27/11/2007