Archives of the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust

GB 3493 T

Archives of the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust

1828 - 2016

This collection consists of material created by the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust (CSBT) and its predecessors during the course of its business. Also included are papers created by the Bridge's consulting engineers and deposited with the CSBT, these are:
Howard Humphreys & Sons and Howard Humphreys & Partners (1910 - 2006)
Flint & Neill Partnership/Cowi (2006 - )

https://archives.cliftonbridge.org.uk/archives-of-the-clifton-suspension-bridge-trust

Material has been arranged into four different principle functions carried out by Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust: Governance and Managing the Bridge; Maintaining the Bridge; Operating the Bridge and providing information and services to those Visiting the Bridge. As far as possible the original order of the records have been kept.

In November 2010 the collections at Bristol University were transferred to the Brunel Institute, a collaborative venture between the University of Bristol and ss Great Britain Trust.

The Bristol Record Office holds three volumes of letter books created by the Trustees of Clifton Suspension Bridge, dated 1831-1839, 1839-1857, 1860-1862. These items were deposited by Bristol solicitors, Osborne, Ward, Vassall, Abbot & Co in 1957, who were the legal representatives for the Trust at the time. (References: 12167/42, 12167/43, 12167/44).

In 1972 some of the Trust's archives were deposited with the University of Bristol Special Collections. This deposit (referenced as DM484) consisted of 7 archive boxes, 7 rolls and 2 oversized flattened items and included letter books of the Committee (1830-1857), Minute books of the Board of Directors and Committee of Trustees (1830-1900, 1919-1955), cash books (1830-1867), Registers of Shareholders (1862-1952) and Annual Reports (1861-1951). The majority of the material relates to the administration of the Clifton Suspension Bridge Company, but there are a certain number of working drawings, surveys and plans (1857-1939). There is also memorabilia relating to the 1864 opening ceremony (referenced as DM2319).

minutes of Trustees 1901-1955,

Howard Humphreys & Sons' 1972 copies of F Gleadow's 1903 tracings,

tickets, programme for the opening ceremony (1864), a notebook presumably listing attendees issued with tickets, and a supplement to the Western Daily Press dated 9 December 1864.

volumes and manuscript notes on Acts and Byelaws, dated 1830-1972,

Further material, which was chosen because of its fragile physical condition was taken from the Bridge Master's Office and the Visitor Centre and deposited with the University of Bristol in 2003 (DM1929, 1 archive box, 2 rolls). These included:

• Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust
• Clifton Suspension Bridge Company

Approximately 40 linear metres of paper-based documents, including photographs and drawings. Also included are digital files (extent unknown).

Current and working files are not available to the public and access is restricted in accordance with copyright and data protection legislation.