July 2025
For several years our volunteers Bob Watkins (structural and civil engineer) and Plymouth University undergraduate Charlie Kay have focussed on investigating and recording the historic items in the Cumberland Basin area.
These are summarised on John Willis’s innovative website https://bwhha.wordpress.com/
The team’s objectives are to:
- Locate all existing heritage assets around the Cumberland Basin;
- Find out when they were built and, if possible, by whom,
- Find out how they worked,
- Establish their existing condition.
Excellent progress has been made, and the work is ongoing as follows:
Surveying includes establishing the dimensions of all the features and locating them in plan and elevation. The features are then referred to Ordnance Survey grid and datum. We have been able to borrow a sophisticated total station surveying instrument to carry out some of this work, and hope to be able to do so again to complete the areas not already covered.
All the assets are being added to one of the 34 key plans of the Cumberland Basin area.
Individual drawings are also being created to show each asset in more detail.
The assets being recorded include:
- Buildings (Dock Offices, the Toll Booth)
- Bridges (including Brunel’s Other Bridge, Replica, and Junction Lock swing bridge).
- Machinery for rotating the bridges.
- Locks (including Howard’s Lock, Brunel’s original Lock, and Junction Lock)
- The dam across Brunel’s Lock.
- Lock gates to Howard’s Lock and Junction Lock.
- Lock gate machinery for Howard’s Lock and Junction Lock.
- Sluices to Howard’s Lock and Junction Lock.
- Bollards and Capstans.
- The hydraulic main around the area.
- Sundry manholes and drainage systems.
Historical research. The team is searching Bristol Archives’ large number of microfilm copies of historical record drawings originally held by the Port of Bristol Authority and associated organisations.
Additionally, Bristol Archives hold minutes of meetings, correspondence and other records which describe some of the features found and these sometimes provide a timeline for their construction or acquisition
Bob Watkins’ scale drawing of the original lock Gate opening & closing mechanisms
This is a photogrammetrically generated image of the entrance lock’s west capstan mechanism, accurate to 2mm
