The bridge is supposed to lift up, but can’t because of the padlocks
A general view of Pero’s Bridge in Bristol city centre, at lunchtime on August 18, the day council workers began the process of cutting off and removing hundreds of ‘lovelocks’, padlocks which are causing a weight problem on the bridge(Image: Bristol Post)
Work has begun to remove three tonnes of ‘lovelocks’ – padlocks locked onto the rails – on a Bristol footbridge. Council officials began removing the locks first thing on Monday morning, although had stopped for a break by lunchtime with only a fraction of the locks removed.
Bristol City Council announced back in June this work would happen at Pero’s Bridge, which connects Narrow Quay with Bordeaux Quay across St Augustine’s Reach, because they feared the locks were getting too heavy for the bridge.
The council called on anyone who wanted to retrieve their locks on Pero’s Bridge to do so, before work began, and in June pledged that this work would be done before the Harbour Festival on the third week of July.
But that didn’t happen, and now, a month later, council workers have been spotted this morning, Monday, August 18, taking bolt cutters to the padlocks on the bridge. There are hundreds of locks on the bridge, and one council chief said the weight of the extra metal was three tonnes – although this has not been verified.
Pero’s Bridge does lift up – the ‘horns’ are counterweights that allow the central part of the pedestrian bridge to lift up and allow taller boats to go further up St Augustine’s Reach to the Cascade Steps.
But at the moment, the council’s director of ‘management of place’, Patsy Mellor, told councillors it couldn’t be lifted because of the weight of the locks. “We have got a ‘no lift’ notice on Pero’s Bridge due to the weight of the locks,” she said. “It’s three tonnes, the estimated weight of the locks.”
“The team is working on a solution where we can place the locks in a nearby structure of some sort. They have to be removed before the Harbour Festival, so it’ll happen quite quickly,” she said back in June.
Love locks on Pero’s Bridge(Image: Alex Seabrook)
Pero’s Bridge is the newest bridge across the water in Bristol – it was built in 1999 and named after Pero Jones, who was one of the few enslaved African people who made the third leg of the notorious ‘triangular trade’ which went from Bristol to West Africa, on to the Caribbean and North America, then back to Bristol.
He came back as a servant for the Pinney family – who had sugar plantations with slaves on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean. The house where they and Pero lived is now Bristol’s Georgian House museum, off Park Street.
READ MORE: The bridge in the city centre of Bristol with links to the slave tradeREAD MORE: Three tonnes of ‘love locks’ on iconic Bristol footbridge to be removed
The bridge connects Queen Square and Narrow Quay on the eastern side of St Augustine’s Reach with what was then the new regeneration development of the harbourside and Millennium Square – with the bridge leading to the coincidentally-named Loverose Way, the pedestrian street from the bridge to Millennium Square and Anchor Square.
In 2023, a campaign was started to ask the council to remove the ‘lovelocks’ with the message that it wasn’t appropriate to place padlocks on a bridge named in honour of an enslaved man. The council didn’t take action then, but are doing so now because of structural concerns.