Features / city centre
9 historical monuments you might not know in the centre
From a granite trough in memory of a Royal Navy captain who was in charge of the former National Nautical School in Portishead to a reminder of a piece of Bristol in New York, the centre has a wealth of historical monuments:
1. This engraved trough which can found near the cenotaph is in memory of captain R.B. Nicholetts. R.N “for the use of the animals of whom he was always the unfailing friend”.
2. Among a flowerbed stands a commemoration of the visit on September 15 1974 from the president of Berlin parliament, Herr Walter Sickert
3. A plaque for the men and women of the 14th army, the “largest and most diverse army comprising many nationalities and faith”, they defeated the Japanese invasion on India in 1944 and liberated Burma in 1945.
4. This fountain was built after the successful industrial and fine art exhibition held in 1893, which raised £2,200 to be split among five medical charities in Bristol.
5. One of four metal plaques near the fountains, this one commemorates a long-forgotten trail that was opened in 1942 by two Nova Scotia politicians.
6. Samuel Plimsoll was born in Bristol in 1824 and a member of parliament from 1868 to 1880. In 1872, he published Our Seamen – An Appeal, which brought to light the large number of sailors who had lost their lives due to preventable causes and carried through the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876.
7. One plaque commemorates the centenary of municipal ownership of Bristol Docks, from 1848 to 1948.
8. First erected in 1723 in Temple Street, the Neptune statue has had several homes: It moved to Bear Lane, Temple 1787, to Church Lane in 1794 and then to the junction of Temple Street and Victoria Street, 1872. It moved to its current home is the centre in 1949.
9. A replica of a plaque erected in New York in 1942, the Bristol version researched and designed by the Temple Local History Group. Presented by BBC Radio Bristol in 1986, it remembers the people of Bristol whose homes were lost and their determination to get through World War Two.
Read more: ‘It’s easy to bury the painful parts of our history but it’s unfathomably important that we don’t’
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