Introduction
Several years ago I received an email from a lady who wanted to know about the E. N. Miles haberdashery. I was unable to help her at the time but in November 2025, I received an email from a relative of the Mies family and I decided to look at the business again.
The Shop
Egbert Nathanial Miles set up a haberdashery shop at 5, Cannon Street, Bedminster in 1884.
He did well selling American-style gentlemen's braces and was able to purchase and expand into the shops on either side of his original haberdashery, creating the three Miles. It was a popular local family business, with its long mahogany counters, shelves stacked with cardboard boxes containing merchandise and the old-world courtesy and knowledge of the staff. Miles closed the mid-1980s, and the buildings were subsequently demolished.
Cannon Street is a short road that runs between East and North Streets in Bedminster. On the 1855 and 1874 Ashmead maps it is spelled Canon but by the 1880s a second N has been added and it was now Cannon Street. Numbers 3, 5, and 7, which Miles owned, stood between The London Inn and Bedminster Town Hall.
1946 aerial view of Cannon Street, Bedminster, Bristol
In the above photo the large building in the centre is the Bedminster Town Hall. Below it are the three buildings owned by E. N. Miles, with the London Inn next to those.
E. N. Miles, Cannon Street, Bedminster in the 1970s
E. N. Miles at 7, Cannon Street, Bedminster in 1976
Photo: Bristol Live
Interior of E. N. Miles, Cannon Street, Bedminster
E. N. Miles site, Cannon Street, Bedminster in 2012
Photo: Google Maps
E. N. Miles site, Cannon Street, Bedminster in 2015. These new buildings were erected in 2014.
Photo: Google Maps
The Miles family were well thought of, with many people remembering them as polite, knowledgeable people. Mr Miles Snr. worked there with sons John and Griff along their cousin David. The lady assistants all wore black and entered every sale in a book and said "Sign Please" to another assistant before sending the money along rails to the cashier and waiting for the receipt and change to be sent back. This was done by some sort of pneumatic or zip system.
The shop did not use bags, the goods were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
There's a nice recollection that if the shop had to give a farthing change they would give a farthing's worth of pins. "They used to give a farthings worth of dressmaking pins instead of a farthing! I was told don't take the 'pins' when I went shopping for my mother and grandmother!"
A farthing was a quarter of an old penny. No farthings were minted after 1956 and they were demonetised from January 1, 1961. The old penny fell out of use on February 15, 1971, when British money was decimalised.
The growth of Miles created a local joke:
How far is it between the Town Hall and the London Inn?
Three Miles!
History of the Area
The original London Inn an eighteenth century coaching inn and was the first stop for stage coaches travelling from Bristol to Wells and dates from some time before 1730. It stands on the corner of East Street, British Road and Cannon Street and the current building was erected in 1895. Before the 1880s, British Road was known as Back Lane.
Bedminster Town Hall was opened on June 4t 1891 and it was designed by architect Frank Wills. It was converted into a cinema in 1909 and in 1954 into a shopping mall. The facade was later remodelled then occupied by individual businesses.
When the Miles buildings were demolished an archaeological dig took place on the site in February 2007. Part of the dig uncovered the foundations of an eighteenth-century building, but the rest of the site was undisturbed bedrock. A study conducted in November 2006 found that:
Identification of a Roman settlement site at West Street in 2003 and its subsequent investigation. This settlement dated to between the Second and Fourth centuries A.D. [although evidence for Iron Age and earlier prehistoric activity was also found during the fieldwork]. Saxon pottery was also recovered. It was noted that the placename Bedminster implies the presence of a minster before the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The Domesday survey of 1086 indicated that the manor of Bedminster was within the county of Somerset and had belonged to the Crown before 1066. It was then in the possession of Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances. The report summarised John Collinson's account of the history of the manor published in 1791 which states that the manor was granted by William II to Robert fitzHamon. fitzHamon's daughter inherited the manor and on her marriage it passed into the hands of her husband Robert fitzHarding, Earl of Gloucester. fitzHarding subsequently became the Lord of Berkeley and the manor remained in the ownership of the Berkeley family until the early fifteenth century.
It then passed by marriage to the Earl of Warwick, Richard Beauchamp and then to the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham's estates were confiscated by Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547) and sold to the Earl of Essex. The Crown regained the manor when Essex died and granted it to the Nevil family in 1553. The Nevils sold the manor to the Smyth family of Ashton Court in 1605 who retained it for several centuries. The first direct evidence found for the study area was a terrier of the parish of Bedminster (BRO AC/M11/32) dating to 1730 which indicated that the site was part of the land associated with the adjacent London Inn (SMR 22506). A plan of the parish of Bedminster of c.1786 (BRO AC/PL107/2) records three small buildings on the north-west side of the study area. A plan of the parish of 1827 (BRO AC/PL107/2) with an associated terrier (BRO AC/E21/1) records that several more non-residential structures had been constructed and records the study area as comprising parts of two land parcels (2157 and 2158). Parcel 2157 was listed in the terrier as a piggery owned by a John Morgan, while Parcel 2158 was recorded as a house and garden, although no owner was listed.
The Bedminster tithe survey of 1841 (BRO EP/A/32/7) recorded no change to the arrangement of structures within the site and that the piggery was still present. An investigation into the public health of Bristol in the early 1850s records a complaint by Moses Reynolds against Henry Williams of Cannon Street concerning his burning of pigs and melting fat, implying that the piggery was then still operating. George Ashmead's plan of Bristol of 1855 indicated that several of the group of smaller buildings recorded by the tithe survey had, by then, been replaced by two attached larger structures on the Cannon Street frontage. These structures had been replaced by three terraced houses by the early 1880s [in fact, these terraced houses dated to the early 1890s and were first recorded by the 1892 street directories. The edition of the Ordnance Survey Bristol Town plan used in the report is, in fact from at least the 1890s; the 1880s edition of the plan records the large structures shown by Ashmead].
Cannon Street was also widened on its western side and the adjacent London Inn was also demolished at this time. No.5 Cannon Street was occupied by E. N. Miles & Co., drapers, from 1898 and by 1910 the company occupied all three properties. E. N. Miles & Co. was traded from the houses into the early 1970s and had extended them to cover the whole site by that date. The buildings were still standing in 1991 but were subsequently demolished. The site was visited on 28 November 2006. The it was cleared of buildings and the area on the south-west (rear) boundary was noted to have been raised by between 2 and 3 metres above the level of the surrounding ground to accommodate a culvert. Scars from the roofs of the buildings which historically stood within the site were noted in the boundary walls enclosing the site.
Sources & Resources
Bedminster Town Hall - Wikipedia
Bedminster, Bristol - Wikipedia
Bristol City Maps
Bristol pictured in the 1970s - Bristol Live