Featured Content Page about: bristol

|Jan_Precip_mm = 97.7

|Feb_Precip_mm = 53.8

|Mar_Precip_mm = 85.9

|Apr_Precip_mm = 65.0

|May_Precip_mm = 92.5

|Jun_Precip_mm = 70.6

|Jul_Precip_mm = 79.8

|Aug_Precip_mm = 56.6

|Sep_Precip_mm = 64.5

|Oct_Precip_mm = 113.3

|Nov_Precip_mm = 118.6

|Dec_Precip_mm = 117.0

|Year_Precip_mm = 1015.3

Demographics

In 2008 the Office for National Statistics estimated the Bristol unitary authority's population at 416,900, making it the 47th-largest ceremonial county in England.

Using Census 2001 data the ONS estimated the population of the city to be 441,556,

and that of the contiguous urban area to be 551,066.

This makes the city England's sixth most populous city, and ninth most populous urban area. and Second World War Blenheim and Beaufighter aircraft. and is the oldest continuously operating theatre in England. The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which had originated in King Street is now a separate company. The Bristol Hippodrome is a larger theatre (1981 seats) which hosts national touring productions. Other theatres include the Tobacco Factory (250 seats), QEH (220 seats), the Redgrave Theatre (at Clifton College) (320 seats) and the Alma Tavern (50 seats). Bristol's theatre scene includes a large variety of producing theatre companies, apart from the Bristol Old Vic company, including Show of Strength Theatre Company, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory and Travelling Light Theatre Company. Theatre Bristol is a partnership between Bristol City Council, Arts Council England and local theatre practitioners which aims to develop the theatre industry in Bristol.

There are also a number of organisations within the city which act to support theatre makers, for example Equity, the actors union, has a General Branch based in the city, and Residence which provides office, social and rehearsal space for several Bristol-based theatre and performance companies.

Since the late 1970s, the city has been home to bands combining punk, funk, dub and political consciousness, amongst the most notable have been The Pop Group and trip hop or ''Bristol Sound'' artists such as Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack. It is also a stronghold of drum & bass with notable artists such as the Mercury Prize winning Roni Size/Reprazent as well as the pioneering DJ Krust and More Rockers. This music is part of the wider Bristol urban culture scene which received international media attention in the 1990s.

Bristol has many live music venues, the largest of which is the 2,000-seat Colston Hall, named after Edward Colston. Others include the Bristol Academy, Fiddlers, Victoria Rooms, Trinity Centre, St George's Bristol and a range of public houses from the jazz-orientated The Old Duke to rock at the Fleece and Firkin and indie bands at the Louisiana.

The Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery houses a collection of natural history, archaeology, local glassware, Chinese ceramics and art. The Bristol Industrial Museum, featuring preserved dock machinery, closed in October 2006 for rebuilding and plans to reopen in 2011 as the Museum of Bristol. The City Museum also runs three preserved historic houses: the Tudor Red Lodge, the Georgian House, and Blaise Castle House. The Watershed Media Centre and Arnolfini gallery, both in disused dockside warehouses, exhibit contemporary art, photography and cinema, while the city's oldest gallery is at the Royal West of England Academy in Clifton.

Stop frame animation films and commercials produced by Aardman Animations and television series focusing on the natural world have also brought fame and artistic credit to the city. The city is home to the regional headquarters of BBC West, and the BBC Natural History Unit. Locations in and around Bristol often feature in the BBC's natural history programmes, including the children's television programme ''Animal Magic'', filmed at Bristol Zoo.

In literature, Bristol is noted as the birth place of the 18th-century poet Thomas Chatterton, and also Robert Southey, who was born in Wine Street, Bristol in 1774. Southey and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge married the Bristol Fricker sisters;

and William Wordsworth spent time in the city,

where Joseph Cottle first published Lyrical Ballads in 1798.

The 18th- and 19th-century portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence and 19th-century architect Francis Greenway, designer of many of Sydney's first buildings, came from the city, and more recently the graffiti artist Banksy, many of whose works can be seen in the city. Some famous comedians are locals, including Justin Lee Collins, Lee Evans, Russell Howard, and writer/comedian Stephen Merchant.

