Portbury

Portbury
Somerset
St Mary's Church, Portbury
Location
Grid reference:	ST502748
Location:	51°28’12"N, 2°42’59"W
Data
Population:	830  (2001)
Post town:	Bristol
Postcode:	BS20
Dialling code:	01275
Local Government
Council:	North Somerset
Parliamentary constituency:	Woodspring

Portbury is a village in the very north of Somerset, close to the mouth of the River Avon, Somerset, which here forms the border with Gloucestershire to the north, and to the Severn Estuary. Portbury itself is on the foot of the hills above the coastal plain and the Gordano Valley, with the M5 motorway slicing across the land beneath it immediately to the north. The Gordano Services on the motorway are just east of the village. Within the parish also are the hamlet of Sheepway, just to the north beyond the motorway and at the northern edge of the Gordano Valley, near and the Royal Portbury Dock, at the mouth of the Avon. The parish had a population of 830 in 2001.

Royal Portbury Dock

Royal Portbury Dock

The Royal Portbury Dock is part of the Port of Bristol. It is carved out of the south bank of the River Avon at the rivermouth on the Severn Estuary and has the docks of Avonmouth on the opposite side of the Avon, in Gloucestershire. The village of Portbury is a little to the south, inland.

The deepwater dock was constructed between 1972 and 1977, and is now a major port for the import of motor vehicles into the United Kingdom.

The Royal Portbury Dock has the largest entrance lock into any British port, accommodating vessels up to 135 ft beam, 951 ft length and 48 ft draft; it is necessary because the port experiences the second-largest tidal range in the world, so the Portbury Dock and Avonmouth Dock are impounded, the water level within each dock maintained by lock gates and impounding pumps. The pumps maintain a minimum water level in the dock when water is lost to the sea through ships entering/exiting the dock.

The M5 motorway runs nearby, and the huge car storage compounds around the dock are visible from the Avonmouth Bridge. A waste industrial area west of the port is being developed as the Portbury Ashlands Nature Reserve.

The dock is now operated by The Bristol Port Company, who also operate Avonmouth Docks, and have done since 1991 when they purchased a 150-year lease from Bristol City Council. Between 2000 and 2002 the Portishead Railway was repaired and extended to the dock at a cost of £21 million.

Container ship unloading

Motor vehicles are both loaded and discharged, and stored on paved quay areas and storage compounds. In 2004, over 650,000 vehicles were handled. During 1996, the motor vehicle trade was awarded the International Quality Standard ISO 9002. Royal Portbury Dock can accommodate up to six RoRo vessels simultaneously.

Aviation fuel tankers up to 120,000 dwt can discharge at the Bristol Aviation Fuel Terminal which opened in 2003, and feeds directly into the UK's pipeline and storage network.

Coal and other bulk cargoes can be discharged with two continuous ship unloaders and two gantry grab cranes, allowing for 5,000 tons an hour throughput.

Containers and forest products are also handled at the dock.

Churches of Portbury

There was a small Augustinian Priory founded in Portbury on land donated by Isabella, Countess of Albemarle in the twelfth century of which there is still a substantial part remaining in the centre of the village.

The parish is St Mary's, which dates from the 12th century, with alteration and extension in the 13th and restoration between 1870 and 1875. It has a Norman doorway and grand fifteenth century porch. Inside there are early Berkeley burials. It is a Grade I listed building.

History

The Romans built a wharf at Portbury for the export of lead and tin from mines on the Mendip Hills. The wharf itself would have been at Sheepway derived from Old English, is scæp and weg meaning sheep track.

Portbury is mentioned in the Domesday Book as being held by Bishop Geoffrey de Montbray of Coutances. It had previously been held by Godwin Earl of Wessex, the most powerful magnate in England under Cnut and Edward the Confessor. No record of the place exists form before the Norman Conquest but it first appears in written history in the Domesday Book of 1086.

In later Norman times Robert Fitzharding, the Reeve of Bristol, (the King's local representative) was rewarded with the Manor of Portbury. He purchased other local manors and moves between them with his entourage of upwards of 200 people, so the manor house complex yet to be found must be substantial. He was made the first Earl of Berkeley. It is said that his wife Eva never left Portbury after moving there and subsequent Berkeley heirs were brought up there before Berkeley Castle was made a comfortable home. She founded the 'Whiteladies' convent of St. Mary Magdalene - 'Maudlin' - hence giving Bristol two of its street names. He founded St. Augustine's Abbey now the Bristol Cathedral. It is recorded that the Berkeley family preferred to spend Christmas at Portbury. There is a Berkeley Chantry chapel with early Berkeley family burials in St Mary's Church dating from around 1190.

Descendants of the Berkeley family married into the family of Coke of Holcombe, Norfolk who held the manor until 1784 when it was sold to James Gordon and inherited by William Abdy. On his death in 1870 it was sold to Sir Greville Smyth of Long Ashton.

Portbury did have its own railway station on the Portishead line until the Beeching axe fell and then the village main street was cut through by the M5 motorway opened in February 1973. Although the M5 is close it has actually made the village much less busy as it was on the main through route from Bristol to Portishead, from St. Georges, Easton in Gordano and on through Sheepway to Old Bristol Road in Portishead. The Rudgleigh — Easton Bypass and the Portbury Hundred either side of the Motorway junction isolated Portbury from through traffic.

Transport links

The disused railway station at Portbury

Portbury is well served by roads given the nearby M5 and A369 which links to Bristol and Portishead.

Part of Royal Portbury Dock is within the parish.

The parish used to have a railway station on the Portishead Railway. The station was closed with the line in the 1960s, though there are efforts to have it reopened, as the track is still present, just overgrown.

Local Newspapers

• Clevedon Mercury
• Portishead Times

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Portbury)

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Royal Portbury Dock)

• The Bristol Port Company website
• UK Government DfT Casestudy
• Portishead and Bristol Lifeboat