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Spike Island, Bristol

Areas of BristolRedeveloped ports and waterfronts in EnglandUse British English from May 2012
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Spike Island is an inner city and harbour area of the English port city of Bristol, adjoining the city centre. It comprises the strip of land between the Floating Harbour to the north and the tidal New Cut of the River Avon to the south, from the dock entrance to the west to Bathurst Basin in the east. The island forms part of Cabot ward. The area between the Docks and New cut to the east of Bathurst Basin is in the neighbourhoods of Redcliffe and St Philip's Marsh.Spike Island was created by William Jessop in the early 19th century, when he constructed the New Cut and converted the former course of the River Avon into the Floating Harbour. Until the Second World War, a lock connected Bathurst Basin with the New Cut, and Spike Island was a genuine island surrounded on all sides by water. However, fears that an aerial attack on this lock at low tide could lead to a disastrous dewatering of the docks led to the lock being filled in. Historically, Spike Island was the site of working quays, shipyards, warehousing and other associated dockside industry. The Bristol Harbour Railway runs the length of the island, and formerly connected these working areas with the railway network. With the redevelopment of the docks, the Island has become an area popular with developers looking to create prime dock side housing such as Baltic Wharf, The Point and Perretts Court. There are also a few restaurants and popular pubs such as The Orchard Inn and The Cottage. Other formerly dock-related buildings have become cultural venues or museums. These include: Spike Island Artspace, a collective of artists' studios located in a former tea-packing factory M Shed, the museum of Bristol, on the site of the former Bristol Industrial Museum, in a former dockside transit shed Bristol Archives in B Bond Warehouse, a former tobacco warehouse Brunel's SS Great Britain, preserved in the dry dock in which she was built CREATE Centre, also in B Bond Warehouse, an ecological art exhibition and Ecohome Underfall Yard, a base for marine-related businesses plus an interactive visitor centre and café.Other historic buildings have been converted into office space, housing small businesses and legal and financial companies such as Creditcall. The path of the harbour railway across Spike Island is proposed for a £38 million rapid transit bus route from Ashton Vale to the city centre. The existing steam railway would be retained, but buses would gain a congestion-free journey into the city. Subject to planning permission and finances, work could start 2012 with services running 2014.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Spike Island, Bristol (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Spike Island, Bristol
Hanover Place, Bristol Spike Island

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Wikipedia: Spike Island, BristolContinue reading on Wikipedia

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N 51.4479 ° E -2.6087 °
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Albion Dock Company

Hanover Place
BS1 6TZ Bristol, Spike Island
England, United Kingdom
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SS Great Britain
SS Great Britain

SS Great Britain is a museum ship and former passenger steamship that was advanced for her time. She was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1854. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), for the Great Western Steamship Company's transatlantic service between Bristol and New York City. While other ships had been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first to combine these features in a large ocean-going ship. She was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic Ocean, which she did in 1845, in 14 days. The ship is 322 ft (98 m) in length and has a 3,400-ton displacement. She was powered by two inclined two-cylinder engines of the direct-acting type, with twin high pressure cylinders (diameter uncertain) and twin low pressure cylinders 88 in (220 cm) bore, all of 6-foot (1.8 m) stroke cylinders. She was also provided with secondary masts for sail power. The four decks provided accommodation for a crew of 120, plus 360 passengers who were provided with cabins, and dining and promenade saloons. When launched in 1843, Great Britain was by far the largest vessel afloat. But her protracted construction time of six years (1839–1845) and high cost had left her owners in a difficult financial position, and they were forced out of business in 1846, having spent all their remaining funds refloating the ship after she ran aground at Dundrum Bay in County Down near Newcastle in what is now Northern Ireland, after a navigation error. In 1852 she was sold for salvage and repaired. Great Britain later carried thousands of emigrants to Australia from 1852 until being converted to all-sail in 1881. Three years later, she was retired to the Falkland Islands, where she was used as a warehouse, quarantine ship and coal hulk until she was scuttled in 1937, 98 years after being laid down.In 1970, after Great Britain had been abandoned for 33 years, Sir Jack Arnold Hayward, OBE (1923–2015) paid for the vessel to be raised and repaired enough to be towed north through the Atlantic back to the United Kingdom, and returned to the Bristol dry dock where she had been built 127 years earlier. Hayward was a prominent businessman, developer, philanthropist and owner of the English football club Wolverhampton Wanderers. Now listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Great Britain is a visitor attraction and museum ship in Bristol Harbour, with between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors annually.

Jacobs Well Theatre

The Jacobs Well Theatre was a playhouse in Cliftonwood, Bristol, England, which opened in 1729. It took its name from the nearby Jacobs's Well, which may have been a mikveh, a type of Jewish ritual bath. The theatre was built by actor John Hippisley, who had created the character of Peachum in the premiere of John Gay's Beggar's Opera. The stage space was so small that actors exiting on one side had to walk around the building to re-enter on the other side, often being subject to banter by spectators enjoying this free show. A hole was knocked through a party wall to an adjacent ale house, The Malt Shovel, so that actors, and audience seated on the stage, could obtain refreshments. Admission prices ranged from 1 shilling to 3 shillings, and it was estimated that a full house could earn as much as £80. Servants of patrons were admitted free of charge to an upper gallery. In later years, Thomas Chatterton described the theatre as a "hut".The journey to the theatre from fashionable areas such as Queen Square and College Green was somewhat perilous, especially on dark nights, and consequently the theatre often provided linkboys to light the way with torches. Notable actors who appeared at the theatre included Charles Macklin, William Powell, and Thomas King, who were all stars of the Georgian stage. After Hippisley's death in 1748, the business was continued by his widow. When the Theatre Royal opened in King Street in 1776 most actors left the Jacobs Well Theatre as the new venue proved to be more fashionable. The last recorded performance at Jacobs Well was a pantomime in 1779.

Jacob's Well, Bristol
Jacob's Well, Bristol

Jacob's Well in Cliftonwood, Bristol, England is an early medieval structure within a building on the corner of Jacob's Wells Road and Constitution Hill thought to be a Jewish ritual bath. The stone structure is built round a natural hot spring and on a lintel there is an inscription thought to be the Hebrew word zochalim, "flowing". This led to the theory that this was a mikveh or Jewish ritual bath. The interpretation of the inscription was challenged in 2002 and the alternative theory proposed that the bath is too deep for a mikvah and may have been used to cleanse bodies before burial in the nearby Jewish cemetery at Brandon Hill which was established after 1177. A Jewish community was known to exist in Bristol from at least 1154 until the wholesale banishment of the Jewish community from England in 1290. The spring became the property of St Augustine's Abbey in 1142 and the exterior was rebuilt in the 18th or 19th century. A Royal Commission on the Health of Towns reported in 1845 that nearly all of the water laid into Bristol came from Jacob's Wells. The Commission noted that the water, which also fed the Cathedral and the Grammar School, was of good quality but the volume was not enough to supply the city.: 12  In 1905 the natural hot spring was diverted into the Jacobs Wells Baths. Jacob's Well was rediscovered in 1987 by the Bristol Temple Local History Group, who were investigating the site during the rebuilding of a furniture workshop which had been the Hotwells Police Station bicycle shed, and a one-time fire engine house. In February 2011, the company that now owns the well applied to the Environment Agency to extract and bottle up to 15 million litres (3.3 million imperial gallons) of water a year. Water from the well was previously bottled and sold in the 1980s.