Celebrating the very best of Bristol’s historic Harbourside

Glassboat restaurant celebrates its first quarter century this year. Mark Sayers delves into the archives of Bristol’s dockside dining institution.

It wasn’t meant to be a restaurant, and I probably wasn’t meant to be a restaurateur either…” Some of the very best things in life occur through accident and happenstance, and that’s undoubtedly the case with Glassboat, Bristol’s world-famous floating restaurant on Welsh Back.

The restaurant has been serving up outstanding food in one of Bristol’s prettiest waterside locations for a quarter of a century now. But, as owner Arne Ringner recalls, the original plan was for something very different. Arne had arrived in Britain from his native Sweden to study botany before working as a researcher at the ‘Long Ashton Cider Institute’ (or Long Ashton Research Station, an agricultural/horticultural research centre just outside Bristol). After that came a stint managing Taunton Cider’s orchards and launching the Bristol-based pressure group Save Our Scrumpy. Then, in 1984, Arne had his big idea: a floating botanical garden on Bristol’s docks.

The Yew Mead

To house this arcadia, Arne and associate Magnus Macdonald had found themselves the ideal craft. Built in 1924, the barge Yew Mead had hauled timber up the Bristol Channel for decades: now, after a hard life, it had started to break up in Severn Estuary mud at Newnham, Gloucestershire. “There was a great abundance of redundant boats, ships and barges 30 years ago,” Arne recalls. “Lightships were decommissioned by the dozen and the old barges that used to ply the Bristol Channel were rusting in clusters along the Severn.”

The process of getting the boat back from Newnham to Bristol was the duo’s first challenge. “It was a rusty old barge, semi-submerged into the mud, and had to be dug out by hand, got afloat and then towed down the Severn, up the Avon and into Bristol Harbour.” There were also tricky negotiations with planners, harbour officials and river folk. “The Harbourmaster and others were very sceptical – ‘What is that? It’s dirty, rusty, full of mud, we don’t want it here.’ It was a bit of an uphill struggle.”

More battles were to come. Bristol’s planners didn’t like Arne’s idea for a floating botanical garden, but told him he could set up a floating cafĂ© instead. “All administrators like to have a box to tick, and there was no box saying ‘floating botanical garden’. However, they did have a box for ‘floating café’, so they went for that.”

In those days, Arne explains, the planners had quite different aspirations for Bristol’s docks. “The docks were still seen as a bit of an inner-city nuisance. They tried to pressurise me into taking up a site at Crew’s Hole in east Bristol, where the tar works had closed down and a new Avon Wildlife Park was planned. But that area has remained a complete dead zone, whereas the docks have become hugely important.”

Arne dug his heels in for a spot he’d found on the empty Welsh Back, near Bristol Bridge. “The site was too good not to develop. There was quite a tug-of-war: the council said they didn’t want any ‘floating failures’ defacing the quaysides.”

The best floating venue

So, as it turns out, the iconic floating restaurant was more compromise than inspiration. Undeterred, Arne and Magnus set about building, on a limited budget, the best possible floating venue. “Sydney, Stockholm, Paris’s floating cafes by the Seine: other cities have a great culture of floating restaurants and Bristol, we thought, should have one of the best.” After spending £500 securing the barge and towing it home, their remaining budget was £850. Almost all of that went to architects Atkins and Walters, who produced the necessary drawings for planning approval, leaving £50 for the boat’s furnishings.

With this budget in mind (and wanting to give the boat some character), Arne and Magnus set out to furnish the boat using antique fixtures and fittings salvaged from other buildings. And they had chosen a good time. “The 1980s saw a golden age of demolition to make way for a ‘new era’, and we found everything for our floating restaurant among the remains of once golden buildings. There were cheap, excellent building materials to be had in exchange for vague promises of a meal for the crane driver and his missus once the restaurant was finished.”

Glassboat’s glass and walnut floors came from the recently defunct Courage Brewery on Temple Back, the solid marble bar from the old St Nicholas Fish Market and the portholes from a cross-channel ferry. Other fittings came from a former police station, Avonmouth flour mills and the former Western Daily Press offices in Silver Street. The Royal Hotel on College Green provided mahogany and Burmese teak for the doors, while the joists came from local firm Mardon, Son & Hall. “They had made all the cardboard for the cigarettes and chocolate industry in Bristol, but by 1984 the great industrial complex was reduced to rubble and we were able to scavenge great long steel joists, like a game of pick-a-stick.”

The grand opening

Glassboat opened in 1986, and boom times soon followed on board. “The late 1980s was the heyday for the financial services industry, and stockbrokers and accountants moved in droves from London to cheaper, more attractive Bristol, where they kept up their tradition of long lunches. Glassboat was awash with pinstripe and backslapping.” Then came the floodlighting of Bristol Bridge in 1990 (inspired by a City Council study trip to Beijing), further enhancing the boat’s evening atmosphere. Soon after, the idea was, er, floated of a Glass Hotel moored next door. “The idea of a floating hotel was great – but it didn’t happen because Welsh Back was becoming increasingly fashionable and other boats were wanting to occupy the space.” In more recent times, Glassboat underwent a thorough restoration including a revamped interior and a modern glass extension added to the stern.

As you’d expect, given its unique character, Glassboat has seen more than its fair share of colourful evenings. “[Australian airline] Qantas brought a large group of crew members and wives for Christmas dinner every year when their planes were serviced at Filton. And the night we had the American Space Shuttle crew in for a ‘bonding’ session with the Hubble telescope repair crew from BAE, the bar ran dry.”

Then there was the visit of Marmaduke Hussey, a former BBC chairman and war hero, who unhitched his prosthetic leg during a boozy fundraising dinner and had to be helped onshore at the end of the night. “Marmaduke phoned in the morning, but could not convince Annette, the cleaning lady, that he had lost his leg the night before. His chauffeur had to return to the boat and retrieve the leg from the general detritus.”

Now, after 25 years’ service, the boat is well worn in – and a key early chapter in Bristol’s Harbourside success story. No other Bristol establishment has stayed under the same ownership for as long, while under present chef Kevin King the food is, says Arne, “better than ever. Changing dining fashions and the new national restaurant chains have taken their toll on the local restaurant community, but the Glassboat is sailing high on the waves.”