Brunel’s lost letters reveal surprising concern over environmental impact of modern Britain

Engineer worried waste created by his Great Western Railway would increase pollution

In recently discovered letters hailed as a “remarkable and extremely rare find”, Isambard Kingdom Brunel is revealed as being surprisingly ahead of his time in worrying about the environmental impact of building modern Britain.

Writing in 1842 about the floating harbour at the heart of Bristol he expressed concern that the “abuses of using the Float as a common receptacle for rubbish have immensely increased”.

He cited the waste created by his Great Western Railway, as well as other industries such as a local cotton mill, iron merchants, and ship, locomotive and bridge builders, all polluting water supplies.

Brunel described the issue as “in some measure unavoidable” but added: “I fear still more from the apparent tendency of all persons to use the Float as a good receiver for that which cannot easily be got rid of elsewhere.”

Nick Booth, head of collections at the SS Great Britain Trust, said: “It’s a fascinating insight into a side of Brunel we have not seen before.

“It would be going too far to suggest Brunel was an environmentalist – he was a Victorian engineer, after all – and his concerns are foremost about the implications for trade.

“But this does provide a glimpse of genuine concern about pollution and is perhaps another way Britain’s greatest engineer was way ahead of his time.”

When the Bristol Dock Company first employed a nervous young engineer named Isambard Kingdom Brunel as a consultant it was a feather in his cap.

A decade later Brunel was one of the most famous people in Britain – and no longer afraid to speak his mind in the most forthright of language, even to his clients.

In a report addressed to the directors of Bristol Docks on 31 January 1842 – while the SS Great Britain was still being built onsite – he berated them for failing to act upon his earlier recommendations to prevent ships getting stuck in the mud of the city’s floating harbour.

He attacked them for a “general abandonment of care” and the “monstrous abuses by which the Channel of the upper part of the Float has been wilfully and wantonly choked up”.

Brunel repeatedly cites the recommendations he had made in previous years: “I need hardly remind you that these measures were never adopted.”

He added later that “past experience leads me to conclude that it is useless to continue to recommend the adoption of a system which is not practically carried out”.

Brunel went on to recommend further measures – at a cost he estimated of £6,000 to £6,500 – and finished with his characteristic signoff: “I am Gentlemen, your obedient servant, IK Brunel.”

Mr Booth said: “It is fascinating to document how Brunel develops over this 14-year period, the most formative years of his career, and how he gets more confident and full of conviction with his language.

“You also get a sense of how systematic he was in keeping all his reports to refer back to.”

The documents also track Brunel’s rise in fame and confidence.

In his early letters the language is carefully balanced.

In later correspondence he criticises various ideas or actions of others’ as “useless” – using the word repeatedly in many of his letters.

He describes issues as “evils” and even criticises the original act of parliament which created the floating harbour in Bristol as being wrong in the first place.

The correspondence focuses almost entirely on the issue of keeping trade coming in and out of Bristol docks by addressing the problem of the floating harbour becoming laden with mud, causing large vessels to run aground.

Mr Booth explained: “This is a first real insight into Brunel’s work on Bristol docks, and we begin to see how the way things are now can be traced back to Brunel.

“He mentions many things that remain part of the fabric of the city today – Clifton Suspension Bridge, of course, but also Cumberland Basin, the Princess Street Bridge and how Overfill Yard became Underfill Yard.

“It’s a really important account of the dock and harbour’s history.”

Press Association