Work on the bridge over the Avon…

Work on the bridge over the Avon had been restarted in 1862, and is complete by 1864—one hundred nand eleven years after a bridge at the site was first planned.

The idea of building a bridge across the Avon Gorge had originated in 1753, with a bequest in the will of Bristolian merchant William Vick, who had left £1,000 invested with instructions that when the interest had accumulated to £10,000, it should be used for the purpose of building a stone bridge between Clifton Down (which was in Gloucestershire, outside the City of Bristol, until the 1830s) and Leigh Woods in Somerset.

By 1829, Vick's bequest had reached £8,000, but it was estimated that a stone bridge would cost over ten times that amount.

An Act of Parliament had been passed to allow a wrought iron suspension bridge to be built instead, and tolls levied to recoup the cost.

A competition had been held to find a design for the bridge; the judge, Thomas Telford, had rejected all designs, and tried to insist on a design of his own, a suspension bridge supported on tall Gothic towers.

Telford claimed that no suspension bridge could exceed the 577 feet (176 m) span of his own Menai Suspension Bridge.

A second competition, held with new judges, had been won by the design of Isambard Kingdom Brunel on March 16, 1831, for a suspension bridge with fashionably Egyptian-influenced towers.

An attempt to build Brunel's design in 1831 had been stopped by the Bristol Riots, which had severely dented commercial confidence in Bristol.

Work was not started again until 1836, and thereafter the capital from Vick's bequest and subsequent investment had proved woefully inadequate.

By 1843, the towers had been built in unfinished stone, but funds were exhausted.

In 1851, the ironwork had been sold and used to build the Brunel-designed Royal Albert Bridge on the railway between Plymouth and Saltash.

Brunel had died in 1859, without seeing the completion of the bridge.

Brunel's colleagues in the Institution of Civil Engineers, feeling that completion of the Bridge would be a fitting memorial, had started to raise new funds.

In 1860, Brunel's Hungerford suspension bridge, over the Thames in London, had been demolished to make way for a new railway bridge to Charing Cross railway station, and its chains had been purchased for use at Clifton.

A slightly revised design had been made by William Henry Barlow and Sir John Hawkshaw; it has a wider, higher and sturdier deck than Brunel intended, triple chains instead of double, and the towers are left as rough stone rather than being finished in Egyptian style.