Any Muddy Bottom

by Geoff Body

  The second half of the nineteenth century brought tangible improvements in the access to Portishead. The Bristol & Portishead Pier and Railway Company opened its line from Bristol in April 1867 and added a new rail-connected pier for good measure. Vessels like the Eagle, Cambria and Saint David were now calling regularly at the pier and for many years provided Bristolians with an excursion to enjoy the sea air, and another steamer operated to and from Cardiff. Another notable event was the arrival of a former naval eighty-four-gun two-decker in September 1869. The 64-year-old warship was moored to the north-west of the pier and was used to provide worthwhile training for poor, wayward or abandoned boys off the streets of Bristol. Soon filled with nearly a hundred lads, TS Formidable fulfilled this role, with the help of the brigantine Polly which was purchased for use as a tender and to provide lessons in practical seamanship, until the activity moved to a fine new nautical school ashore in 1906.

  Despite a host of different voices representing the Bristol involvement and rivalries with the plans for the new docks at Avonmouth, Portishead secured massive investment from the Bristol docks estate surplus in 1873. Then, finally, and ten years after the arrival of the Formidable, Portishead got a fine new dock built over the former marsh and very much in the form it has remained, albeit now serving a different function.

  Inevitably, its location on the approaches to the River Avon and the docks of Bristol meant that Portishead’s development was always going to be linked with that city and its maritime activity. A nineteenth-century example of this was the building nearby of a quarantine hospital specifically for housing contagious cases among passengers on vessels destined for Bristol. They were brought ashore at Portishead under special arrangements to allow the vessel to be cleared for the final leg of its journey. Isolation, treatment and working in the gardens were then the programme. Later the hospital became a farm school for youngsters destined for emigration.

  The main-line railway, now part of the Great Western Railway, steadily increased its siding access to the dock and was joined by the Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Railway which reached Portishead in 1907 and was linked to the Great Western Railway and the docks in the following years. The rail traffic reflected the principal activities of the port with some coal arriving and some timber being moved forward for inland destinations.

  The twentieth century also brought further expansion in the form of a BP oil installation and then an electricity power station which came on stream in 1929 and was fed by a succession of steam and motor colliers. The dock had a busy Second World War, storing military supplies and getting bombed for its trouble. Subsequently a second power station, Portishead B, was commissioned in 1955, both stations on the north side of the dock. There, too, were the attendant coal discharge quays, storage areas and wagon tipplers although the B station was also oil burning. Beyond the power stations the railway sidings continued towards Bailey’s maize mill and the substantial lock gates and entrance chamber and to the pier railway station. The latter closed in 1954 in favour of a new station nearer the town, but this was only to last for ten years.

  The pier and lock entrance at Portishead. The small, slate-roofed brick building on the left was formerly the lock keeper’s office..

  The south side berths of the dock handled timber at No. 1 Wharf, wood pulp and oil at No. 2 with No. 3 the location of the hydraulic arms that directed liquid phosphorus to the conveyors into Albright & Wilson’s factory, built early in the 1950s and lasting until 1969.

  The last decades of the century brought the end of the former dock and industrial complex. Railway services were withdrawn, the two power stations were closed and demolished and the docks closed to shipping altogether in 1992. Stagnation in the dock area followed, but the millennium heralded a new chapter with the construction of a new lock barrel being followed by the opening in 2001 of the Portishead Quays marina. In the new century Portishead’s links with the sea were thus secure in the marina and its wealth of surrounding developments and in the survival of the old parish wharf which has been protected and transformed by community-prompted action.

  Replaced by a marina and new housing, the old dock at Portishead is seen from the original parish wharf.

  The dock entrance at Portishead looks out to the approaches to Avonmouth Docks and the modern Royal Portbury Dock. Between Portishead and the latter is a lonely, muddy shoreline where narrow tracks still lead to the old St George’s and Portbury wharves. This whole waterside area, from Pill to Easton-in-Gordano, was home to numerous Second World War defence sites, especially anti-aircraft batteries, all designed to defend Avonmouth Docks and the seaward approaches to Bristol. Also now absorbed into the landscape around the former Portishead Docks are the pond reservoirs for surplus water from the old power stations which once more play a useful role as part of a wildlife habitat.

