Fact 31: Neptune on the move
Neptune stands at the head of St Augustine’s Reach on the City Centre looking as if he had been there forever. Far from it. Neptune must be Bristol’s most travelled statue. The old man of the sea was cast in lead and set up in 1723 in Temple Street when a new conduit or water pipe was made. He had his own fountain.
He and his fountain were twice moved around Temple Street, but always within yards of Temple church with its famous leaning tower.
Then, in 1872, Neptune was settled at thejunction ofVictoria Street and Temple Street. He stayed there until 1949 when he was given his present site and a smart granite base at St Augustine’s bridgehead.
The old boy even took a month long break from Bristol on one occasion. That was in the 1980s when experts realised that his lead bodywork needed attention. So Neptune was carted off for a long-overdue service before resuming his rightful place as one of Bristol’s best-loved street characters.
Fact 32: Bristol's Leaning Tower of Temple
Pisa has its famous leaning tower - and so does Bristol with its drunkenly off-vertical tower of Temple Church in Temple Street.
The tower isn’t on the stupendous scale of its Italian counterpart, it’s true. But its prominent position by busy Victoria Street and its proximity to Temple Meads station make it one of the most startling sights to be seen by newly-arrived visitors to Bristol.
Poor old Temple Church was badly blitzed during the air raids of World War II and the building remains a gutted ruin half a century later.
But it wasn’t enemy bombs which caused the tower to reel over five foot out of true. That happened after it was rebuilt in 1460. The foundations caused problems which couldn’t be solved, the tower began to move but, at last, it settled at today’s offbeat angle.
There has been a church on this site since 1145 when the mysterious order of Knights Templar erected their chapel here - nearby Temple Meads takes its name from the order.
Fact 33: Pay up - on the nail
'Cash on the Nail' the man said. . . and a century or so ago in Bristol he really meant it. For the deal would have been clinched on one of Bristol’s four famous nails standing outside the Corn Exchange on Corn Street or, from the late 1550s to 1771, under a covered walk outside All Saints Church before they were moved to today’s well-known site.
The brass nails with their flat tops and raised edges to prevent coins tumbling onto the pavement, were made as convenient tables for merchants to carry out their business . . . hence the expressions 'nailing a deal' and cash on the nail. The oldest pillar hasn’t got a date but experts say it is late Elizabethan. The second was given by Bristol merchant Robert Kitchen, who died in 1594. The two remaining nails are dated 1625 and 1631.
Robert Kitchen’s nail was slightly bent when it was struck by a lorry in 1963. The pillar isso heavy that a crane had to be used to lift it before it could be replaced securely. A large crowd gathered, worried that someone might be making off with an important part of Bristol’s history. The workmen quickly reassured them. . . and the nail was replaced the next day.
Fact 34: Arnolfini who?
What’s in a name? A bit of a mystery for many people when it comes to the Arnolfini, Bristol’s famous modem art gallery housed on the two lower floors of the massive Bush warehouse on Narrow Quay.
Arnolfini? Who’s he? Something to do with an Arnold someone-or-other? Not a bit of it. Bristol’s Arnoffini made its first appearance in 1960 when former art student and modern art enthusiast Jeremy Rees and some friends decided that the city needed its own modem gallery. But what to call it?
He remembered a favourite picture,Jan Van Eyck’s The Marrige of the Arnolfini painted in 1434, one of the masterpieces of Dutch art. It is a portrait of an Italian merchant with his bride and it now hangs in the National Gallery in London. The Bristol gallery needed an unusual, striking name . . . and Amolfini was certainly that! The name stuck.
Bristol’s Amolfini had a nomadic early life. It originally opened in a large upstairs room in Triangle West, Clifton and then made a brief stay at a disused warehouse in Queen Square before arriving at another empty warehouse on Canon’s Road. Then, at last, it found its permanent headquarters at the old tea warehouse on Narrow Quay where it has stayed ever since.
Among its many accolades, the Arnolfini was made the subject of a Royal Mail postage stamp as part of a series celebrating outstanding successes in restoring old industrial buildings.
Fact 35: The Bristol Boxkite
It hangs from the ceiling of the Bristol City Museum in Queen’s Road, Clifton, a mad contraption of strings and wire.. . and one of the most significant engineering products ever made.
The Bristol Boxkite - called that because it looked just like one — was the brainchild of Sir George White, Bristol’s tramways boss and the founder of the Bristol Aeroplane Company and the British aviation industry. First he flew French aircraft at his Filton airfield and factory - then came the home-made Bristol Boxkite, unveiled dramatically with a public flying display on Durdham Down in 1910, piloted by a Frenchman.
The plane was so successful that before long, two were being made a week and the order book was full. And its place in world history was assured within months of that dramatic lift-off. A Bristol Boxkite was fitted with a morse key and carried out aerial reconnaisance during autumn manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain. It was the first time any aircraft had been flown for military purposes. A new age had begun.
