Encyclopedia
Bristol is a
city, unitary authority and
ceremonial county in
South West England, 115
miles west of
London and located at
With a population of 400,000, and
metropolitan area of 550,000, it is England's sixth, and the
United Kingdom's ninth, most populous city, and one of England's core cities. It received a royal charter in 1155 and was granted county status in 1373. For half a millennium it was the second or third largest English city, until the rapid rise of
Liverpool,
Manchester and
Birmingham in the
Industrial Revolution of the 1780s. It borders on the unitary districts of
Bath and North East Somerset,
North Somerset and
South Gloucestershire, and has a short coastline on the
Bristol Channel.
Bristol is one of the main centres of culture, employment and education in the region. From its earliest days, its prosperity has been linked to that of the
Port of Bristol, the commercial
port, which was in the city centre but has now moved to the Bristol Channel coast at
Avonmouth and Portbury. In more recent years the economy has been built on the aerospace industry, and the city centre docks have been regenerated as a centre of heritage and culture. The city is famous for its unique music and film industries, and was a finalist for the 2008 European Capital of Culture.
History
There is evidence of settlement in the Bristol area from the palaeolithic era, with 60,000-year-old archaeological finds at Shirehampton and St Annes. There are
iron age hill forts near the city, at Leigh Woods and
Clifton Down on the side of the
Avon Gorge, and on Kingsweston Hill, near Henbury. During the
Roman era there was a settlement,
Abona, at what is now
Sea Mills, connected to
Bath by
Roman road, and another settlement at what is now Inns Court. There were also isolated villas and small settlements throughout the area.
The town of
Brycgstow was in existence by the beginning of the 11th century, and under Norman rule acquired one of the strongest
castles in southern England. The River Avon in the city centre has slowly evolved into
Bristol Harbour, and since the 12th century the harbour has been an important port, handling much of England's trade with
Ireland. In 1247 a new bridge was built and the town was extended to incorporate neighbouring suburbs, becoming in 1373 a county in its own right. During this period Bristol also became a centre of shipbuilding and manufacturing. Bristol was the starting point for many important voyages, notably
John Cabot's 1497 voyage of exploration to North America.
By the 14th century Bristol was England's third-largest town , with perhaps 15-20,000 inhabitants on the eve of the
Black Death of 1348-49. The plague inflicted a prolonged pause in the growth of Bristol's population, with numbers remaining at 10-12,000 through most of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Diocese of Bristol was founded in 1542, with the former
Abbey of St Augustine becoming
Bristol Cathedral. During the
1640s Civil War the city suffered through Royalist military occupation and plague.
Renewed growth came with the 17th-century rise of England's American colonies and the rapid 18th-century expansion of England's part in the Atlantic trade in Africans taken for
slavery in the Americas. Bristol, along with
Liverpool, became a significant centre for the slave trade although few slaves were brought to Britain. During the height of the slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2000 slaving ships were fitted out at Bristol, carrying a estimated half a million people from
Africa to the
Americas and
slavery. Fishermen who left Bristol were long part of the migratory fishery to the
Grand Banks of
Newfoundland and began settling that island permanently in larger numbers around this time. Bristol's strong nautical ties meant that maritime safety was an important issue in the city, In the 19th century
Samuel Plimsoll, "the sailor's friend", campaigned fearlessly to make the seas safer. He was shocked by the scandal of overloaded cargoes and successfully fought for a compulsory loadline on ships.
Competition from Liverpool from c.1760, the disruption of maritime commerce through war with
France and the abolition of the slave trade contributed to the city's failure to keep pace with the newer manufacturing centres of the North and Midlands. The long passage up the heavily tidal Avon Gorge, which had made the port highly secure during the middle ages, had become a liability which the construction of a new "Floating Harbour" in 1804–9 failed to overcome. Nevertheless, Bristol's population quintupled during the 19th century, supported by new industries and growing commerce. It was particularly associated with the Victorian engineer
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the
Great Western Railway between Bristol and London, two pioneering Bristol-built steamships, and the
Clifton Suspension Bridge.
John Wesley founded the very first
Methodist Chapel, in Bristol in 1739.
Bristol's city centre suffered severe damage from bombing during
World War II. The original central shopping area, near the bridge and castle, is now a park containing two bombed out churches and some tiny fragments of the castle. A third bombed church nearby, St Nicholas, has been restored and currently houses private city council offices despite containing a
triptych by
William Hogarth, painted for the high altar of
St Mary Redcliffe in 1756.
