Paul,
I have been finding out a few things about my family history using the internet recently.
I found that my great great grandfather, Richard Britten Bustin , who started as a Victorian photographer in Ross-on –Wye and Hereford, then moved to Bristol and became the pub landlord (and possibly) the owner of the original Griffin, one of the lost pubs on a site link of yours. He was there from the 1860’s for about ten years in the original Griffin Hotel, where about half of a large family moved with him from Hereford! Apparently, when this area was rebuilt about 1872, Steep street became Colston Street, Griffin lane became lower park lane, and the Griffin Hotel itself was rebuilt. He was in the Griffin for about another 20 years in the new building. Originally, the Griffin Hotel attracted the theatre public, since the Prices Theatre (near where the big NCP car park is now) was close by for many years before the “Hippodrome” was built. The Griffin has been well known as a gay pub in more recent times and is now called “Level One”.

On Flickr, I was very interested to find your early photo of Steep Street and Griffin Lane, and this shows what the original Griffin Hotel, built apparently in the 1740’s or earlier would have looked like. Do you have the original photo or glass plate? I would like to be able to have a really good quality copy of this photo if I could to mount and frame- would it be possible for you to scan this at a higher resolution please- or did this come from a modern print which is available?. I can almost make out a sign on the small building and other details in the foreground!
( I expect the Bustins took this photo themselves at the time - both Richards sons had photographic studios in Bristol, and the Hereford studio was still going). My mother told me that Buffalo Bill (Bill Cody of the American wild west show) which visited this country in 1892 stayed once at the (new Griffn) Hotel- and had an affair with her grandmother (Richard Bustins daughter Lily, who would have been 23 and unmarried at the time, but subsequently married three times!).

Richard Bustin , the pub landlord was an interesting person himself. His father must have moved from Barnstaple in Devon to Swansea and ran a pub there. Richard met and married an artist while in London , and then went on to become an art master himself, then became the Headmaster of the Hereford School of Art, now known as the Hereford College of Arts. His wife, Marion (or Mary Anne) the artist who then had about ten children, seemed also able to set up and run a photographic business in Hereford, while he retired from the arts and was in Bristol running the Griffin. Later his wife and some of the children (including my great grandmother Lily) moved into the new Griffin with him!.


Recently I have been trying to find “cartes de visite” or photos taken by the Ross-on –Wye and Hereford studios, and have bought a couple from ebay,and at the moment there is a photo on ebay by F.Bustin of Bristol!

Sorry the image is scanned and not the original photo try link below

The Reece Winstone Archive

http://www.reecewinstone.co.uk/