A brief history of Bristol
Bristol has been a port for a thousand years but came to prominence after the Norman invasion of 1066. St Augustine's Abbey was founded in 1140, and after several additions became the cathedral of the new Diocese of Bristol at the behest of King Henry VIII in 1542.
By the 14th century, the city was trading with Spain, Portugal, the Mediterranean and Iceland. After the discovery of America, Bristol was the main point of departure for voyages to the New World.
In 1373, King Edward III granted Bristol county status – an honour it has held almost without interruption until the present day.
In the mid-18th century, Bristol was England's second city. The country was flooded with goods imported via Bristol from the New World, including cane sugar, tobacco, rum and cocoa – products of the slave trade. Around this time, merchants began to build their homes away from the docks in genteel areas such as Clifton. The beautiful Georgian houses of this area are a legacy of these times.
By the 19th century, Bristol's fortunes as a port were on the wane. The Avon's extreme tides left many ships dangerously marooned, and its bends caused great problems for the navigators of the new, bigger merchant ships. But a new age was in prospect with the arrival in 1831 of a new chief engineer at Bristol docks: Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
In 1833, Brunel was appointed chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, and his work on the line that linked London to Bristol helped to establish him as one of the world's leading engineers. Brunel did more than anyone to shape the face of modern Bristol. His legacy includes the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the ss Great Britain, and Temple Meads Old Station.
The aerospace industry has had a base in Bristol since its early days when George White founded the Bristol Aeroplane Company at Filton in 1910. In the mid-1960s, Concorde was built and tested at Filton.
Modern Bristol is one of the most popular British cities for business relocation and a major focus for media and new technology. The HTML web language was partly developed at the Hewlett Packard research centre in Bristol, Aardman Animations created its Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films here, and the BBC's strong presence in Clifton includes its phenomenally successful Natural History Unit.
The next few years will see a tremendous programme of redevelopment and investment to secure Bristol's place as one of the most striking and beautiful waterfront cities in Europe.