Like much British post-war planning, the rebuilding of
Bristol city centre was characterised by large, cheap
tower blocks,
brutalist architecture and expansion of roads. Since the 1980s this trend has changed with the closure of some main roads, the restoration of the Georgian period Queen's and Portland Squares, the current demolition and rebuilding of the Broadmead shopping centre and, in 2006, one of the city centre's tallest post-war blocks was torn down. The removal of the docks to
Avonmouth, seven miles downstream from the city centre has also allowed substantial corporate redevelopment of the old central dock area in recent decades, although at one time the continued existence of the docks was in jeopardy as it was viewed as a derelict industrial site rather than a potential asset.
Economy and industry
As well as Bristol's nautical connections, the city's economy is reliant on the aerospace industry, the media, information technology and financial services sectors and tourism. In 1998 Bristol's
GDP was £6.224 billion
GBP, and the combined GDP of South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and B&NES was £6.98 billion. The GDP per head was £15,472, making the city more affluent than the UK as a whole, at 23% above the national average. This makes it the second-highest per-capita GDP of an English city, after London, and 34th in the
European Union, as well as the only English core city with a GDP above the national average. In December 2005, Bristol's
unemployment rate was 5.2%, compared to 3.6% for the south west and 4.8% for the United Kingdom.
While Bristol's economy is no longer reliant upon its port, the city is the largest importer of cars to the UK. Since the port was leased in 1991, £330 million has been invested and the annual tonnage throughput has increased from 4m tonnes to 12m tonnes. The financial services sector employs 40,000 in the city, and the hi-tech sector is important, with 400 micro-electronics and silicon design companies, as well as the
Hewlett-Packard national research laboratories. Bristol is the UK's seventh most popular destination for foreign tourists, and the city receives nine million visitors each year.
In the 20th century, Bristol's manufacturing activities expanded to include aircraft production at
Filton, by the
Bristol Aeroplane Company, and aero-engine manufacture by
Bristol Aero Engines at
Patchway. The aeroplane company became famous for the
WWI Bristol Fighter, and
Second World War Blenheim and
Beaufighter aircraft. In the 1950s it became one of the country's major manufacturers of civil aircraft, with the Bristol Freighter and
Britannia and the huge
Brabazon airliner. The
Bristol Aeroplane Company diversified into car manufacturing in the 1940s, building luxury hand-built cars at their factory in
Filton, under the name
Bristol Cars, which became independent from the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1960.
In the 1960s Filton played a key role in the Anglo-French
Concorde supersonic airliner project. Concorde components were manufactured in British and French factories and shipped to the two final assembly plants, in
Toulouse and Filton. The French manufactured the centre fuselage and centre wing and the British the nose, rear fuselage, fin and wingtips, while the Rolls-Royce/Snecma 593 engine's manufacture was split between
Rolls-Royce and
SNECMA . The British Concorde prototype made its maiden flight from Filton to
RAF Fairford on 9 April 1969, five weeks after the French test flight. In 2003 the companies running Concorde made the decision to cease flying the aircraft and to retire them to locations around the world. On 26 November 2003, Concorde 216 made the final Concorde flight, returning to Filton airfield to be kept there permanently as the centrepiece of a projected air museum. This museum will include the existing Bristol Aero Collection, which includes a
Bristol Britannia aircraft.
The major aerospace companies in Bristol now are
BAE Systems,
Airbus and
Rolls-Royce, all based at Filton. Another important
aviation company in the city is
Cameron Balloons, the world's largest manufacturer of
hot air balloons. Annually, in August, the city is host to the
Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, one of Europe's largest hot air balloon events.
Culture
The city has two
League football clubs:
Bristol City who play in League One and
Bristol Rovers who play in League Two, as well as a number of non-league clubs. The city is also home to
Bristol Rugby rugby union club, which has won promotion to the Guinness Premiership, a first-class
cricket side, Gloucestershire C.C.C. and a Rugby League Conference side, the
Bristol Sonics. The city also stages an annual
half marathon, and in 2001 played host to the World Half Marathon Championships.
In summer the grounds of
Ashton Court to the west of the city play host to the
Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, a major event for
hot-air ballooning in the UK. The Fiesta draws a substantial crowd even for the early morning lift that typically begins at about 6.30 am. Events and a fairground entertain the crowds during the day. A second mass ascent is then made in the early evening, again taking advantage of lower wind speeds. Ashton Court also plays host to the
Ashton Court festival each summer, an outdoors music festival which used to be known as the Bristol Community Festival.
