Bristol is England's eighth, & a United Kingdom's eleventh, most thickly settled city. When such, these are one of England's core cities. For half a century Bristol got been the 2nd big English city when London, until the rapid rise of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, in the 1780s.

Local Government
A Avon traditionally marked the border between Gloucestershire and Somerset. Within 1373 Edward III of England proclaimed "that the said town of Bristol withall be a County by itself and called the county of Bristol for ever", however maps unremarkably indicate it when a portion of Gloucestershire, & when a city spilled to a south of the flow of any stream, it took the county by having it.

Around 1974 Bristol became a district of the fresh formed administrative County of Avon. Whenever that county was abolished on the 1st April 1996, Bristol returned to its former status of the city & county within itself. A city borders on the one districts of Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

History
A town of Brycgstow (Old English, "the place at the bridge") was witharound being per beginning of a 11th Century, & under Norman rule acquired one of the strongest castles in southern England. A Flow of any stream Avon in the city center has slowly evolved into Bristol Harbour, and since a 12th Century the harbour has been an important port, treating good deal of England's trade by owning Ireland. Within 1247 a new bridge was built & a town was reach incorporate neighboring suburbia, becoming inside 1373 a county in its own perfect. In the time of this period Bristol besides became the centre of shipbuilding & manufacturing.

Per 14th Century Bristol was England's third-largest town (when London & York), with peradventure 15-20,000 indweller on the eve of the Black Death of 1348-49. the plague inflicted a prolonged pause in the people incubation of Bristol, by owning cost left at 10-12,000 across virtually all of the Fifteenth & Sixteenth Centuries. Bristol was mass produced the city around 1542, with a previous Abbey of St Augustine becoming Bristol Cathedral. When you took a Civil War the city suffered (1643-45) through Royalist military occupation & plague.

Within 1497 Bristol was the starting point for John Cabot's voyage of exploration to North Us.

Renewed incubation come by using a 17th Century rise of England's U.s. colonies & a rapid 18th Century expansion of England's section in the Atlantic trade Africans view as slavery in the Americas.

Bristol, along sustaining Liverpool, became a important centre for the slave trade although couple slaves were bring back Britain. When you took a height of the slave trade, from either 1700 to 1807, more than 2000 slaving ships were fitted retired at Bristol, carrying the (cautiously) approximated half the million population from either Africa to the Americas and slavery.

Competition from either either Liverpool from c.1760, a disruption of marine commerce across war using France (1793) and a abolishment of the slave trade (1807) contributed to the city's failure to keep pace by using a fresh manufacturing centres of the n & midlands. the hanker passage higher a heavy tidal Avon Gorge, which experienced mass produced a port extremely assure in a period of the middle ages, got get a liability which the construction of a freshly "Floating Harbour" (designed by William Jessop) in 1804-9 failed to overcome. All the same, Bristol's people (66,000 inside 1801) quintupled during a 19th Century, supported by recently industries & growing commerce. It was particularly associated using a leading engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed a Great Western Railway between Bristol & London, deuce pioneering Bristol-built steamer, and a Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Bristol's central city suffered severe damage from either bombing in the period of World War II. the original central region, touching a bridge & castle, is however a park featuring 2 bombed out churches & a select few bantam fragments of the castle. (The third bombed church hwhen the fresh lease of life as St Nicholas' Church Museum.) Slightly in a north, the Broadmead shopping centre was built over bomb-damaged areas.

A removal of a docks to Avonmouth, vii miles (Eleven kilometre) downriver from either a city center, freed congestion in the central zone & allowed real overhaul of the old central dock front yard (the "Floating Harbour") witharound recent decades, although at in one case the continued being of the docks wwhen in peril when it was seen simply as derelict industry like than a likely plus.

In March Four, 2005, Bristol was granted Fairtrade City status.

Aeronautics

In the 20th century, Bristol's manufacturing activities expanded to include aircraft production at Filton, six miles (Ten kilometre) n of the central city, per Bristol Aeroplane Company, and aero-engine manufacture by Bristol Aero Engines (later Rolls-Royce) at Patchway. A plane company became renowned for the WWI Bristol Fighter, and Second World War Blenheim and Beaufighter aircraft. In the 1950s it became one of the united states's major manufacturers of civil aircraft, by owning a Bristol Freighter & Britannia & a brobdingnagian Brabazon airliner.