Fact 36: A little piece of Bristol in America
Well, quite a large piece of old Bristol and it lies buried 3,000 miles across the Atlantic beneath East River Drive in New York City. It is tons of rubble from buildings wrecked in the Bristol Blitzes of World War II which was ferried across the Atlantic in war-time by American Liberty ships.
These vessels brought desperately-needed goods to the people of Britain via Avonmouth docks, but once their cargoes had been unloaded, they were dangerously unstable. Without cargoes or heavy ballast, the ships could well have split at the seams or capsized on the rough crossing back to their East Coast harbours. The answer lay by the ton-load in areas of Bristol flattened by bombs.
Until then this rubble had been ferried into the Bristol Channel and dumped overboard. Now it had a more useful job to do helping American sailors to get safely home. And the rubble didn’t go to waste on the far side of the Atlantic. In New York City the great East River Drive highway was under construction and the ex-ballast was used as foundations for the motorway. A plaque was placed by the roadside to record the tale.
After the area was redeveloped for waterside apartments, the plaque was reinstated and unveiled in 1974 by the Bristol-born Hollywood film star Gary Grant. In a delightfully flamboyant gesture Cary arrived at the ceremony in a British double-decker bus.
Fact 37: The Bedminster Flying Cod
Bedminster’s Flying Cod must be one of south Bristol’s greatest street sign eye-catchers. The hefty figure of a fish adorns the front of Webb’s fresh fish shop in East Street, Bedminster, where it gazes across the road at the redeveloped site of the former tobacco giant Wills factory.
The fish swam into public view when it was erected in East Street in 1990 thanks to a government initiative to brighten up inner city areas and within months it had become one of the most talked-about and admired bits of street decoration. Buses stop just outside the shop and the staff at Webb’s love seeing the expressions on the faces of top deck passengers new to the route. They’re goggle-eyed. . . or cod-eyed!
Fact 38: Towering discoveries
The fanciful Cabot Tower on Brandon Hill is one of Bristol’s most exotic landmarks. he foundation stone was laid during a lavish ceremony on June 24, 1897, the 400th anniversary of John and Sebastian Cabot’s discovery of mainland America aboard the Bristol ship the Matthew. Across the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, there was a big ceremony too.
The tower was opened the following year, the work of Bristol architect William Venn Gough whose other buildings in Bristol include Colston’s Girls School on Cheltenham Road and the former Port of Bristol Authority offices on Queen Square. Cabot Tower stands 105 feet tall and is capped by a gilded, winged figure representing the spirit of commerce mounted on a globe of the world.
Fact 39: Did he dive or didn’t he?
Only one person has claimed to have made the daredevil dive from the Clifton Suspension Bridge into the River Avon more than 250 foot below and survived - American adventurer Lawrence Donovan.
This noisy self-publicist arrived in Bristol in 1889. He told everyone who would listen to him that he had already dived from the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, half the height of its British counterpart, and that he was ready for Clifton’s far greater challenge.
The day and time were announced and crowds gathered to watch his spectacular attempt. Donovan made a great show of stomping back and forth along the bridge, but always with police alongside him. Whenever he made the slightest move to go near the edge, he was promptly restrained by the officers. After a while the crowds melted away, disappointed.
But one night shortly afterwards a carriage driven by two men came clattering onto the bridge. Out came a figure which plunged into the water below. Almost immediately afterwards Donovan was rescued on the Leigh Woods side of the river, claiming he had made his dive weanng a specially-designed metal body protector.
Onlookers say it was a dummy, not Donovan, which had sailed through the air and smashed into the water. Donovan was taken to hospital at once. The sceptical staff who examined the remarkably unharmed American remarked dourly that the adventurer was suffering from 'an ailment certainly not caused by a jump from the bridge'.
Fact 40: The lover who leapt...and lived
Only a handful of people have survived the terrible fall from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The most celebrated was young lover Sarah Ann Henley.
Sarah was a local girl from St Philip’s in Bristol. In 1885 she was 22 and working in a Bristol factory when she was jilted by her boyfriend.
The heartbroken girl made her way up from industrial St Philips to Clifton and the bridge and, in despair, she leapt from the parapet. She was saved by victorian women’s fashion.
This was the age of wide skirts and voluminous petticoats and as she tumbled through the air, this mass of material acted like a sort of parachute to break her fall. Instead of crashing like a stone she drifted in the wind and sailed across to a sticky landing in the deep mud of the riverside.
The drama wasn’t over. Her rescue from the mud was a difficult business but at last she was brought safely to firm ground and then to hospital where she was found, amazingly, to have suffered no more than a few light bruises but deep shock. Sarah’s tale has a happy ending. She later married, lived to the ripe old age of 84 and was quite a celebrity.
Please feel free to add your own comments to the Guestbook or Forum
Memories of Bristol over the past 100 years including 3000 photographs on-line
This non commercial 'hobby' site, has been evolving and expanding on line since 2001 and is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only.