  Clevedon

  Until the nineteenth century, Clevedon and its surrounding area consisted of little more than a small fishing community and a collection of scattered farms. There were only eighty houses in the village in 1630 and that number did not rise above a hundred until the early 1800s. Growth was then quite rapid from about 1820 onwards with better roads, a coach service to Bristol and then a railway branch from the main line of the Bristol & Exeter Railway. The former self-sufficiency based on home-grown produce, kiln lime from local quarries and some small boat fishing was replaced by more exotic supplies brought in from Bristol to cater for the substantial dwellings erected. Hotels, inns and then a pier catered for the increasing number of visitors.

  Clevedon Bay was not a welcoming place for coastal shipping so such activity as there was took place at the pill at the older, southern end of the town. There, sheltered by Church Hill, a group of minor rivers and a major drainage channel reach the sea creeks, but even here high water depths can often be less than a metre. The Land Yeo, the Middle Yeo and the Blind Yeo were hardly significant water highways, although the odd small smack may have made odd visits to the little inlet and moved a short distance inland and there would have been some transhipment to small local boats able to penetrate further.

  By the late nineteenth century coal merchant George Thomas was advertising ‘Best Coals from the Forest of Dean’ which arrived in his own vessels and could be delivered at 25/- a ton. Mrs Thomas is recorded as the owner of the coal sloop Liver. The coal could be unloaded at a simple wharf beside the pill and weighed over the local weighbridge. The ‘hard’ built under the shadow of the hill allowed access for the horse and cart drivers to collect their loads for delivery in the main town. In the opposite direction, stone quarried at the nearby Wains Hill Quarry was loaded into trows and, like that from Uphill, used in the construction of the sea wall at Kingston Seymour.

  The last seaborne coal arrived in Clevedon during the Second World War, but earlier the Rowles brothers variously owned and operated several vessels at Clevedon in the decades before and after 1900. These included the trows Brothers, William and Martha and Nellie and the ketch Emily. Another small cargo activity was salt produced by evaporation on the Salthouse Field and said to have provided an occasional load for a vessel called the Little Harp which foundered in Salthouse Bay not far from the hostelry now bearing its name, but this is the subject of conflicting stories.

  Pleasure and excursion sailings using a rescued and restored Clevedon Pier continue to be substantial and important but, apart from that wartime load of coal, the last traditional maritime activity around the pill was ship-breaking which ended in the 1930s. John Hurley broke up Pockett’s notable paddle steamer Velindra at the hard after she was scrapped in 1897 and the 172-ton iron paddler Ira in 1908. Captain Rowles was also extensively involved in ship-breaking, albeit later, and the pill was the graveyard for a host of barges, ketches and schooners over a period of some forty years.

  Small pleasure craft lie quietly in the entrance to the Yeo rivers at Clevedon. Quite large vessels used to be broken up here.

  Woodspring Bay and Sand Bay

 
The coastal areas of the Kingston Seymour and Wick St Lawrence parishes are still relatively remote. They are low-lying, honeycombed with waterways and, before modern drainage, were liable to great and frequent flooding. Farms, rhynes and pasture predominate with the Kenn, Yeo and Banwell rivers collecting the waters of lesser streams on their way to Woodspring Bay. Channel vessels sailed by in great numbers and over the centuries many a small craft would occasionally have landed goods at suitable spots along this lonely shore. Not all would have been on legitimate business, for the area had a reputation for smuggling. Indeed, apart from farming, the only other occupation of note among past villagers in Wick St Lawrence was that of coastguard, and an obsolete cutter moored at the entrance to the Yeo was the base for preventative officers at one period.

  On the empty grasslands between Weston-super-Mare and Clevedon the remains of the Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Railway’s coal unloading jetty on the River Yeo are still visible.

  It is easy to imagine a time when the odd load of contraband would be landed in this remote entrance to the Banwell River.

  The tiny Kingston Pill is too far from anywhere to have warranted trading activity, but the sea wall to the south was built with stone brought from the quarry at Uphill by trow and there were certainly some movements along the River Yeo. An article in the South Avon Mercury mentions barges being loaded with ore from Wrington at a wharf near the Ship and Castle at Congresbury.

