Bristol - Underfall Yard, Spike Island - chimney - local postcard c.1980s

Postcard
• Picture / Image: Underfall Yard, Bristol
• Publisher:  St. Peter's Hospice, Bristol
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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The Underfall Yard is a historic boatyard on Spike Island serving Bristol Harbour, the harbour in the city of Bristol, England.

Underfall Yard was commonly referred to as ""The Underfalls"" and takes its name from the underfall sluices. The original construction was in the early 19th century with revisions by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 1830s.

Following restoration in the 1990s, this Victorian work yard is now a Scheduled Monument that includes several listed buildings. The harbour and its equipment are still actively maintained, and host a cooperative of boat builders.

In the early nineteenth century, the engineer, William Jessop was engaged by the Bristol Dock Company to create a non-tidal Floating Harbour to combat continuing problems with ships being grounded at low tide. With his system, which was completed in 1809, water was trapped behind lock gates so ships could remain floating at all times, unaffected by the state of the tide on the river. Part of the project included building a dam at the Underfall Yard with a weir to allow surplus river water to flow into the New Cut, an excavation that by-passed the Floating Harbour and joined the River Avon near Temple Meads.^[1]

The docks' maintenance facility was established on the land exposed by the damming of the river to construct the harbour and remains sited at this location to the present day.

By the 1830s the Floating Harbour was suffering from severe silting and Isambard Kingdom Brunel devised the underfall sluices as a solution.

The Bristol Docks Company never achieved commercial success and was taken over by Bristol City Council in 1848. In 1880 the Council bought the Slipway and yard to enlarge the docks' maintenance facilities.

The 'Underfall' system was re-built in the 1880s, with longer sluices, and the yard above was 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.^[2]

During the 20th century the western parts of the yard were leased to P & A Campbell Ltd, operators of the White Funnel Line of paddle steamers as a maintenance base. The yards have been little altered recently except for the replacement of the three-storey 'A' block over the sluice paddle room resulting from bomb damage in World War II.

Underfall Yard has been refurbished under the management of the Underfall Restoration Trust thanks to Lottery money, European funding and financial support from Bristol City Council. Since the 1990s £500,000 has been spent on regenerating the slip and restoring buildings around the boatyard.^[3]

Based at the yard at the moment are two wooden boat builders, a blacksmith, a ship rigger, a composites specialist (GRP, Carbonfibre), a narrow boat outfitter and a joiner.^[4]

Jessop's original designs for the harbour included a dam with an 'overfall', with the level of the water determined by the height of the dam's crest. As a result of the accumulation of mud and silt in the harbour, ships entering the narrow harbour were frequently being grounded. In 1832 Brunel was called upon to provide the solution to this problem and designed the sluice system, still in use today, to remove excesses of foul-smelling silt and mud.

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, known as a drag boat, to scrape the silt away from the quay walls. Sluices 1, 2 and 4 ('shallow') are used to control the water level, while sluice 3 ('deep') removes the silt. When the deep sluice is opened at low tide, a powerful undertow is created which sucks the silt out of the harbour and into the river. In March 1988, the sluice control was computerised and automated.^[2]

Most of the buildings and engineering installations at the yard were constructed between 1880 and 1890 under the direction of John Ward Girdlestone.^[1] Many of them have been designated by English Heritage as listed buildings.

The original blacksmiths' and engineering workshops remain in use while the shipwrights' shop is now used as a carpentry workshop.

type=printed

city/ region=bristol

period=post-war (1945 - present)

postage condition=unposted

number of items=single

size=continental/ modern (150x100mm)