The History of M Shed
The M Shed site is today a bustling location close to the city
centre, part of the historic dockside which now plays a major role
as a residential location and favourite place to spend leisure time
for many Bristolians and visitors.
Before the start of the 1700s the area was agricultural land
alongside the River Avon. From that point on things began to
change and from about 1700 through to roughly 1865 ship building
yards dominated the area. With the subsequent construction of
quays, the name of Princes Wharf came in to being. The wharf
played an important role in the transfer of goods from ships for
both import and export. At the time of the Second World War,
the site housed a large granary as well as transit sheds for
storing goods. War-time bombing destroyed the granary and
sheds.
After the war the area was cleared and prepared for
redevelopment as a new general cargo wharf. L and M Sheds
were so called as previous transit sheds in the docks had all been
labelled sequentially in alphabetical order. Connected at
first floor level, they were separated on the ground floor by a
haulingway cutting across the building and linking the quayside and
the road beyond. The sunken rails around the building allowed
steam engines to haul in and away truckloads of goods, directly
beneath the towering electric cranes used to load and unload the
shipping. Of steel and concrete construction, the building
design was utilitarian and very typical of the post-war austerity
years.
The new wharf began operations in 1952 with the Bristol Steam
Navigation Company using M Shed. In the following years a diverse
range of goods made their way through M Shed, to and from locations
across the world such as the Soviet Union and providing raw
materials for local industries such as board for the paper
mills.
In the mid-1960s Bristol City Council decided to close the Docks
to commercial traffic and the run down of the facilities
began. Much of the trappings of industry were removed and the
iconic cranes that framed the skyline began to be scrapped. A
local pressure group was formed of people who wanted to see part of
the city's heritage retained which resulted in the group purchasing
two cranes and a further two being bought by the City
Council. Around the same time, the Council's Museums Service
had taken over responsibility for the nearby Fairbairn Steam
Crane. This heavy duty crane was installed on the quay in
1878. Used sporadically over the decades it proved useful
into the second half of the 20th century. It is
now a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
The Bristol Industrial Museum opened its doors in M Shed in 1977
and the upper floor of L Shed was also taken over to be the large
object store for the museums service soon after. The lower
floor of L Shed was briefly home to the National Lifeboat Museum
between 1981 and 1988. A working steam railway was an
accompaniment to the Industrial Museum from the earliest days,
running along the dockside and helping to retain an echo of the
working dock itself. The Industrial Museum became an
exceptionally popular venue for Bristolians, particularly those
south of the Avon, and a great place to take visitors to show off
the docks and the city's heritage.
The arrival of the National Lottery in the 1990s offered an
opportunity for the Industrial Museum to be revamped and for the
city of Bristol to gain a brand new facility telling in one place
the complex and fascinating history of one of the country's most
important cities, both in the past and currently. With
funding primarily from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Bristol City
Council along with several other major funders, the new museum M
Shed opened in 2011.
M Shed is a new type of museum. It is not just a city
history museum. What it seeks to do is to reflect people's
experiences of living or visiting the city across time. It
aims to tell people's stories of what they have seen and done, in
the first person if possible, and to illustrate those stories with
3-d objects from across the museums service along with 2-d archives
from the Bristol Record Office. As well as the historic
stories, the museum seeks to reflect contemporary issues and to
encourage visitors to contribute their own experiences through the
use of computer kiosks (and remotely via the website). The
three main galleries are complemented by more in depth material
held on databases and also by a dynamic programme of events and
activities aimed at bringing the museum to life. The museum
should act as a physical and virtual gateway to exploring all
things Bristolian and reflect how very one of us contributes
something to the society we inhabit.
To deliver this vision, M Shed, and to a lesser extent L Shed,
have been transformed by a multi-million pound make over. LAB
Architects have designed the new atrium which acts as the entrance
foyer and stands where the old haulingway used to divide the two
sheds. They have revamped the old gallery spaces of the Industrial
Museum and added a new temporary exhibition gallery and conference
suite on to the roof. All this has been done sensitively so
as not to lose that feeling of how the working dockside would have
looked in its heyday of the 1950s. The refurbished electric cranes,
the steam engines pulling visitors along the dock and the three
museum boats taking passengers for trips around the waterway all
kept alive by a team of enthusiastic volunteers continue to assist
in retaining that mix of the old and
new.