St Vincent's Works Virtual Tour

Garrad Hassan and Partners bought the building in August 2000. After receiving appropriate permission from all the different agencies required in order to make alternations to a Grade II* Listed Building, refurbishment began in January 2001 and was completed at the end of April.

The building was in a poor state at the time, but did have a new roof. The refurbishment included the removal of much "modernisation", such as partitions and lowered ceilings, which had been introduced in the 1960's and 1970's.

Garrad Hassan's occupancy of the building continues the engineering tradition of St Vincent's Works - it has been an engineering office continuously since it was built.

Parts of the SS Great Britain and the Clifton Suspension Bridge were made in the works attached to the office.

Below is an extract from "Bristol: Last Age of the Merchant Princes" by Tim Mowl, which describes the architectural merits of the building and also provides a little history.

"Here, perhaps more than anywhere else in the city, is evidence that 19th-century merchants really were 'princely' in their vision and planning and that the term is not mere hyperbole.

The continuity of round-arched design on Lysaght's site along Silverthorne Lane is striking. John Lysaght, a Bristol educated Irishman, was given the original galvanising plant of only seven workers in 1857, but he soon expanded it to include earlier foundry buildings in a primitive Rundbogenstil and even two neo-Norman gate lodges.

The later office block was devised by Milverton Drake with wages, timekeepers, muniments, stationers, country and roofing departments all arranged around the literally glittering octagon alight with Royal Doulton tiles. Quite what image Milverton Drake was attempting on the exterior it is hard to say Free-form Norman might serve as a description but 'Ruritanian Romanesque' catches its self-inflated grandiosity perfectly. Inside, there is a central mosaic floor emblazoned with Bristol's city arms. Italian grotesque work enriches the spandrels of the arches and snarling metal heads of panthers lend an odd ferocity to the railings of the gallery.

Below the tiled and glazed dome a painted frieze of golden ships from an Egyptian galley to a Bristol built steam warship reminds the visitor that Lysaght did have maritime interests in addition to its most profitable trade in corrugated iron sheets to the Australian outback."

We are reminded every year by the thousands of visitors that come to visit St Vincent's Works during Bristol's "Open Doors Day" just what an amazing place it is to work in.