Bristol's lost wetlands

THE theme of this year’s Bristol Festival of Nature is water, and among other things it plans to draw our attention to the way the old place looked in former times.

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Before everything got paved over, the confluence of two rivers involved a lot of bits that were sometimes very wet. There are also clues in the place names. Canons Marsh, for instance. And before it was the architectural/heritage jewel we all treasure today, Queen Square was simply “The Marsh” or the “Town Marsh”.

You need only look at old paintings and watercolours of the harbour area even into the 1800s to see how much development has happened since, and to see a landscape where wildlife could thrive despite all the human activity.