Bristol's Polish Community

Bristol’s Polish community was first established in the twentieth century by Polish airmen and people displaced by the second world war and by economic migrants who came to join them later in the century, these groups predate the large wave of workers who came after Poland’s inclusion in the European Community in 2004. These groups have swelled the membership of the city’s Polish Catholic Church which had been dwindling by the 1990s.

But there were individual Poles who came as visitors as early as the 18th century. General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the Polish nationalist hero came to Bristol in this period and the diminutive musician Jozef Boruwlaski (1739-1837 raised his family in Bristol).

There was also until the Second World War a large and diverse Jewish community in Poland a few of whom were also resident in Bristol since the eighteenth century.