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Main article: History of Bristol.
The town of Brycgstow (Ireland. In 1247 a new bridge was built and the town was extended to incorporate neighbouring suburbs, becoming in 1373 a county in its own right. During this period Bristol also became a centre of shipbuilding and manufacturing.
By the 14th century Bristol was England's third-largest town (after York), with perhaps 15-20,000 inhabitants on the eve of the Black Death of 1348-49. The plague inflicted a prolonged pause in the population growth of Bristol, with numbers remaining at 10-12,000 through most of the 15th and 16th centuries. Bristol was made a city in 1542, with the former Abbey of St Augustine becoming Bristol Cathedral. During the Civil War the city suffered (1643-45) through Royalist military occupation and plague.
In 1497 Bristol was the starting point for John Cabot's voyage of exploration to North America.
 Looking across the Broadmead Shopping Centre from a static balloon at 500 feet
Looking across the Broadmead Shopping Centre from a static balloon at 500 feet
 The west front of Bristol Cathedral
The west front of Bristol Cathedral
 Bristol Bridge seen across the Harbour
Bristol Bridge seen across the Harbour
Renewed growth came with the 17th Century rise of England's American colonies and the rapid 18th Century expansion of England's part in the Atlantic trade in Africans taken for slavery in the Americas.
Bristol, along with Liverpool, became a significant centre for the slave trade although few slaves were brought to Britain. During the height of the slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2000 slaving ships were fitted out at Bristol, carrying a (conservatively) estimated half a million people from Africa to the Americas and slavery. Fishermen who left Bristol were long part of the migratory fishery to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and began settling that island permanently in larger numbers around this time.
Competition from Liverpool from c.1760, the disruption of maritime commerce through war with France (1793) and the abolition of the slave trade (1807) contributed to the city's failure to keep pace with the newer manufacturing centres of the North and Midlands. The long passage up the heavily tidal Avon Gorge, which had made the port highly secure during the middle ages, had become a liability which the construction of a new "Floating Harbour" (designed by William Jessop) in 1804-9 failed to overcome. Nevertheless, Bristol's population (66,000 in 1801) quintupled during the 19th Century, supported by new industries and growing commerce. It was particularly associated with the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the Great Western Railway between Bristol and London, two pioneering Bristol-built steamships, and the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Bristol's city centre suffered severe damage from bombing during World War II. The original central area, near the bridge and castle, is now a park, featuring two bombed out churches and some tiny fragments of the castle. A third bombed church has a new lease of life as St Nicholas' Church Museum. Slightly to the north, the Broadmead shopping centre was built over bomb-damaged areas.
The removal of the docks to Avonmouth, seven miles (11 km) downstream from the city centre, relieved congestion in the central zone and allowed substantial redevelopment of the old central dock area (the "Floating Harbour") in recent decades, although at one time the continued existence of the docks was in jeopardy as it was seen merely as derelict industry rather than a potential asset.
On March 4, 2005, Bristol was granted Fairtrade City status.
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Bristol is home to two major institutions of higher education: the Create centre is home to many sustainable development projects and life long learning schemes. The city has 129 primary schools and three city learning centres. There are also many independent schools of a high quality in the city, including Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, an all boys school, the only of its kind in the area.
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Many Bristolians speak a distinctive dialect of English (known colloquially as Brizzle or Bristle). Uniquely for an urban area of Britain, this is a rhotic dialect, in which the r in words like car is pronounced. It is perhaps this element of the dialect which has led outsiders to dub it "farmer speech".
The most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L (or Terminal L), in which an L sound is appended to words that end in a letter a. Thus "area" becomes "areal", etc. This may lead to confusions between expressions like area engineer and aerial engineer which in "Bristle" sound identical. Other examples include 'Americal' and 'Canadal', and, when unsure, the answer 'I have no ideal'. In the same way, the Swedish Ikea is known by some as 'Ikeal'. This is how the city's name evolved from Brycgstow to have a final 'L' sound: Bristol.
Another Bristolian linguistic feature is the addition of a superfluous “to” in questions relating to direction or orientation. For example, “Where’s that?” would be phrased as “Where’s that to?” and “Where’s the park?” would become “Where’s the park to?”. Interestingly, this speech feature is very predominate in Newfoundland English, where many of that island's early European inhabitants originated from Bristol and other West Country ports. They lived on the island in relative isolation in the centuries to follow, maintaining this feature.
For a full listing of all of Bristol's colloquialisms visit: That Be Bristol - Dictionary
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Hotels in United Kingdom - Bristol >>
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