  The River Yeo was certainly used to land coal brought in for the Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Railway, one of several light railways of character which came to be managed by the redoubtable Col H.F. Stephens. A simple jetty and wharf was built where the railway crossed the river and was provided with a short spur off the running line to handle the occasional coal shipments arriving from around 1914. The colonel then came to believe that savings could be made for his impecunious line by bringing its coal supplies across the Bristol Channel in its own vessel. Accordingly the Sarah, a smack-rigged trow built in 1873 at Framilode, was purchased and brought her first load of coal for unloading at the Yeo wharf in 1924. Three years later the 1897 Penrhyn-built 60-ton Lily took over the monthly load, but sank during a nightmare voyage in 1929. The ketch Edith was also employed occasionally. A steam crane was used for discharging these vessels for a time, but later this had to be done by using the vessel’s derrick.

  Another use of the River Yeo is recorded back in the 1720s and ’30s when William Donne had a vessel bringing iron in bar or plate form from Bristol to his mill at Congresbury. In a process called ‘splitting’, this raw material was converted to rods for use in nail-making. Some use might also have been made of the river’s minor tributary, the Oldbridge River, which gave access for very small craft to Puxton.

  At the southern end of Woodspring Bay the River Banwell emerges at a spot sheltered by St Thomas’s Head, itself the site of an MoD establishment which undertook experimental work until fairly recently. Woodspring Priory could have been supplied via a short pill off the Banwell and goods could also have been transhipped to small craft for the St George’s and Banwell communities. Along the Middle Hope stretch of coast to Sand Point, Hope Cove had a smuggling reputation, complete with a supposed tunnel to spirit the spirits away.

  Around Sand Point lies the long sweep of Sand Bay with Kewstoke village stretched out below Worlebury Hill. The name Kewstoke may have its roots in the Celtic word for ‘boat’ and there used to be fishing for shrimps and sprats from near the present Commodore Hotel, itself formerly the site of two fishermen’s cottages. The New Inn reputedly was involved in the odd bit of smuggling, especially casks of wine and spirits lobbed overboard from vessels on the Bordeaux–Bristol run and recovered from the beach after being stranded there by the tide that had floated them in. The shapes of ghostly horses and furtive men form part of local legend.

  Weston-super-Mare

  Before the nineteenth century there was little at Weston-super-Mare to suggest its eventual growth as a popular resort; such use as was made of the wide, shallow Weston Bay was by small fishing vessels with a single mast and small square sail. This was all they needed, for their activity rarely took them out of the bay into the more difficult waters beyond. Indeed, much of Weston’s catch was taken quite close to the shore with ‘callers’ to scare away the gulls.

  The development of Weston as a seaside town was then quite rapid from the 1820s and included the establishment of a bathhouse and pool on Knightstone Island which was opened in 1822. This provided an opportunity to create a small sheltered area in which vessels could unload their cargoes of coal, building materials and other goods as demand increased in line with the growth of the town.

  A former Scottish ferry and a Dunkirk veteran in the shelter of Knightstone Harbour at Weston-super-Mare waiting for their busy season.

  By the 1840s the visitors coming to Weston had created a demand for entertainment. Fishermen were glad to supplement their income by providing short summer trips, and tugs from Bristol quickly joined the trend. Temporarily modified for their new role, these embarked and landed their passengers at Birnbeck, Anchor Head or in the mouth of the River Axe at the south end of the bay. From this modest beginning sprang over a century of passenger steamer operation.

  The Bristol & Exeter Railway’s 1841 branch line into Weston-super-Mare was an unimpressive affair, just a single line from the direct route between Yatton and Bridgwater and operated for its first few years using spartan carriages drawn by horses. But the original 1841 station is illustrated with trucks and the primitive sheer legs cranes to unload them and would soon have been handling merchandise as well as passengers. Increasingly, the infant railway would have been used to bring in supplies of general merchandise from Bristol and the sea-going vessels discharging there. Some of the coal previously brought over to Weston and nearby Uphill by water would also be lost to rail, depending on how far it had to be carted and especially after the opening of the Severn Tunnel.