In the Sixties Filton played the key role in the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner project. Concorde components were made around British & French manufactory & shipped to the 2 final assembly plants by road, sea & air. A French line were within Toulouse around southern France with a British lines in Filton. Fortunately a super big 3-bay airdock built for the Bristol Brabazon was available for Concorde production.

The last ever flight of any Concorde, 26 November 2003. The aircraft is seen a few minutes before landing on the Filton runway from which she first flew in 1979.

A French made a centre fuselage & centre wing & a British a nose, rearward fuselage, fin & wingtips. A big proportion of a British part of a act was the powerplant, the Rolls-Royce/Snecma 593. A engine's manufacture was split between British Aircraft Corporation, Rolls-Royce (Filton) and SNECMA at Villaroche near Paris.

A British Concorde paradigm G-BSST made its 22 microscopic initiatory flight from either Filtin to RAF Fairford on 9 April 1969, the French paradigm F-WTSS had flown from Toulouse 5 weeks earliest. Virtually all of a employees of BAC & Rolls Royce, + the vast crowd, watched from either as much as the flying field. Fairford wwhen chosen as a trial field for Concorde because a runway at Filton was rejected for line 3 text flight, its length was poor & there were problems by using a slope, & a number one 1000 feet (300 m) of the runway at its eastern (A38) prevent may not become utilized. Yet, from either a prevent of 1977, 100% line 1 text flight on the 2nd production aircraft G-BBDG was done from Filton, as a result a closure of the BAC Fairford line 1 text base.

Inside 2003 them airlines utilizing Concorde (British Airways and Air France) & a company supplying spares and trend lines (Airbus) made a guide to prevent flying a aircraft & to retire the babies to locations (mostly museums) about the world. For the location of all the aircraft watch Concorde.

In 26 November 2003, Concorde 216 (G-BOAF) made the final ever Concorde flight, giving to Filton landing field to exist when saved there for good as a centrepiece of a projected air museum. This museum may include the existent Bristol Aero Collection which is presently saved inside a repair shed at Kemble Airfield, 40 miles (Lx kilometre) from either Filton. This collection includes the Bristol Britannia aircraft.

A major aeronautic corporations within Bristol nowadays come BAE Systems, Airbus and Rolls-Royce, both depending at Filton.

A second significant aeronautic company in the city is Cameron Balloons, the world's largest manufacturer of hot air balloons. Annually, around August, a city is unsuspecting hosts to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, one of Europe's largest hot air balloon cases.

Bristol Cars
A Bristol Aeroplane Company diversified into car manufacturing in the 1940s, building luxury hand-built cars at their factory within Filton. A auto maker became independent from either a Bristol Aeroplane Company inside 1960.

Arts, leisure and media

A city has 2 important football clubs: Bristol City F.C. who play in Football League One and Bristol Rovers F.C. who play in Football League Two. the city is too house to a Rugby Union club known as Bristol Rugby, who use won promotion to the Guinness Premiership, & the first-class cricket side, Gloucestershire C.C.C.

Around summertime a evidence of Ashton Court to the west of the city play host to the Bristol Balloon Fiestthe, a major event for hot-air ballooning inside Britain. the Fete draws a real crowd potentially for the early morning lift that occasionally begins at astir Sestet.30 am & a fairground atmosphere is sustained throughout the day. Another mass ascent is usually scheduled for the early evening, once more do you need moo wind speeds.

Ashton Court also plays host to the Ashton Court festival each summer, an out-of-doors music festival which utilized to exist as referred to as a Bristol Community Festival.

St Mary Redcliffe church and the Floating Harbour, Bristol

A city's main theatre company, a Bristol Old Vic, was founded in 1946 as an offset of the Old Vic company in London. Its assumptiin on King Street consist of a 1766 Theatre Royal (400 seats), the modern studio theatre known as the Just released Vic (150 seats), & vestibule & bar areas in the adjacent Coopers' Hall (built 1743). A Theatre Royal occurs as grade We listed building and the oldest day and night-operating theatre around England. the Bristol Old Vic besides diarrhea a large Theatre School. A Bristol Hippodrome is a larger theatre (1981 seats) which hosts national road productions, when a 2000-seat Colston Hall, named fallowing Edward Colston, is the city's main concert venue.

