The Brunel Institute
The Brunel Legacy Tim Bryan Director of the Brunel Institute at the SS Great Britain in Bristol
In this, the first of a series of features about Brunel and his work, Tim describes the collections held at the Institute that tell the story of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his life and work. Of all the Victorian engineers, Brunel is probably the best represented in terms of surviving archive material about his life and career; in April 1910 the Great Western Railway Magazine recorded that the Brunel family had presented a large collection of material to the Great Western Railway, which was kept at Paddington for many years, but is now preserved at the National Archives at Kew. In 1950, Brunel’s grand-daughter Lady Celia Noble presented the University of Bristol with a priceless collection of letter books, sketchbooks, calculation books, documents and drawing instruments that had been retained by the family until that point. The collection grew further as more material become available through donations and auction purchases by the University. In 2010, the collection was moved to the Brunel Institute, to become part a new collaborative venture between the SS Great Britain Trust and the University of Bristol that sits alongside Brunel’s engineering masterpiece, the SS Great Britain. The
Institute now houses one of the world’s finest collection of Brunelrelated material which includes not only the material formerly held at the University of Bristol Library, on long term deposit, but many other important items from the Trust’s own National Brunel Collection relating to the engineer and his family, making it one of the most significant collections of its type in the world. The collection spans all aspects of Brunel’s career, covering bridges (including the Clifton Suspension bridge), railways, steamships, tunnels and other miscellaneous projects such as his designs for a
Detail of a lamp post at Bath station from Brunel’s sketchbook
A stereoscopic photograph of the Royal Albert Bridge, Saltash under construction Spring 2021
GREAT WESTERN STAR MAGAZINE
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