As is my want, I darted down a quiet thoroughfare last weekend to research some local history. The thoroughfare in question was Rivergate, at the back of Temple Meads station among the new office buildings at Temple Quay. There, you will find three metal information boards and a seat that doubles as a viewing platform down to an original medieval structure. Click here for photos.

The information boards detail the history of the Portwall, the southern wall of the medieval city of Bristol which originally stood in open fields owned by the Knights Templars. Built in around 1250, the Portwall had several semicircular defensive towers along its length, as well as a Watergate to allow access to the ditch and meadows the other side of the wall. It is the Watergate that can be seen below the viewing point. The foundations of a large round tower now lie under the Bristol & West building.

By the early eighteenth-century, the land inside the Portwall was being sold for housing, with new streets being laid out. The Portwall was considered an obstruction and was being demolished or reused in later buildings.

In 1839, the meadows of Temple Meads were sold to the Great Western Railway Company for the building of the railway station. Later, a goods yard was built filling all of the area between the station and the former line of the Portwall. Even after all of this development, the Portwall is still preserved beneath the modern road.

“What has all this got to do with the Portwall Tavern?” I hear you cry. Well, not much really, but I think it’s always interesting when a pub adopts a historic name, especially one dating back so many centuries. The Portwall ran along what is now Portwall Lane where the Portwall Tavern can be found, another reminder of a bit of Bristol history.

A narrow, single-room pub, the Portwall Tavern is always filled with artificial light as the only windows are near the front door looking towards St Mary Redcliffe church. Ale on tap when I visited on Monday lunchtime was Butcombe, Gem and Gorge Best, while lunch options include paninis, jacket potatoes and lasagne.

There is a dartboard and an electric fire, with old black and white photographs of Bristol on the wall, but sadly not old enough to entirely retrace the centuries-old history behind this pub’s name.

The Portwall Tavern, 1 Portwall Lane, Bristol. 0117 922 0442.