There was a castle at Bristol from around 1080, built by the Normans. It was strengthened and extended in the early twelfth century when it played a key role in the power struggle between King Stephen and his rival to the throne, the Empress Matilda. The illustration below is an artist's impression from 1922 of what the castle might have looked like in its heyday.

In later years its military significance was greatly reduced and it fell into disrepair. It was partly restored by the Parliamentarians during the English Civil Wars (1642-51), but was dismantled, along with the city's defensive walls, on the orders of Oliver Cromwell in 1655. The area on which it stood, to the east of the city centre, is now the site of Castle Park (opened in 1978), where some remnants of the old foundations can still be found.



Bristol Castle in the Days of its Glory F G Lewin (Bristol Libraries).

Many other landmark buildings have been lost to the city through warfare or redevelopment programmes. These include the seventeenth-century Dutch House, on the corner of Wine Street and High Street, which was destroyed by enemy bombing on Sunday 24 November 1940 during the Bristol Blitz. (Read about the Blitz in the Bristol at War story on The Siege website.) It was a five-storey, timber-framed building, in the Tudor-style. Its main corner-post, which was carved into a grotesque howling figure, has been preserved by Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery.



The Dutch House by Nathaniel Sparks (1910) (Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives).

George Braikenridge, a nineteenth-century merchant, collected around 1,400 views of Bristol, most of which had been specially commissioned in the period 1820 to 1830. They were bequeathed to Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery, and provide an invaluable record of buildings and streets dating back to the thirteenth century which have since been bombed, demolished, damaged, fallen into disrepair or altered beyond recognition. Among these were St Peter's Hospital (formerly known as The Mint), destroyed in the Blitz, and the houses of Broker's Alley at the Pithay, knocked down in the 1890s to make way for the expansion of the J S Fry chocolate factory.



St Peter's Hospital seen from St Peter's Churchyard by James Johnson, 1821 (Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives).



Top of Pithay (Broker's Alley) by Thomas L Rowbotham, 1829 (Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives).

However, many historic buildings have survived, among the oldest of which is St Mary Redcliffe, parts of which date back to the twelfth century. On a visit to the city in 1574 Queen Elizabeth I is alleged to have declared this to be the 'fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England'.



St Mary Redcliffe by John Pickard, c 2006.

Queen Elizabeth granted the charter for the Hospital School in Bristol that bears her name in 1586. The school was founded for 'the education of poor children and orphans' using a bequest by John Carr, a soap merchant. It was at one time based in St Bartholomew's Hospital, the remains of which can still be seen near the foot of Christmas Steps, a picturesque alley running between Lewins Mead and Colston Street in one of the oldest areas of the city. The hospital was founded in 1240. Its entrance was through the thirteenth-century archway which is shown to the right of the picture below. Today, the shop on the left of this picture is a popular fish and chip shop.



The City School (Queen Elizabeth's Hospital) in Christmas Street by Hugh O'Neill, 1820 (Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives).

The redbrick building on Brandon Hill that is now home to Queen Elizabeth Hospital School was built in the 1840s, though it looks to have come from a much earlier age. In the nineteenth century a number of previous architectural styles were revived including the Tudor, the Gothic and the Ancient Greek. St George's Church on Great George Street, now a concert venue, was built in 1824 in what was called the new Greek Revival or neo-Classical style. Its architect, Robert Smirke, designed the British Museum, another neo-Classical building.



St George's Church, Great George Street by Edward Cashin, 1824 (Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives).

As befits a city founded on trade, there are a number of impressive warehouses along the quays of the Floating Harbour, many of which have now been converted into apartment blocks after years of neglect. Among the most exotic is The Granary (1869) on Welsh Back. It is ten storeys high, built in multicoloured brick and stone with a different window shape for each floor and a roof that looks like a battlement. It is one of the best remaining examples of nineteenth-century Bristol Byzantine, a style that combined elements of Gothic, Moorish, North Italian and Venetian design.



The Granary, photograph by Ian Blantern, 2006.

At the bottom of Broad Street is a beautifully decorated Art Nouveau building from the beginning of the twentieth century that used to house the Edward Everard printing works. The figures you can see depicted in the mural are the printers Gutenberg and William Morris, the Spirit of Literature and a woman holding up a lamp and a mirror to represent Light and Truth.



The Edward Everard printing works, photograph by Ian Blantern, 2006.

At the top of Park Street, is the Wills Memorial Building of the University of Bristol. Its tower, a prominent city landmark, is over 65 metres tall. The building was built in honour of Henry Overton Wills, the tobacco manufacturer, who had donated money to the university, and it was completed in 1925.



Architectural drawing for the tower of the Wills' building, 1914. (Special Collections, University of Bristol).

Adjacent to Explore At-Bristol on Millennium Square is the planetarium. Its chrome sphere is probably one of the most-photographed structures in Bristol.



The planetarium at Explore At-Bristol.

In autumn 2008 Cabot Circus is due to open at what was formerly known as Broadmead. This is the largest city centre regeneration programme in Bristol since the reconstruction that followed World War Two.



Computer-generated image of the Harvey Nichols shop at Cabot Circus.