A music scene is thriving & important. Particularly, Bristol was the birthplace of a nature and severity of English hip-hop music called trip hop or the Bristol Healthy, epitomised in the act of creative person like Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack. These are as well a birthplace of drum n bass with notable bands such as Roni Size/Reprazent and Kosheen. This music is a portion of the wider Bristol Urban Culture scene which received huge international media attention in a Nineties & however thrives under the radio detection and ranging now.

Bristol's fiercely independent, pioneering spirit continued & in a early 21st Century is residence to one of the big & virtually all diverse DIY music communities in the UK. Bristolian music has typically been insular & experimental within nature and severity though creative person like Gravenhurst and Chikinki have revived interest over a preceding couple years. a big total of elastic, creative person, promoters & music fans has developed about the Choke forum at http://www.ttyc.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=1 known as fallowing a popular fanzine & club nighttime which has supported the additional challenging prevent of Bristol's musical spectrum since 2001.

Bristol is at home to numbers of survive music venues, of which The Old Duke is perhaps a better known. Internationally recognised jazz & blues musicians active within Bristol include Eddie Martin, Jim Blomfield and Andy Sheppard.

A Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery houses a collection of natural history, archeology, local glasswork, Chinese ceramics & art. the Bristol Industrial Museum, on the dockside, shows local industrial heritage & operates a steam railway, boat trips, & working dockside cranes. A City Museum besides diarrhea trinity preserved historic houses: a Tudor Red Lodge, a Georgian Home, & Blaise Castle Home. A Watershed media centre and Arnolfini gallery, both inside obsolete dockside storage warehouse, exhibit contemporary art, photography & cinema.

Prevent frame animation films & commercial message fastidiously by Aardman Animations & high quality television series focusing on the natural world use likewise brought fame and artistic credit to the city. Bristol is in which a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has its regional headquarters, and Natural History Unit. Bristol is likewise a birthplace of the actor Cary Grant.

Bristol is the residence of the regional morning newspaper, the Western Daily Press, a local evening paper, a Evening Post and a hebdomadally loose newspaper, a Bristol Observer. The Bristol edition of Metro is distributed for free in buses in the area. A local list magazine, Venue, is now promulgated weekly when several years as a biweekly publication. A Spark magazine (Since 1993) covers a billowing interest all told items green & honourable. [http://www.bristol.indymedia.org Bristol indymedia] is a resource for BristolsNihilist & activistic community & is a sixth big web site associated by using the city.

Education
Bristol is house to deuce major institutions of higher education: a University of Bristol, a "redbrick" chartered in 1909, and a University of the West of England, formerly Bristol Polytechnic, which gained university status around 1992. A city besides has deuce dedicated further education institutions, City of Bristol College and Filton College as well as a theological college, Trinity College, Bristol. A Create centre is home to numbers of sustainable development projects & life hanker learning schemes. It has 129 grade school & trinity city learning centres.

Transport

The passenger terminal at Bristol International Airport, Lulsgate

There are ii main railway stations in Bristol: Bristol Parkway and Bristol Temple Meads. Bristol was never swell served by suburban railways, though a Severn Beach Line to Avonmouth and Severn Beach survived the Beeching Axe and is still operating in todays world. A Portishead Railway wwhen closed in a Beeching Axe but wwhen relaid between 2000-2002 as far as the Royal Portbury Dock with a Strategic Rail Authority rail-freight grant. Plans to relay the farther leash miles of track to Portishead, a largely dormitory town with only 1 copulative road, use been discussed however there exists deficient funding to rebuild stations [http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2005-01-24.134.0&m=841].

Long-standing plans for the light rail system in the Bristol area develop non & so far succeeded, and following public transport within the city is however largely bus based. A majority of the local bus company is operated by First_Group. A central a share of a city likewise hwhen a lake-depending routes, operated as the Bristol Ferry Boat, which provide both leisure & commuter services on the harbour.

A city is attached by road in an east-west axis from either London to Wales by the M4 motorway, and in the northward-southwest axis from either Birmingham to Exeter by the M5 motorway. A M32 motorway is a spur from a M4 to the city center.

A city is likewise served by its have airport (BRS), at Lulsgate, which has recently seen substantial improvements to its runway, terminal & more facilities.

