Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> On Clifton Down above Bristol in an area of green near Christ Church now dissected by roads and roundabouts still stand two monuments an obelisk and a cenotaph. In their isolation lacking the bombastic surrounds of public statuary they seem to embody the expression of some private and distant tribute. Both monuments were and remain gestures of loyalty from the man who originally commissioned them Lieutenant-General Sir William Draper. They and the nearby sign marking Manilla Road are the residual ghosts of a man and of events which in their time commanded the attention of the whole of the nation. The obelisk dedicated to William Pitt Earl of Chatham and the cenotaph dedicated to the 79th Regiment of Foot Draper’s Regiment had been created for the garden of Sir William’s house Manilla Hall which he had built on Clifton Down following his return from successful command of the expedition which captured Manila capital of the Philippine Islands from Spain in 1762 towards the end of the Seven Years War. The conquest remains the most easterly battle ever fought by a British expedition The monuments were never intended for public viewing. They were appropriate in size only for the garden of the private house for which they were designed. Their presence in Clifton was itself an expression of loyalty to the city in which Sir William had been born in 1721. The general’s loyalty to William Pitt and to his disbanded regiment both crucially linked to his own achievements was entirely understandable. His loyalty to Bristol was less clearly focused and sprang more from his immediate family links than from deeper roots. (LL)