Bristol
Bristol is a city and county in South West England, with a population of 463,400. It also has status as a ceremonial county, although it lost its title as a full administrative county in 1974. The city lies between Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. South Wales lies across the Severn estuary.
About Bristol in brief
Bristol is a city and county in South West England, with a population of 463,400. It also has status as a ceremonial county, although it lost its title as a full administrative county in 1974. The wider district has the 10th-largest population in England. The city lies between Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. South Wales lies across the Severn estuary. Bristol was a starting place for early voyages of exploration to the New World. In 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, became the first European to land on mainland North America. At the height of the Bristol slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2,000 slave ships carried an estimated 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas. Bristol’s modern economy is built on the creative media, electronics and aerospace industries, and the city-centre docks have been redeveloped as centres of heritage and culture. It is connected to London and other major UK cities by road and rail, and to the world by sea and air: road, by the M5 and M4 ; rail, via Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway mainline rail stations; and Bristol Airport. It was selected in 2009 as one of the world’s top ten cities by international travel publishers Dorling Kindersley in their Eyewitness series of travel guides. The Sunday Times named it as the best city in Britain in which to live in 2014 and 2017, and Bristol also won the EU’s European Green Capital Award in 2015.
The current name derives from the Old English form Brycgstow, which is typically etymologised as place at the bridge. It appears that the form Bricstow prevailed until 1204 and the Bristolian ‘L’ is what eventually changed the name to Bristol. The original form of the name survives as the surname Bristow,which is derived from the city. Early recorded place names in the Bristol area include the Roman-era British Celtic Abona and the archaic Welsh Caer Odor, which may have been calqued as the modern English Clifton. By 1067, Bristol had one of Britain’s strongest trading centres with a mint producing silver pennies bearing its name. Under Norman rule, the strongest town of the area was Bristol, which was a well-fortified burh and that year beat back a raiding party from Ireland led by three sons of Harold Godwinson’s sons. The modern city has two universities, the University of Bristol and the University Of the West of England, and a variety of artistic and sporting organisations and venues including the Royal West of. England Academy, the Arnolfini, Spike Island, Ashton Gate and the Memorial Stadium. The Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the. Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock. The city has the largest circulating community currency in the UK; the Bristol pound, which are pegged to the Pound sterling.
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This page is based on the article Bristol published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