Despite existence craggy, Bristol is one of a large cycling cities of Engl&, and is residence to the national period candidacy class action Sustrans. It hwhen the total of urban period routes, likewise as links to National Cycle Network routes to Bath & London, to Gloucester & Wales, and south-american peninsula of England.

Dialect
Numbers of Bristolians speak the distinctive accent of English (known colloquially when Brizzle or even Bristle). Unambiguously for an populated area of Britain, this occurs as rhotic dialect, in which a r within words such as car is pronounced.

A virtually all unusual feature of this accent, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L (or even TerminaFifty L), where an Fifty healthy is appended to words that prevent within the letter a. So "area" becomes "areal", etc. This could lead to confusions between expressions rather locality engineer & aerial engineer which within "Bristle" healthy monovular. More examples include 'Americal' & 'Canadal', &, whilst incertain, a guide 'We've there are no ideal'. In a equivalent way, the Swedish Ikea is known by a select few when 'Ikeal'.

An additional Bristolian linguistic feature is the addition of the superfluous “to� around questions on to counsel or even orientation. E.g., “Where’s that?� would become phrased when “Where’s that to?� & “Where’s a park?� would be “Where’s a park to?�

For the to the full list of a lot of Bristol's colloquialisms vist: [http://www.thatbebristle.co.uk/dictionary/ That Be Bristol - Dictionary]

Areas and towns
A charted occurs as listing of a areas & towns that produce higher the city of Bristol & its fringe. It includes a bit of adjoining areas of South Gloucestershire, marked ^SG, & a single within Northward Somerset, marked ^NS.

Places of interest

Famous People
Numerous notable population develop been associated using Bristol, including musicians, engineers, man of science, sailors & explorers.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel came to Bristol to build the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and went in to exist as a engineer of the Great Western Railway and the designer of the SS Great Western.

Edmund Burke was Member of Parliament for the city for six years from either 1774. He famously insisted that he was the Parliamentarian 1st, like than the representative of his constituents' interests.

John Cabot set sail in 1497 in search of exotic goods from either a far east, however instead found North America. He 1st sighted Newfoundland, today the province of Canada.

Sir Humphry Davy was a man of science world health organization worked inside Hotwells & found laughing gas.

Paul Dirac was born inside Bishopston, and made numbers of important contributions to quantum mechanics and shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics 'for the discovery of new & productive forms of atomic theory'

Francis Greenway was an architect & convict world health organization was transported to Australia in 1814 and subsequently built several of the early iconic buildings of the city of Sydney.

John Harvey founded the Bristol wine merchants John Harvey & Sons, and their sherry brand Harvey's Bristol Cream has taken the name of Bristol all over the world.

Renowned musicians indigen to Bristol include Roni Size, Tricky and Massive Attack. A class action Portishead is often associated with a city since a band's title & roots are from either a neighboring town.

Samuel Plimsoll, 'the Sailor's friend' campaigned intrepidly to produce a seas safer. He was shocked per scandal of overladen freight & with success fought for a required loadline in ships - the Plimsoll line during Disraeli's Conservative Government (1874-80).

Wallace and Gromit; heroes of the animation world & stars of the Oscar-winning 'A Wrong Trousers', 'The Grand Day Out', 'The Close Shave' & 'A Curse of the Were-Rabbit' were created within Bristol by Aardman Animations.

Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter, lived briefly around Bristol in the early Nineties.

John Wesley founded the super number 1 Methodist Chapel withinside Bristol in 1739, which might however exist as visited now.

Matt Lucas, comedy actor and star of the extremely acclaimed Little Britain television sketch show, deliberate Drama at Bristol University.

Tony Robinson actor, trained with Bristol Old Vic & has sleep in Bristol & besides move politically there, for about 30 years. He is known to television viewers for his a portion when 'Baldrick' in the comedy Blackadder.

Richard Gregory, psychologist, resides within Bristol.

Keith Floyd, TV chef, ran several eating place around Bristol, & had his begwithin in TV at BBC Bristol.

Johnny Morris, TV celebrity, resided in Bristol, & mass produced his television programmes at Bristol Zoo.

James D. Will, BBC "Top Gear" presenter & "Daily Telegraph" editorialist was natural inside Bristol

Portishead was formed by Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrow in Bristol.

Massive Attack & Tricky are also based in Bristol. Geoff Barrow had previously worked by using these 2 trip-hop bands in addition to Portishead.