Bristol Ferry's Independence arrived today at Underfall Yard for essential maintenance. She was built in 1927 to work the shallow waters of the River Severn and Wye.  For a time Independence worked on the Erewash Canal in Derbyshire, built by the famous canal and harbour engineer William Jessop who was the main designer of Bristol Floating Harbour.  She also spent some time working in the Wye Valley between Chepstow and Brock Weir and was bought by The Bristol Ferry Boat Company in 1980 (information reproduced here with kind permission of Bristol Ferry). You can catch a ferry to and [...]

Up on the patent slipway is the Matthew of Bristol.  She is having maintenance work done and she was supposed to stay with us until 13th January. Unfortunately for her (but luckily for us!) she needs a bit more of repair done, as they have to replace more planks than expected. Therefore, she is going to stay with us a little bit longer (until the end of February!).

Congratulations to Tom Nash, a boatbuilder at the yard who has been awarded The Alfred Telling Award.  Tom has worked at Underfall Yard since 2015 and worked for several yard businesses: Tim Loftus Boatbuilding, Star Yachts and RB Boatbuilding. The Alfred Telling Award is a Scholarship awarded annually to a young person from the City of Bristol to further their education and development in their chosen career.        

Rachel, a mechanical engineer, started working at Underfall Yard Trust this year as our Workshop Manager.   Last year she began volunteering at Clifton Suspension Bridge and her experience there led to a career change, which brought her to the yard.  And it is for that volunteering that she has won the South West category of the prestigious ‘Volunteers for Museum Learning’ award. For the seventh year The British Museum and the Marsh Christian Trust have been working in partnership on the award which recognises the hugely valuable contribution that volunteers make in helping museums engage with their visitors. Joanna Mackle, Deputy Director [...]

Our mural was designed by young people from South Bristol with the help of local artist Katharina Nyilas.  It celebrates Bristol’s Harbour Master and the amazing work that they do all year round.  The Harbour Master’s team takes care of Bristol’s waterways from Netham Lock to Cumberland Basin. We are inviting our visitors and local community to help us paint the mural over Docks Heritage Weekend, 1&2 October, 11am - 5pm and over October half term.  The canvas for our mural is the shipping container that houses the spill kit.  The spill kit is used by the Harbour Master's team in [...]

On 18 March 2016 we opened our Visitor Centre and, just over 6 months later, we are delighted to share with you that over 40,000 people have visited. In this time we have organised visits and tours for schools and children’s centres from across Bristol; scouting organisations and groups for young people; and special interest and social clubs. Our wonderful volunteers have given over 2,800 hours of their time in the last 6 months to help us welcome visitors from across Bristol, the country and the world. We could not have done this without the support of our amazing funders: Heritage [...]

We are delighted to announce that our building works are due to be completed in September.  Our contractors, John Perkins, have been with us since June 2015 to repair and restore many of our buildings.  One of the great successes of the project is that none of the buildings look markedly different: structural works have been carried out sensitively using materials that blend in. Bricks and slates have been specially ordered to match the existing materials.