The city's principal theatre company, the
Bristol Old Vic, was founded in 1946 as an offshoot of the
Old Vic company in London. Its premises on King Street consist of the 1766 Theatre Royal , a modern studio theatre called the New Vic , and foyer and bar areas in the adjacent Coopers' Hall . The Theatre Royal is a grade I
listed building and the oldest continuously-operating theatre in England. The Prestigious
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which had originated in King street is now a separate company. The
Bristol Hippodrome is a larger theatre which hosts national touring productions, while the 2000-seat Colston Hall, named after
Edward Colston, is the city's main concert venue. Other theatres include the Tobacco Factory, QEH and Redgrave Theatres. Bristol is home to many live music venues, of which
The Old Duke is perhaps the best known.
The music scene is thriving and significant. From the late 1970s onwards it was home to a crop of cultish bands combining punk, funk, dub and political consciousness, the most celebrated being The Pop Group. Ten years later, Bristol was the birthplace of a type of English
hip-hop music called
trip hop or the "Bristol Sound", epitomised in the work of artists such as
Tricky, Portishead, Smith & Mighty and
Massive Attack. It is also a stronghold of
drum n bass with notable artists such as the Mercury Prize winning Roni Size/Reprazent and
Kosheen as well as the pioneering DJ Krust and
More Rockers. This music is part of the wider Bristol urban culture scene which received international media attention in the 1990s and still thrives today.
The
Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery houses a collection of natural history, archaeology, local glassware, Chinese ceramics and art. The
Bristol Industrial Museum, on the dockside, shows local industrial heritage and operates a steam railway, boat trips, and working dockside cranes. The City Museum also runs three preserved historic houses: the Tudor Red Lodge, the Georgian House, and
Blaise Castle House. The
Watershed Media Centre and
Arnolfini gallery, both in disused dockside warehouses, exhibit contemporary art, photography and cinema.
Stop frame animation films and commercials painstakingly produced by
Aardman Animations and high quality television series focusing on the natural world have also brought fame and artistic credit to the city. The city is home to the BBC's regional headquarters, and the BBC Natural History Unit. Locations in and around Bristol often feature in the BBC's natural history programmes, including the cult children's television programme
Animal Magic, filmed at
Bristol Zoo.
In literature Bristol is noted as the birth place of
Thomas Chatterton, chief poet of the 18th-century Gothic literary revival, England's youngest writer of mature verse, and precursor of the Romantic movement.
Robert Southey was born in Wine Street, Bristol in 1774,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Southey married the Bristol Fricker sisters; and
William Wordsworth spent time in the city where Joseph Cottle first published Lyrical Ballads in 1798.
The 18th and 19th century portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence and 19th century architect
Francis Greenway, designer of many of
Sydney's first buildings, came from the city, and more recently the infamous
graffiti artist
Banksy. Many famous comedians are locals, including
Justin Lee Collins and Lee Evans. Bristol University has given us the satirist Chris Morris,
Simon Pegg and
Nick Frost of
Spaced is a British [i] television [i] situation comedy [i] written by and starring Simon Pegg [i]...
and
Shaun of the Dead is a zombie [i]-themed romantic comedy [i], or "rom zom com" as it dubs itself, re...
and
Matt Lucas and
David Walliams of
Little Britain is a character-based BBC [i] radio [i] and television [i] sketch show [i] written by...
fame. Hollywood actor
Cary Grant was born in the city,
Patrick Stewart, Jane Lapotaire,
Pete Postlethwaite,
Jeremy Irons, Greta Scacchi,
Miranda Richardson, Helen Baxendale,
Daniel Day-Lewis,
Gene Wilder and
Tony Robinson are amongst the many actors who learnt their craft at the world famous
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, opened by
Sir Lawrence Olivier in 1946 and
Hugo Weaving studied at
Queen Elizabeth's Hospital School.
Bristol has a daily morning
newspaper, the
Western Daily Press; an evening paper, the
Evening Post; a weekly free newspaper, the
Bristol Observer; and a Bristol edition of the free
Metro newspaper. The local weekly listings magazine,
Venue, covers the city's music, theatre and arts scenes. All of these papers are owned by the
Northcliffe Group. The city has several local radio stations, including BBC Radio Bristol, GWR FM,
Classic Gold 1260 and a university station,
The Hub.
A distinctive dialect of
English is spoken in Bristol . Uniquely for an urban area of Britain, this is a
rhotic dialect, in which the
r in words like
car is pronounced. It is perhaps this element of the dialect which has led outsiders to dub it "farmer speech". The most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the
Bristol L , in which an
L sound is appended to words that end in a letter
a. Thus "area" becomes "areal", etc. This is how the city's name evolved from Brycgstow to have a final 'L' sound: Bristol. Further Bristolian linguistic features are:-
- The addition of a superfluous "to" in questions relating to direction or orientation, or using "to" instead of "at".
- Using male pronouns "he", "him" instead of "it".
For example, "Where's that?" would be phrased as "Where's he to?", a feature exported to
Newfoundland English 
