Underfall Yard:Brunel’s secret Bristol legacy

Underfall Yard is no mausoleum to the past, it is a living breathing shipyard without which Bristol would never have developed its economic strength.

Pamela Parkes investigates. Pictures by Jon Kent

Take a walk past the ss Great Britain, have a pint at The Cottage and admire the new Banksy, but then why not venture just a few hundred yards past all of this and discover, tucked away, a monument as important to our national heritage as Stonehenge.

Underfall Yard, now a gathering of 19th-century red brick buildings, is a scheduled ancient monument and, without it, there would be no Floating Harbour and Bristol’s history would have been very, very different.

When it was built the yard was the centre of pioneering technological advances spearheaded by the greatest engineers of their day, including Brunel and Girdlestone.

Reminders of the past still remain, including the stunning pump rooms with a collection of Edwardian machinery which, until about five years ago, was still helping pump out the Floating Harbour, clearing it of silt.

“Not conventional”

Now the site is run by the Underfall Yard Trust.

“It’s not conventional, it’s not a country house, it’s not what people recognise instantly as heritage…but it is really, really important,” said project manager Nicola Dyer.

“Without this yard, without the overfall, without the hydraulic power which was generated here that operated the locks and the swing bridges, you wouldn’t have the Floating Harbour, which means you wouldn’t have Bristol developing the way that it did for the last 200 years.

“It’s massively significant and I think that is what is really exciting about the project is we do genuinely have a city centre site that is of incredible recognised importance, which is a little bit of a secret in some ways.”

Ancient monument

As a scheduled ancient monument the yard escaped being turned into ubiquitous waterside flats after commercial shipping ended in the city in the late 1970s.

“This is a last remnant,” said Nicola. “It’s not that there isn’t boat building going on in other parts of Bristol, but the yard has maintained its working atmosphere. Not only is the site remarkable, the continuity is remarkable and you don’t find that in other places.”

This is what makes the yard so special. It is no mausoleum to the past. Underfall Yard is a living breathing ship yard, run by a cooperative of craftsmen and women dedicated to traditional maritime skills and, if everything goes to plan, over the next 18 months, Underfall Yard will be as firmly on the Bristol tourist trail as Brunel’s masterpieces.

Maritime excellence

Wandering around the yard is to discover a window into past skills and a vision of the future. Underfall Yard Trust, which took over running the yard from Bristol City Council in 1994, has won just over £3million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the trust plans to turn it into a centre of maritime excellence.

It plans to open up more of the space to craftspeople in a bid to not only preserve traditional marine skills, but introduce them to a new generation.

“The ethos is not to become a museum,” said Nicola. “People have said over and over again it has to stay a working yard – that’s what’s beautiful about it.

“The yard has evolved over time and it has acted as a magnet (for traditional craftspeople). We have been incredibly lucky that we have found these people. The challenge now that we are taking on more space is we keep that ethos going – who we bring in next really to compliment everyone we have here.

“The long-term vision for the yard is that it becomes a centre of maritime excellence. It is not just about traditional skills as they used to be – it’s about how they are being used now.”

The trust’s plan also includes converting the pump house to a new visitor centre by 2016, but Nicola emphasises that they will not lose what makes the yard so special to many of its visitors.

“Some people have interest in the history, other people have interest in the traditional boat-making skills, other people love it because it’s unsanitised and not tidied up – it’s a bit messy because it’s a working environment.”

History of Underfall Yard

Bristol’s harbour was built upon the exceptional tidal range of the Severn Estuary and River Avon, which carried ships into the city and scoured the river of silt.

Trade flourished and, during the Middle Ages, the port expanded, trading with the Atlantic seaboard, Iceland, the Mediterranean, and eventually becoming a linchpin in the slave trade to the West Indies.

But continuing commercial success meant larger ships and, when the water drained away from the quay at low tide, the ships lay grounded in the mud. To try and keep up with ports such as Liverpool, The Bristol Docks Company employed engineer William Jessop to create a non-tidal harbour.

Between 1804 and 1809 the Floating Harbour was built which trapped the water behind lock gates allowing ships to remain floating at all times.

It was a mammoth engineering project – an earth dam was built at Underfall Yard and the Cumberland Basin lock system constructed. The New Cut was excavated to bypass the Floating Harbour and carry the tidal waters to rejoin the River Avon near Temple Meads station. The Feeder Canal was dug to join the river at Netham Lock. The canal both fed the new harbour with water to maintain the dock level and provided a connection for barges to the river Avon, to Bath and the Kennet and Avon Canal.

William Jessop had created a weir in the dam at Underfall to allow surplus water to flow back into the New Cut, this was known as the ‘Overfall’.

By the 1830s the Floating Harbour was suffering from severe silting and Isambard Kingdom Brunel devised a solution. In place of the Overfall he constructed three shallow sluices and one deep scouring sluice between the harbour and the New Cut, together with a dredging vessel. This drag boat would scrape the silt away from the quay walls. When the deep sluice opened at low tide, a powerful undertow sucked the silt into the river to be carried away on the next tide. The shallow sluices enabled adjustment of the dock water level according to weather conditions.

This ‘Underfall ‘ system was rebuilt in the 1880s with longer sluices and the yard above enlarged. Brunel’s method of silt disposal is still in operation today, but the silt is carried in mud barges or pumped to the sluices through a quayside pipe system from the more efficient modern ‘Cutter-Suction’ dredgers.

However, even Brunel’s design could not overcome limitations of the port when faced with the ever increasing size of ships and the narrowness of the river through the Avon Gorge. Bristol’s role as an international trading port was over by the 1890s when Avonmouth Docks were developed.

(History information courtesy of Underfall Boat Yard)

For more information about Underfall Boat Yard, visit www.underfallboatyard.co.uk