Features / clifton suspension bridge
Preserving Brunel’s legacy deep underground
It is the job of Etain O’Shea to lead groups into somewhere that despite being directly beneath our city’s most famous structure had remained secret for more than 160 years.
Etain is learning officer at the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust and during the Easter holidays is leading guided tours of the bridge’s cavernous vaults within the abutment underneath the Leigh Woods tower.
Taking visitors through a locked door, along a passageway and down a ladder, Etain says that often when she tells people that she works at the bridge, they think that she serves coffee from the cart rather than being a custodian of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s world famous legacy.
is needed now More than ever
“When people come in here they are often gobsmacked and don’t have much to say,” Etain told the Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast.
“Being in the biggest vault that you can be in here is an incredible experience.”
Listen to more from Etain on the latest episode of the Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast:
Astonishingly, the 12 vaulted chambers up to 36 feet deep – construction of which Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have supervised between 1836 and 1840 as the first part of the bridge to be constructed – were only rediscovered in 2002 during works to resurface the abutments.
The Leigh Woods Abutment is a huge red sandstone structure built on the side of the gorge on the North Somerset side of the bridge – photo: Martin Booth
Ray Brown was replacing some paving slabs when he unearthed two railways sleepers which covered the entrance to what turned out to be a 50ft shaft leading into the chambers.
In time for this year’s tours – sponsored by full fibre provider, ITS Technology Group’s Faster Britain programme – a new decking has been installed in the largest of the stone chambers beneath a ceiling festooned in stalactites.
Book tickets for vaults tours from www.cliftonbridge.org.uk/whats-happening with new slots being made available until the end of the season on October 31.
The largest vault is large enough to contain three double-decker buses one on top of each other – photo: Martin Booth
Main photo: Martin Booth
Read more: Many young people from south Bristol have never visited Suspension Bridge
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