Brunel's Bristol

Bristol is a lasting legacy to one of the greatest engineers of all time, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

From the majestic Clifton Suspension Bridge, to the ss Great Britain and Temple Meads station and the Great Western Railway, Pamela Parkes looks at how Brunel made his mark on Bristol.

We have exclusive video from the miles of secret tunnels beneath Temple Meads station, a guided tour by Mr Brunel himself and a video tour of the hidden vaults underneath the Clifton Suspension Bridge, but first a little more about the great man himself.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born with engineering in his blood.

A prodigious talent he was born in 1806, the only son of the French civil engineer Sir Marc Brunel. By the time he was eight-years-old, under his father's tutelage, he already had mastered basic engineering concepts. Schooled in Hove and in Paris, his real education came when he went to work with his father on his first engineering project, building the Thames Tunnel from Rotherhithe to Wapping in east London.

He went on to make his name creating some of the world's greatest engineering projects right here in Bristol: the Clifton Suspension Bridge, ss Great Britain and the Great Western Railway. He also completed a whole host of lesser know engineering projects including Underfall Yard, now a a scheduled ancient monument as historically important to the UK as Stonehenge.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel died on September 15 1859, aged just 53-year-old and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London but his legacy lives on. In 2002 he was voted the second greatest Briton of all time, after Winston Churchill.

Brunel was just 27-years-old when he was appointed GWR's chief engineer.

He set about building the train line and the station at Temple Meads, which is now one of the oldest stations in the country.

Station manager Jonathan Curnow leads us on this exclusive video tour of the hidden parts of Bristol Temple Meads

Commissioned in 1836 the station opened on August 31, 1840 and the first train travelled between Bristol and Bath. 

Because of the cost of land in Bristol the station was built out of the city centre and only Cambridge has a train station further away from it's centre. "This was as close as they could get at the time," says current station manager Jonathan Curnow.

Brunel built the Engine Shed and Passenger Shed and the station was the headquarters of GWR. Services ran out of Bristol before they ran out of London, said Curnow.

 "The station is remarkably unchanged considering how old it is," adds Curnow. However, the clock tower is actually a later Victorian addition.

"It was a working station and it's been a museum twice - it was out of use for a few years but now it is back in use," says Curnow. "It shows how well it was built at the time."

At the time of the ss Great Britain's launch in 1843 she was the largest ship in the world.

Built in Bristol, she was also the first screw-propelled, ocean-going, iron-hulled steam ship – in short she was revolutionary. She was the first great ocean liner and was designed initially for the emerging trans-Atlantic luxury passenger trade.

However, as Mr Brunel (the ss Great Britain guide Simon Strain) himself explains,  the ship was not part of a grand plan and came about thanks to an off-the-cuff remark.

The ss Great Britain Trust is so much more than just the ship though. It is the custodian of thousands of Brunel memorabilia and mementos. 

The trust is opening Being Brunel: the national Brunel project in 2017. It will be based in the very offices where Brunel worked on the Bristol harbourside.

It will be first time that the collection of artefacts, including some of Brunel’s personal possessions and documents, will be displayed. 

Chief executive of the ss Great Britain Trust Matthew Tanner says Brunel was a "visionary hero and has become a national treasure".

The project will, for the first time, create a "dedicated place where Brunel’s inventive genius and the personality behind the icon can be explored".

Last year the Clifton Suspension Bridge celebrated its own 150th anniversary with a spectacular fireworks display.

Brunel died before the bridge was completed, but he left a hidden history which was only recently discovered.

The engineer had baffled experts with the construction of the Leigh Woods abutment, the structures at the end of the bridge.

The abutment was the first part of the bridge to be constructed between 1836 and 1846 and rises 33.5m out of the Avon Gorge. For more than a century the stone structure, which supports the bridge tower, was believed to be solid.

Then, just 14 years ago, a series of huge cavernous vaults underneath the abutment were discovered. The vaults have given engineers and historians a unique insight into how the bridge was constructed, and the very humble beginnings of such a famous structure.

"All they would have done is hack out some relatively flat shelves out of the rock and built the structure straight up," said bridge master David Anderson.

This somewhat underestimates the scale of the task as, once you are inside the chambers, the size is astonishing. There are 12 masonry arched vaults in all, rising up out of the Avon Gorge itself supporting the road and the footways 30m above.

At the first level there are seven chambers up to 11m (36ft) high; beneath that are a lower series of five more chambers of the same size

But Brunel left no clues about the existence of the vaults and for decades what lay beneath the abutment was left to speculation.

“We never knew for sure if there were vaults there or not", said Anderson. “We thought over the years that there probably would be vaults within the structure as it would make sense to build it that way, but Brunel did not leave us with any access”.

The vaults were accidentally discovered during some routine repairs on the bridge in November 1999 when a workman discovered a narrow shaft into the structure.

The task of exploring the tunnel was left to cavers, who carefully made their way down more than 36 metres before finding narrow side tunnels which led them into the enormous vaults.

Today it is still a scramble down to reach the entrance of the vaults. Cave spiders congregate around the door frame; they are the only living thing found in the vaults and act as guardians to the entrance.

The vault may be cathedral-like in size, but it was built in a relatively rough and ready fashion.

“They are not pointed or finished off with any particular care because Brunel didn't think anyone would come here to look at them,” said Anderson. “He left no access points so I guess he thought it would look after itself for centuries to come, and it has.”

However, despite the apparent lack of aesthetic care, the skills of the craftsmen and designer are all too apparent in the condition of the caverns themselves: “We've had to do very little masonry work since we discovered them. If we hadn't discovered them and they’d remained secret for another 100 years I don’t think there would have been any particular problems,” said Anderson.

Explorations of the vaults continue, but they are not giving up their secrets that easily. “We have only found artefacts," said Anderson. "We recently found a pick head when we were clearing out rubble in one of the access shafts a few weeks ago. It is 180-years-old and still in good condition. That is the only thing, no bones or treasure, not so far anyway.”