up to three tonnes<\/a>, and the process to cut them off began on Monday morning.<\/p>\nThere are thousands of the locks attached by couples to the bridge – which is named after Pero Jones who was enslaved in Bristol in the 18th Century – many with their initials inscribed.<\/p>\n
Bristol City Council has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n
Pero’s Bridge opened in 1999 and links Queen Square and Millennium Square. <\/p>\n
It is not yet known what will happen to the padlocks once they are removed.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755184337_952_grey-placeholder.png\")
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/99584e50-7c29-11f0-92c1-85a236087aea.jpg.webp.webp\")
<\/p>\n
Tom Davies (r) and Josh Inoue (l) spoke to the BBC on the bridge<\/p>\n
Speaking to the BBC on the bridge, couple Tom Davies and Josh Inoue said the move “makes sense if it’s a safety thing”.<\/p>\n
“It’s sad though, I hope they came up with another way of preserving it,” Mr Davies said.<\/p>\n
Mr Inoue said: “You can see a lot of them [the padlocks] are eroded and decaying, but the moment is still there. <\/p>\n
“Things fade, but memories are forever.”<\/p>\n
![\"Many](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/ead65fb0-7c24-11f0-a40e-2dd630055bb1.png.webp.webp\")
<\/p>\n
It is estimated the padlocks collectively weigh three tonnes.<\/p>\n
The council initially planned to remove the locks before the Bristol Harbour Festival last month.<\/p>\n
It cleared the bridge of padlocks about 10 years ago – but couples attached new locks and it was covered again within a few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leigh Boobyer & Mike Gilmore BBC News, Bristol BBC The padlocks were being removed on Monday Padlocks attached…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-355250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115052159351168570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"BBC](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/09f9ac30-7c2f-11f0-92c1-85a236087aea.jpg.webp.webp\")
BBC<\/p>\n