3-021-125 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Entertainment of Her Majesty's Ministers in the Volunteer Drill-Hall at Bristol, 1868. View of '...the grand entertainment given to several of her Majesty's Ministers...by the Bristol Conservative Association and their party in the adjoining counties of Gloucester and Somerset. This banquet took place in the spacious drill-hall of the Bristol Volunteer Corps...which was handsomely furnished and decorated for the occasion. The number of guests seated at the tables was about 1000, and, with the ladies who filled the galleries above, it was estimated that there were at least 1500 persons in the hall. The chair was occupied by the Duke of Beaufort, K.G.; who had Lord Stanley on his right hand and Sir John Pakington on his left, with Mr. Gathorne Hardy and many influential members of both Houses of Parliament. The vice-chairman was the Mayor of Bristol. The toasts were duly proposed and honoured; and the chief speakers were the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Secretary of State for War, and the Secretary of State for the Home Department, besides the Duke of Beaufort, Lord Bathurst, Sir W. Miles, Sir George Jenkinson, Colonel Hogg, Colonel Neville Grenville, Colonel Luttrell, Archdeacon Denison, and several others'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.