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was created by Jessop in 1809 and improved by Brunel in the 1830s who changed it from an overfall into The Cut to an underfall. The pumping station was built in 1888 to operate locks a machinery around the docks and originally operated on steam. It took over from The Pump House at Howards Junction Lock. The existing electric pumps date from 1907.
The Avon Crescent Electricity Sub-station is allegedly haunted as a worker fell from the roof into the building but they never found his body! (According to Senior Electrical Engineer – Pete Willis.)
The Matthew is a replica of a caravel sailed by John Cabot in 1497 from Bristol to North America. It was built in 1994-6 at Redcliffe Quay.
Cabot came to live in Bristol for the purposes of his trade, and while there applied for, and on March 5, 1496 obtained from Henry V 11. a patent for discovery for himself and his
three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancius, to sail to all parts of the east, west, and north, with five ships at their own cost, under the royal banner, and to take possession of new islands and countries, paying the king a fifth of their gain from each voyage On arriving at the port of Bristol, whither they were bound to return. He set sail in the early part of the May of the next year in a ship said to have been named the Matthew, manned by eighteen sailors, nearly all of Bristol. His son Sebastian probably sailed with him. Land was discovered on June 24. This seems to have been the northern coast of Cape Breton*.
Thus our Bristol sailors discovered North America a year before Columbus struck the coast of the southern continent.
Historic Towns – Bristol William Hunt & Edward A Freeman 1889
*Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada
The Patent Heave-Up Slipway was built in 1856 and replaced by the current slipway in the 1890s. The Winch Shed at the top of the slipway worked on hydraulic power from 1890 but was converted to electricity in 1924.
Mayflower is a steam tug built in Bristol in 1861 and now preserved by Bristol Museums Galleries & Archives. She is based in Bristol Harbour at M Shed. She is the oldest Bristol-built ship afloat and is believed to be the oldest surviving tug in the world.
The creation of the Underfall allowed the creation of Underfall Yard by reclaiming dock space in 1834.
