Then and Now Take Two – The Industrial Museum

This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.

After going through some old photographs I found some of the Bristol Harbourside, so decided to go back to where I had taken these then photographs and take some new now photographs.

I took this photograph of the Industrial Museum on the Bristol Harbourside either in 1995 or 1996. It was taken with my Canon SLR using film.

I wasn’t exactly sure which vantage point I had taken the original image. The broken guardrail had been fixed.

Of course the Industrial Museum as was, was closed and replaced with the MShed

The railway tracks have also gone.

Find it interesting that the Balmoral is in both photographs in roughly the same place.

Walking around the harbour

Spent a pleasant couple of hours walking around the Bristol Harbourside.

We were going to park in the Millennium Square Underground car park However we couldn’t quite believe the prices, so we went off to park in The Galleries instead. Not the easiest place to get to, now Baldwin Street is closed to traffic. Once parked there we headed off down Corn Street before heading down Marsh Street to Prince Street Bridge.

Moored up by the Arnolfini was the STS Lord Nelson, a sailing ship with lots of masts.

The STS Lord Nelson was a sail training ship operated by the Jubilee Sailing Trust. It is in the process of being decommissioned.

Having crossed Prince Street Bridge, we walked along Princes Wharf, on the dockside by the M Shed. The MV Balmoral was moored alongside.

MV Balmoral is a vintage excursion ship which required extensive hull work if she is to sail with passengers again.

Up by the M Shed is the Fairbairn steam crane. It can lift more tonnage than all the other remaining dockside crates combined.

As we walked along the docks I took a photograph of the old gasworks on the other side of the harbour.

There has been quite a lot of development and regeneration on that side of the harbour over the years. Back in the 1990s I did a ferry ride and took a photograph of the pre-developed area.

Another old view of that area.

We then passed Brunel’s Buttery where there were many people enjoying hot drinks and bacon butties. I don’t remember the last time I had a bacon butty from the Buttery, but I must go back at some point.

We walked past the SS Great Britain before heading inland slightly to walk past the Albion Dock.

We walked through the historic Underfall Yard before closing Merchants Road Bridge and then heading back to the centre.

As we walked long the harbourside we got a better view of the luxury yacht complete with helicopter.

There was another boat moored on Princes Wharf with a car onboard.

And to complete things off there was a small boat with a bicycle!

Having enjoyed our walk we headed back into town stopping for coffee at Caffe Nero on Corn Street.

Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s Part Five

Back in the 1990s when I was teaching at a college in Bristol, I use to undertake regular field trips to the Bristol Harbourside as part of a unit on urban regeneration. There was at the time to much happening down there after years of inaction that it was an ideal place to demonstrate the impact of investment and change of use. Bristol had been an important port for hundreds of years, this all came to a halt in the 1970s and regeneration plans were developed. Not much happened for twenty years, but in the last twenty years we have seen major regeneration of the area, massive building of offices, business, residential and entertainment, as well as visitor attractions such as at-Bristol (where incidentally I worked for a while when it opened).

During one of those field trips, I took my SLR camera with me, and digging around a box in the garage I found the prints, which I have since scanned in. This is the fifth post on these images, you can find part one, part two, part three and part four.

Prince Street Bridge was originally a two way bridge when this photograph was taken. At some point in the last ten years I think, half was pedestrianised. Currently it is closed to all traffic.

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One of the earliest developments in the Bristol harbourside was the Lloyds bank development which was built and opened in the 1980s. Here is the view of the amphitheatre which is often used for events.

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Then the next lot of photographs are taken from the ferry, which still steams around the harbour.

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The MV Balmoral  is moored up next to the sadly missed Industrial Museum (the M Shed is no replacement)

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Slightly different view of the previous shot.

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The Arnolfini is just out of shot to the left in the final photograph of Prince Street Bridge.

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