Trams' 150th

As you may know, it's 150 years this year since the Bristol Tramways Company was started in order to run horse-drawn trams.

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By the 1860s, trams or “omnibuses” pulled along rails by horsepower were seen as the coming thing in Britain's growing cities. The government provided the legislative framework for their development and Bristol's Corporation obtained Parliamentary permission to start laying out routes in 1871.

It had the rails put in, but then a period of wrangling ensued over who would run our new trams. The Bristol Tramways Company, led by local law firm Stanley & Wasbrough, whose young clerk George White handled much of the work, clinched the deal. It was running its first line in 1875, from Perry Road to Blackboy Hill.

Other routes followed, thanks to George White, who would later be the firm’s MD and chairman.

Aaaaannd the rest is history of the sort you'll know from no end of local books and BT articles ever since, not to mention all the asides in the last 50 years’ worth of news stories about how Bristol is definitely maybe possibly getting a new tram/mass transit/light rail system next year/decade/century.