Features / Christmas Steps
12 things you probably didn’t know about Christmas Steps
The steep steps that run between Perry Road and Colston Street are undeniably festive as the nights draw in.
Here are some fascinating facts about one of the oldest parts of the city:
1. The steps were completed in September 1669 on the site of an older street that led up from the river. Barrels were rolled down the steep hill to be loaded onto ships.
Photo: Paul Townsend via Flickr
2. Slaves are said to have been chained up along Christmas Steps during Bristol’s era as a slave port.
3. Bobby’s Fish Bar at the bottom of the steps is one of the oldest in the country, having traded for over 120 years.
4. Through the stone archway next door to the chippy was once St Bartholomew’s Hospital, founded in 1240. It has housed both Bristol Grammar and QEH Schools over the years.
5. Just inside the gates of St Bartholomew’s Court is a statue of Madonna and child, said to have been beheaded by Oliver Cromwell himself.
6. The steps were known as Knyfesmith Street in medieval times.
7. The current name may be a reference to a nativity scene depicted in stained glass in the Three Kings of Cologne Chapel at the top of the steps.
8. The four flights of stairs themselves are grade II listed.
9. Zerodegrees at the very top was built on the site of sheds that housed Bristol’s trams and the horses that pulled them.
10. The alcoves or sedilia at the top of the steps are known as the Alms-Gatherers’ Niches.
11. Colonel Henry Lunsford was shot through the heart on the steps during the English Civil War. His plaque on the side of Weber & Tring’s was recently rededicated during a Civil War reenactment.
12. The Christmas Steps pub was formerly called The Three Sugar Loaves for a nearby sugar refinery that burned down in 1859 – one of 11 destroyed by fires across Bristol that year.
Main photo by Phil Watson
Read more: The Christmas Edition @ The Christmas Steps Gallery
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