The Bristol Industrial Museum was a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, located on Prince's Wharf beside the

Floating Harbour Bristol Harbour is the harbour in the city of Bristol, England. The harbour covers an area of . It is the former natural tidal river Avon through the city but was made into its current form in 1809 when the tide was prevented from going out perm ...

and which closed in 2006. On display were items from Bristol's industrial past – including aviation, car and bus manufacture, and printing – and exhibits documenting Bristol's maritime history. The museum was managed by

Bristol City Council Bristol City Council is the local authority of Bristol, England. The council is a unitary authority, and is unusual in the United Kingdom in that its executive function is controlled by a directly elected mayor of Bristol. Bristol has 34 ward ...

along with nearby preserved industrial relics along Prince's Wharf, including the Bristol Harbour Railway, cranes and a small fleet of preserved vessels. The railway, cranes and vessels all now form part of the working exhibits at M Shed Museum. The museum closed its doors to the public on 29 October 2006.

M Shed M Shed is a museum in Bristol, England, located on Prince's Wharf beside the Floating Harbour in a dockside transit shed formerly occupied by Bristol Industrial Museum. The museum's name is derived from the way that the port identified each of it ...

, the new Museum of Bristol has been created on the site, keeping the same façade and many of the exhibits. It opened 17 June 2011. A website has been created to try to capture the essence of the museum and some of its memories. It can be found at http://bristolindustrialmuseum.epizy.com/

Overview

The museum's indoor exhibits were housed on the two floors of a former quayside transit shed.

Road transport

On the lower floor was the transport gallery, which housed various land transport exhibits with a particular Bristol slant. Exhibits included what is believed to be the world's first purpose-built holiday caravan to be compared with a 1950s equivalent, the Grenville steam carriage, bicycles,

motorcycle A motorcycle (motorbike, bike, or trike (if three-wheeled)) is a two or three-wheeled motor vehicle steered by a handlebar. Motorcycle design varies greatly to suit a range of different purposes: long-distance travel, commuting, cruising ...

cars A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, people in ...

, carriages and

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

es.

Aviation

On the upper floor the aviation gallery told the story of Bristol's involvement in

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...

manufacture and contained a collection of Bristol-made aero engines, a Bristol-built helicopter, a mock-up flight deck of

Concorde The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a retired Franco-British supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Studies started in 1954, and France an ...

and scale models showing the many aircraft built in the city. On the same floor the story of the

Port of Bristol The Port of Bristol comprises the commercial docks situated in and near the city of Bristol in England. They are now operated by the Bristol Port Company, which owns both Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Docks. Until 1991 the Port of Bristol Authori ...

was told with models, paintings and other exhibits.

Print & Pack

The adjacent ''Print & Pack'' gallery told the story of one of Bristol's biggest industries with machinery and products. This was a particularly popular working exhibit, with live demonstrations of printing machinery such as Linotype and

Letterpress Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker com ...

. These same exhibits also printed many of the museum's own leaflets, tickets and flyers.

Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery gallery

Elsewhere in the museum, the ''Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery'' gallery told the story of Bristol's involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the UK,

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and the Caribbean, from its early days through abolition and to recent times.

Historic ships, cranes and trains

Normally moored in front of the developing new museum is the collection of historic vessels, which included the 1934

fireboat A fireboat or fire-float is a specialized watercraft with pumps and nozzles designed for fighting shoreline and shipboard fires. The first fireboats, dating to the late 18th century, were tugboats, retrofitted with firefighting equipme ...

"'' Pyronaut''" and two tugs: ''John King'' built as a diesel tug in 1935 and ''

Mayflower ''Mayflower'' was an English ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After a grueling 10 weeks at sea, ''Mayflower'', with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, r ...

'', the world's oldest surviving steam tug built in 1861. On the quayside outside the museum are four electrically powered cargo cranes built in 1951 by Stothert & Pitt. A short distance to the west is much older crane, the sole surviving operational example of a

Fairbairn steam crane A Fairbairn crane is a type of crane (machine), crane of an 'improved design', patented in 1850 by William Fairbairn, Sir William Fairbairn. There are numerous hand-powered versions around the world and one surviving steam-powered example in Bri ...

. Built in 1878, also by Stothert & Pitt, it was in regular use until 1973 loading and unloading ships and railway wagons with loads up to 35 tons. It has been restored and is in working order, operating on some bank holidays and the Bristol Harbour Festival. Bristol Harbour Railway continues to offer train rides along the quayside on bank holidays, using restored steam locomotives and rolling stock.

References

{{Culture in Bristol Bristol Harbourside Grade II listed buildings in Bristol Grade II listed museum buildings Industry museums in England Museums in Bristol Defunct museums in England