Many Thanks To Tumbles For The Tour over the weekend..
Possibly originally a railway tunnel and then converted into an air raid shelter for use during the war, In recent years it has been the venue for a local gun/rifle club.
Bristols Clifton Rocks Railway is a short walk away.
At the end of the tunnel there is the remains of the toilets beyond this there are further sections but this area is bricked up.
Bristol’s most crowded bomb shelter - the Portway Tunnel. Today it stands locked and derelict, its entrance half hidden by thick undergrowth. But during the worst of the Bristol blitzes in the winter of 1940/41, people would walk for miles to find shelter in the tunnel that lies beneath Bridge Valley Road in the shadow of the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
The tunnel gained a near-mythical reputation as the safest place to be when bombs were falling over Bristol, and families shoved and squeezed their way into the dank, unhealthy interior to pass the night. So many began walking to the tunnel each night that the authorities acted, fearing riots or, worse, an epidemic from the increasingly filthy conditions in the tunnel.
Hundreds of people were forcibly evicted from the Portway refuge and ordered not to return. A small number of treasured passes were issued to the lucky few. The action caused bitter resentment among a hungry, blitz-weary population. But as the fear of blitzes began to die away after the final great raids of the spring of 1941 faded, so did the ill-feeling.
http://silverstealth.fotopic.net/c1572714.html
Possibly originally a railway tunnel and then converted into an air raid shelter for use during the war, In recent years it has been the venue for a local gun/rifle club.
Bristols Clifton Rocks Railway is a short walk away.
At the end of the tunnel there is the remains of the toilets beyond this there are further sections but this area is bricked up.
Bristol’s most crowded bomb shelter - the Portway Tunnel. Today it stands locked and derelict, its entrance half hidden by thick undergrowth. But during the worst of the Bristol blitzes in the winter of 1940/41, people would walk for miles to find shelter in the tunnel that lies beneath Bridge Valley Road in the shadow of the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
The tunnel gained a near-mythical reputation as the safest place to be when bombs were falling over Bristol, and families shoved and squeezed their way into the dank, unhealthy interior to pass the night. So many began walking to the tunnel each night that the authorities acted, fearing riots or, worse, an epidemic from the increasingly filthy conditions in the tunnel.
Hundreds of people were forcibly evicted from the Portway refuge and ordered not to return. A small number of treasured passes were issued to the lucky few. The action caused bitter resentment among a hungry, blitz-weary population. But as the fear of blitzes began to die away after the final great raids of the spring of 1941 faded, so did the ill-feeling.
http://silverstealth.fotopic.net/c1572714.html
Did Tom not warn you to do the same?
