Bright idea saw bridge a-peel grow a bunch

Bristol's Banana Bridge recently re-opened after vital repair and refurbishment, but the recent work is nothing compared to the intricate operation that put it there in the first place, as Eugene Byrne has been finding out.

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THE Banana Bridge, a footbridge connecting Redcliff and Bedminster, was closed last May for a much-needed £1.4m refurbishment.

The work was completed five months ahead of schedule, and it was re-opened on June 20 in a ceremony involving the Lord Mayor, Cllr Henry Michallat, council officials and pupils from two nearby schools, many of them doubtless relieved that their journeys to and from school would now be shorter, leaving them more time in bed of a morning.

Cllr Ed Plowden, chair of the council's "transport and connectivity" committee, told reporters: "It is looking very smart and more banana-like than ever with its fresh coat of yellow paint."

Officially it's the Langton Street footbridge, though Langton Street itself, which mostly comprised Victorian-era terraced houses - and which was also home to the first Beavis lemonade factory (ask your grandma) - is long gone.

What survived the Blitz was demolished in the postwar redevelopment of the Redcliff area and what remains is now under flats and the St Mary Redcliffe school.

For most of its life the Banana Bridge was just the Langton Street Bridge until the Council painted it yellow in the late 1990s or early 2000s; it only became the Banana Bridge after this, not just because of its bright hue but because of its shape technically it's a "bow-string" bridge.

Annoyingly, BT has been unable to discover when, exactly, the paint-job was carried out. According to one councillor, there were complaints about it at the time, though we can't find any articles or outraged readers' letters in the local press about it.

Of course, there would be a massive outcry if anyone proposed painting it any other colour now. It has become, to use a cliché, "iconic".