When ships came up to Quay Head
The road outside used to be water. For six hundred years, this was the end of the line for ships sailing into Bristol.
The clue is in the name. Before there was a Quay Head House, there was Quay Head: the very top of the quay, the furthest point a ship could reach into the heart of Bristol.
In the thirteenth century the city dug a new course for the River Frome, St Augustine’s Trench, to give its booming port more quayside. For centuries afterwards, ships moored along what is now the Centre, and the church across the road is still called St Mary on the Quay because its front door once opened onto the water.
The river became a problem. By the nineteenth century dozens of sewers were emptying into the Frome. Bit by bit it was covered over: the stretch upstream in 1857, and then in 1893 the water right in front of Quay Head House, only nine years after the building opened. The trustees who had commissioned offices with a view of masts and rigging found themselves looking out at an exhibition ground instead.
The Frome is still there. It runs in a culvert under the Centre, a few metres from the front door.
Can you help?
We have never seen a photograph of the building with water in front of it. Between 1884 and 1893 it must have been taken by somebody. If you have an old print, postcard or engraving of the quay at this end, please send it in.
Share an old view of the quay.
Sources: The Bristol Magazine, City Histories: The Lost Docks; Bristol24/7, The hidden river flowing underneath Bristol city centre; Wikipedia, The Centre, Bristol