The Junction of Steep Street and Trenchard Street, Bristol, 1866

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This view was recorded five years before Steep Street, curving away to the left, was demolished and replaced by a realigned road, Colston Street. The photograph was published in 1891 as a nostalgic view by Bristol art publishers and print sellers Frost & Reed. A limited run of 100 prints was produced and the negative destroyed.

The junction of Steep Street and Trenchard Street, Bristol, 1866. (Photo by John Hill Morgan/Historic England Archive)

A small nugget of grittier Victorian reality buried in the image. The shop window in the centre of the picture contains a sign reading “hair bought”: presumably one of the options for the poor of Bristol in hard times.

Below is the currently view of the junction of Steep and Trenchard streets, via Google Maps:

The junction of Steep Street and Trenchard Street, Bristol, 2019. (Photo via Google Maps)