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.

Julie Sienesi takes over from Nicola Dyer, our former Project Director, who has been overseeing the £4million Heritage Lottery Fund capital works since commencement. Julie is passionate about the yard and joins us after 18 years at the ss Great Britain. Rachel Gollin is due to join us at the end of June as our Workshop Manager. Her first priority is getting the pumps up and running before she moves on to tackling the workshops. She will be in charge of all things machinery within the trust. We are also delighted to welcome the Adventurous Activity Company and Shipshape [...]

Both Star Yachts and RB Boatbuilding are working on new builds. Win, of Star Yachts, said they are looking forward to completing the 32ft twin engine motor launch later this summer. Work is progressing rapidly in the Big Shed (which is not open to the public) and we all look forward to seeing the end result. Visitors to the yard often want to see what is going on inside the Big Shed. John, of RB Boatbuilding, has kindly let us install a camera to document and share the whole process of building their latest Pilot Cutter. We will add [...]