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Being Brunel opens on Friday, beside his famous steamship the SS Great Britain in Bristol.
Being Brunel opens on Friday, beside his famous steamship the SS Great Britain in Bristol. All images: Adrian Brooks/Imagewise
Being Brunel opens on Friday, beside his famous steamship the SS Great Britain in Bristol. All images: Adrian Brooks/Imagewise

Being Brunel museum opens on Bristol harbourside

This article is more than 6 years old

New £7.2m attraction celebrates Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s work and life through previously unseen artefacts and a journey into the mind of the great engineer

“You are now in Brunel’s ear canal,” Rhian Tritton tells early visitors to the UK’s newest museum as they walk through a dark, disconcerting, spongy corridor.

Next they are in his brain where 20 people at a time will get an audio, visual and, with the tang of steam and cigar smoke, smellable experience of Brunel’s life and work.

The trip inside the mind of Isambard Kingdom Brunel is part of a £7.2m visitor attraction on Bristol’s harbourside, which opens to the public on 23 March.

With six galleries showing around 150 personal artefacts, many never seen in public before, curators of the Being Brunel museum hope it will give visitors unprecedented, informative and fun insights into the life and work of one of the greatest engineers Britain has ever produced.

“I want visitors to meet him, I want them to feel they actually know him,” said Tritton, the driving force behind the new museum, one which has taken six years to realise. “I want them to be emotionally connected.”

Brunel’s sketchbook showing his vision for the Great Eastern ship, held by Rhian Tritton, director of content at Being Brunel.

The new museum is effectively a very large addition to the current SS Great Britain attraction, which gives visitors the chance to walk round what was the world’s first great ocean liner.

Among the artefacts going on display are a well-worn cigar case which contains Brunel’s last cigar and has on its lid the words IKB Athenaeum Club Pall Mall. It had space for 48 cigars – one day’s supply.

Elsewhere there is Brunel’s 1821 school report – teachers predict he will achieve great things – and a remarkably accomplished sketch of a horse that he drew when he was six.

One of the standout features in the new museum is the eight-metre tall model of Brunel’s hugely recognisable head, complete with cigar and stovepipe hat, into which visitors can walk inside his mind.

Tritton, the director of interpretation, collections and education, said she was inspired by the mad, hilarious film Being John Malkovich, which has a tiny door into the mind and consciousness of the American actor.

Why not do the same for Brunel? “I thought it would be a new way to tell his story.” she said. “There have been lots of very good biographies of Brunel but he does tend to be viewed from a strictly engineering perspective, everything is measured by the success or failure of his engineering projects.”

Giving a final polish to the bell of Brunel’s Great Western steamship, which first set sail in 1838, and was once the largest passenger ship in the world.

Recreating the smell of cigars without using cigars is less tricky than it might sound, Tritton said. “We have smells on board SS Great Britain for vomit, horses, urine, bread, all sorts of things, so cigar smoke is a cinch.”

The new museum incorporates Brunel’s original and fully restored dock office in the Great Western Dockyard, where he designed and built the SS Great Britain, a ship which took four years to construct and another 18 months to get out of Bristol.

There are also artefacts exploring the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the Great Western Railway, Box Tunnel and Paddington Station.

Tritton said they were keen to not only tell the story of Brunel’s greatest achievements, but also his failures. So there is a section of pipe from the ambitious but ill-fated South Devon Atmospheric Railway, a line which would have run from Exeter towards Plymouth using trains powered by atmospheric traction. There are also objects and sketchbooks showing the Great Eastern, the vast iron steamship which was, at the time of its launch in 1858, by far the largest ship the world had ever seen.

The museum has benefitted from £4.78m from the Heritage Lottery Fund and it is expected to provide a significant boost to tourism in the city, with anticipated visitor numbers of 200,000 a year. The admission price is £16.50 for adults and £9.50 for children, and provides unlimited revisits for 12 months.

Tritton said the interest in Brunel, his life and achievements was enormous. “There is something so enigmatic about him... But also he was brave and fearless in the scope of his projects and I think people respond to that.”

More on this story

More on this story

  • SS Great Britain: divers remember salvage on 50th anniversary

  • Letters reveal Isambard Kingdom Brunel's pollution concerns

  • Light at the end of the tunnel: sun shines for Brunel's birthday

  • Fox Talbot photograph of Brunel's Hungerford bridge to go on display

  • Brunel’s Atmospheric Railway

  • What would Isambard Kingdom Brunel think of the HS2 debate?

  • Brunel to tower again over Crystal Palace

  • Naked ambition

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