Coombe Dingle is a suburb of

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city i ...

, England, centred near where the Hazel Brook tributary of the

River Trym A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wa ...

emerges from a limestone gorge bisecting the

Blaise Castle Blaise Castle is a folly built in 1766 near Henbury in Bristol, England. The castle sits within the Blaise Castle Estate, which also includes Blaise Castle House, a Grade II* listed building, listed 18th-century mansion house. The folly castle ...

Estate to join the main course of the Trym. Historically this area formed part of the parish of

Westbury on Trym Westbury on Trym is a suburb and council ward in the north of the City of Bristol, near the suburbs of Stoke Bishop, Westbury Park, Henleaze, Southmead and Henbury, in the southwest of England. With a village atmosphere, the place is partly na ...

, Gloucestershire, and is now part of

Kingsweston Kingsweston was a ward of the city of Bristol. The three districts in the ward wer Coombe Dingle, Lawrence Weston and Sea Mills. The ward takes its name from the old district of Kings Weston (usually spelt in two words), now generally conside ...

ward of the city of Bristol. South of Coombe Dingle is Sea Mills; to the north is

Kings Weston Hill Kings Weston Hill () is a hill in the north of Bristol, England. It forms a ridge about long, extending from Henbury to Shirehampton and separating Lawrence Weston to the north from Coombe Dingle to the south. The hill is a public open space m ...

; to the west are

Kings Weston House Kings Weston House () is a historic building in Kings Weston Lane, Kingsweston, Bristol, England. History It was built between 1712 and 1719 was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh for Edward Southwell on the site of an earlier Tudor house, remodel ...

and

Shirehampton Shirehampton is a district of Bristol in England, near Avonmouth, at the northwestern edge of the city. It originated as a separate village, retains a High Street with a parish church and shops, and is still thought of as a village by many of it ...

Park; and to the east,

Henbury Henbury is a suburb of Bristol, England, approximately north west of the city centre. It was formerly a village in Gloucestershire and is now bordered by Westbury-on-Trym to the south; Brentry to the east and the Blaise Castle Estate, Blaise H ...

Golf Club and Westbury on Trym proper. The inhabited place appears simply as ''Combe'', ''Coomb'' or ''Coombe'', meaning 'short bowl-shaped valley', in documents from the 13th century onwards and on early maps. The name applied to Coombe Farm and Coombe House on the eastern side of the confluence of the Hazel Brook and the Trym, not where the modern suburb lies. This area later became noted for its cherry orchards, commemorated in a modern house-name, and a nursery. Strictly speaking, Coombe Dingle was the wooded narrow valley through which the Trym passes south-west of the farm and house to flow southwards through Sea Mills to the River Avon. The name of the narrow valley was borrowed for the new development consisting mostly of private housing built to the west of the Trym in the 1920s and 1930s on an area called Boulton's (or Bowden's) Fields. It was and remains a desirable area to live. Near the western edge is Haig Close, a small development of houses originally built for ex-servicemen in 1929 on land donated from the Kingsweston Estate by

Philip Napier Miles Philip Napier Miles JP DLitt ''h.c.'' (Bristol) (21 January 1865 – 19 July 1935) was a prominent and wealthy citizen of Bristol, UK, who left his mark on the city, especially on what are now its western suburbs, through his musical and organis ...

, though this is generally said to be in Sea Mills. Coombe Dingle was once a popular destination for outings from Bristol, and there was a well-known tea-room in the wooded Dingle itself, now a private house. The original winding road passing it, also called The Dingle, has been bypassed by the modern A4162 which is carried across the river on a discreet bridge with a classical-style balustrade. In the Dingle itself, the river drove a flour mill called Coombe Mill. There is a parade of shops on Westbury Lane. There used to be, close to the road bridge and near the northern end of Coombe Lane, a "tin" (i.e. corrugated iron)

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related Christian denomination, denominations of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John W ...

chapel.Tin Tabernacles website
/ref> It was a small building with plain Gothic-style windows dating from the 1890s, demolished in the mid-1990s and replaced by a house. There are no other places of worship in Coombe Dingle. Coombe Lane is the home of

Bristol University The University of Bristol is a Red brick university, red brick Russell Group research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Society of Merchant Venturers, Merchant Venturers' sc ...

sports complex, which is commonly referred to as Coombe Dingle, though it is really in Stoke Bishop.

References

*Fisher, Janet, and Derek Fisher (2002) ''Bygone Bristol: Sneyd Park, Stoke Bishop, Coombe Dingle, Henbury on old postcards.'' Bristol: Bygone Bristol. {{Areas of Bristol Areas of Bristol