  At low tide such cargoes as continued to come by sea could be unloaded on the harbour mud directly to the horse-drawn carts that would deliver them. Coal shipments were always a seasonal business, but Weston’s modest harbour did have its busy periods, one illustration showing no less than five vessels of various rigs moored there, among them the Gloucester ketch Eliza. Although gradually giving way to land competition, some movements continued until the 1930s, but the activity was minor compared with the summer pleasure boating in fishing boats, launches and steamers.

  Not that Weston was content with its marine facilities. No resort worthy of its name failed to want a pier and the long gestation of the scheme for one based on Birnbeck Island was begun in 1845, but not realised for over twenty years. In between there had been an 1854 plan for a railway-served jetty at Uphill followed in 1859 by a scheme to enclose a water area at the northern end of Weston Bay and provide it with a railway link from Puxton. Even more dramatic was an 1861 idea involving the creation of a full-scale harbour at the end of Brean Down, not a new concept, but one that now had national support and was seen as catering for international traffic as well as shorter distance mail and merchandise. It too would be served by a branch railway and work was actually begun, but was largely wrecked by a severe storm in 1872. Despite a reincarnation of the Brean Down Harbour project in 1887, a fresh Act of Parliament in 1889 and another extending the time limits in 1893, the wave-battered works were soon to be abandoned and the grand vision forgotten.

  Although relatively few cargo vessels worked into and out of Weston, a great number passed by in the narrowing Bristol Channel and a lifeboat station established at Birnbeck in 1882 saved over a hundred lives in its first seventy-five years of service. The list of rescues features trows, ketches, schooners and a few steamships, reflecting the pattern of sailings to and from the larger channel ports.

  Uphill and Lympsham

  A deceptively small and meandering pill off the River Axe leads for 500 yards to a sluice protecting Weston’s small village-cum-suburb of Uphi
ll. Now a haven for small pleasure craft, the meeting point of pill and village was once the site of a busy wharf, quarry and limekiln area at Uphill which has a long history as a small coastal port. In addition to the local fishing activity off the Axe Estuary, small vessels could make their way up the main river and penetrate some distance inland by tortuous minor waterways, especially in the flooding periods.

  Originally a manorial port, Uphill represented a harbour sheltered by the bulk of Brean Down and was the limit of the Port of Bristol’s jurisdiction. For many years the pill had no public wharf and ancient rights made it one of the very small number of free ports. Customs officers were based at Uphill from 1685 onwards, but some illicit activity had always taken place there and probably continued, albeit less openly.

  With four ‘properly’ dressed passengers, the ferry from Brean nears the beach at Uphill after crossing the mouth of the River Axe.

  Back in 1591 a French vessel, the Gray Honde of Bayonne, was brought into Uphill, having been ‘furiouslye battered’ and captured while on a return voyage from Newfoundland. Our quarrel at the time was with Spain and Portugal, but ‘the Englishe shippe appointed warrlyke belonging to Syr Walter Rawleigh’ had been privately funded by a number of Bristol merchants in search of quick profits and not fussy how they were obtained. Representatives of the French owners came over with the backing of the French king and strongly protested about this blatant piracy, but did not get either their ship or their cargo back. Another French vessel was forced to shelter at Uphill in 1652 after crossing from Ireland.

  Before coal traffic came to dominate the Uphill arrivals in the nineteenth century there was a regular seasonal trade in the movement of livestock dating back at least to the seventeenth century. The damp, low-lying grassland around Uphill was not suitable for cereal crops but ideal for fattening livestock. Oxen and cows arrived in the months from March to October and were fattened on the lush coastal marshes before being driven to Bristol and other markets, some as far away as London, for slaughter and consumption. Loads of sheep arrived in the months from January to March and were used to restock the herds on higher grounds. Some loads came from Ireland and there were regular arrivals from Sully in South Glamorgan, with three 20-ton vessels bringing over a steady stream of sheep for the grazing lands of Wiltshire and Dorset and of cattle for fattening prior to sale in the Bristol markets. They also brought in pigs sometimes, as well as small quantities of Welsh woollens, and most vessels took produce back with them on the return voyage.