Bathurst Basin

51°26′49″N 2°35′41″W / 51.4469°N 2.5948°W / 51.4469; -2.5948

The John Sebastian (Trinity House L.V. No 55) in Bathurst Basin
Bathurst Basin, with the General Hospital in the background

Bathurst Basin is a small triangular basin adjoining the main harbour of the city of Bristol, England. The basin takes its name from Charles Bathurst, who was a Bristol MP in the early 19th century.[1]

The basin was built on an area of an old mill pond, Trin Mills.[i] The pond was supplied by the River Malago, from Bedminster to the South. It lost its water supply as the New Cut was created in 1809, running to the South of the enlarged Floating Harbour and catching the flow of the Malago. After this it formed a connecting basin, through two sets of locks, between the Floating Harbour and the tidal River Avon in the New Cut.[2] The connection enabled smaller vessels to bypass the main entrance locks in Cumberland Basin. From 1865 a deep water dock with a stone quay front was built. The area used to be an industrial dock with warehouses and numerous shipyards at the adjoining Wapping Shipyard and Docks, including Hilhouse, William Scott & Sons and William Patterson. Now there is a small marina, with residential quayside properties.

The Bristol Harbour Railway connected to the main line system at Temple Meads, via a lifting bascule bridge over the northern entrance dock to the basin and a tunnel beneath St Mary Redcliffe. The tunnel still exists, but is now blocked,[ii] and the original railway bridge has been replaced with a swing footbridge. This bridge is manually swung by a hydraulic pump action.[iii]

Bristol General Hospital is located on the Eastern quay of the basin. When constructed in 1859, the hospital was built with basement warehouse space to defray its operating costs.[3] The Southern quay has never had any substantial buildings on it and for many years was used by Holms Sand & Gravel Co. as a depot for building materials, brought in by boat and offloaded into road vehicles. A travelling crane on an overhead gantry was used to handle these.[3][4]

  1. ^ Cork, Tristan (12 March 2017). "Forget Colston, here's five Bristol landmarks named after other slave trade businessmen". bristolpost. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Walker (1939), 111 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Bygone Bristol, City Docks, p44-45 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Fray Bentos (3 August 1975). "Death rattle of Bristol's port: Sand boat in Bathurst Basin" (photograph). 1970s photographs of lost Bristol.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-roman> tags or {{efn-lr}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-roman}} template or {{notelist-lr}} template (see the help page).