How we got here

Early Days

From 70 AD until about 430 AD Sea Mills was a fortified settlement at the Roman harbour of Abona where the Trym joins the Avon.   This is where in 1712 Joshua Franklin built a wet dock for ships to unload, but it lost money and the structure deteriorated.   Yet today you can still see part of the dock built out into the creek.

 

The Railway

The railway was built 1865 by the Bristol Port Railway and Pier Co. from Avonmouth to Hotwells.   By 1904 the Midland Railwav extended it via the Clifton Down Tunnel - the first to be built with pneumatic drills - and the single track was doubled.

 

Starting to Build

Sea Mills farmland was sold to the City of Bristol in 1918 by Dr Napier Miles.   Our estate was designed as a garden suburb under post-WWI housing acts ('homes for heroes').   The first sod was cut 4^th June 1919 and houses were being occupied by the August of 1920.   Each house had to have a neatly trimmed privet hedge in front and an apple tree in the back garden!

The estate's design was a good example of its time, coming third in the Garden Cities and Town Planning Associations national competition in 1935.

 

To the Present Day

In 1926 a lady columnist of The Western Daily Press recorded a trip down the newly built Portway.   As well as counting the trees planted along the roadside she tells us that Sea Mills had long been known as 'the midshipman of the Avon'.   If anyone can tell us more about this nickname we'd like to know.

Coombe Dingle remained a quiet rural area until after WWII when the land between Westbury Lane and Blaise Woods was filled in with houses and prefabs, the latter replaced in the 1970s.   The last few sites off Grove Road are now disappearing under in-fill housing.

These days the area south of Sylvan Way has been designated the Sea Mills Conservation Area, while most of our north and west borders together with the eastern part of Coombe Dingle are in the Kingsweston and Coombe Dingle Conservation Area.