Maritime bonanza as Brunel Institute opens

The Brunel Institute sits alongside Brunel’s ss Great Britain, the great Victorian engineer’s masterpiece and only surviving ship, now at the heart of a multi-award winning museum and visitor attraction. Admission to the Brunel Institute, which is also managed by the ss Great Britain Trust, is free of charge to all.

Staff and volunteers expect the Brunel Institute, with its National Brunel Archive and David MacGregor Library, to appeal to researchers and enthusiasts, those with a passion for the Brunel’s work and for maritime history, as well as to local residents.

Rare items include the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s drawing instruments, his diaries, and photographs of the Clifton Suspension Bridge during its early build. An innovative collaboration with the University of Bristol sees the important Brunel holdings of that institution also joining the Institute to form the National Brunel Archive.

The Brunel Institute holds around 45,000 items, including 4,500 maritime, engineering and shipbuilding books, 2,000 ship plans, 100 ship models, 35,000 maritime photographs, passenger and crew diaries and letters, 50 films, the Lloyd’s Register dating back to the 1700s, and the Illustrated London News.

As well as the Brunel Archive, specialist maritime David MacGregor Library, the Viridor Theatre and Great Western Room, which will be available for venue hire, there are important and popular education programmes ranging from ‘Sea Hear’ storytelling and ‘Future Brunels’ for teenagers, to the ‘Brunel Badge’ and loan box schemes.

The ss Great Britain Trust is a registered charity, which runs the independent museum, and receives no central or local government funding. The charity generates income through the attraction’s visitors, venue hire, and through fundraising, to care for the historic ship and to run its educational programmes.

Director of the ss Great Britain Trust, Matthew Tanner MBE said, ‘The ss Great Britain Trust has two objectives. The first is to care for the ss Great Britain, which is being achieved through the ambitious conservation and restoration programme. The second is educational. The Brunel Institute allows the Trust to encourage education at every level and to provide an invaluable resource and service to researchers as well as those with a passing interest in maritime history and in Brunel, schoolchildren and the under fives.’