Bristol University graduates include magician and psychological illusionist Derren Brown; the satirist Chris Morris; Simon Pegg and Nick Frost of ''Spaced'', ''Shaun of the Dead'' and ''Hot Fuzz''; and Matt Lucas and David Walliams also some churches dating from the 12th century onwards.

Outside the historical city centre there are several large Tudor mansions built for wealthy merchants. Almshouses and public houses of the same period still exist, intermingled with modern development. Several Georgian-era squares were laid out for the enjoyment of the middle class as prosperity increased in the 18th century.

During World War II, the city centre suffered from extensive bombing during the Bristol Blitz. The redevelopment of shopping centres, office buildings, and the harbourside continues apace.

Sport and leisure

The city has two League football clubs: Bristol City and Bristol Rovers, as well as a number of non-league clubs. Bristol City was formed in 1897 a became runners-up in Division One in 1907, and losing FA Cup finalists in 1909. They returned to the top flight in 1976, but in 1980 started a descent to Division Four. They were promoted to the second tier of English football in 2007. The team lost in the play-off final of the Championship to Hull City (2007/2008 season). City announced plans for a new 30,000 all-seater stadium to replace their home, Ashton Gate. Bristol Rovers is the oldest professional football team in Bristol, formed in 1883. They are just below mid-table in League One, and reached the quarter-final stage of the FA Cup. During their history, Rovers have been champions of the (old) division Three (1952/53, 1989/90), Watney Cup Winners (1972, 2006/07), and runners-up in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy. The Club have planning permission to re-develop the Memorial Stadium into an 18,500 all-seat Stadium to be completed by December 2010.

The city is also home to Bristol Rugby rugby union club, a first-class cricket side, Gloucestershire C.C.C. and a Rugby League Conference side, the Bristol Sonics. The city also stages an annual half marathon, and in 2001 played host to the World Half Marathon Championships. There are several athletics clubs in Bristol, including Bristol and West AC, Bitton Road Runners and Westbury Harriers. Speedway racing was staged, with breaks, at the Knowle Stadium from 1928 to 1960, when it was closed and the site redeveloped. The sport briefly returned to the city in the 1970s when the Bulldogs raced at Eastville Stadium.

The Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, a major event for hot-air ballooning in the UK, is held each summer in the grounds of Ashton Court, to the west of the city. The fiesta draws substantial crowds even for the early morning lift beginning at about 6.30 am. Events and a fairground entertain visitors during the day. A second mass ascent is made in the early evening, again taking advantage of lower wind speeds. Until 2007 Ashton Court also played host to the Ashton Court festival each summer, an outdoor music festival known as the Bristol Community Festival.

Media

Bristol has two daily newspapers, the ''Western Daily Press'' and the ''Bristol Evening Post''; a weekly free newspaper, the ''Bristol Observer''; and a Bristol edition of the free ''Metro'' newspaper, all owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. The local weekly listings magazine, ''Venue'', covers the city's music, theatre and arts scenes and is owned by Northcliffe Media, a subsidiary of the Daily Mail and General Trust. Bristol Media is the city's support network for the creative and media industries with over 1600 members. The city has several local radio stations, including BBC Radio Bristol, Heart Bristol (previously known as GWR FM), Classic Gold 1260, Kiss 101, Star 107.2, BCfm (a community radio station launched March 2007), Ujima 98 FM, Original 106.5 (Bristol),

as well as two student radio stations, The Hub and BURST. Bristol also boasts television productions such as ''The West Tonight'' for ITV West (formerly HTV West), ''Points West'' for BBC West, hospital drama ''Casualty'' (due to move to Cardiff in 2011) and Endemol productions such as ''Deal Or No Deal''. Bristol has been used as a location for the Channel 4 comedy drama ''Teachers'', BBC drama ''Mistresses'', teen drama ''Skins'' and horror-drama series ''Being Human''.

Dialect

A dialect of English is spoken by some Bristol inhabitants, known colloquially as ''Bristolian'', or even more colloquially as ''Bristle'' or ''Brizzle''. Bristol is the only large English city with a rhotic accent, in which the ''r'' in words like ''car'' is pronounced. The unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the ''Bristol L'' (or ''terminal L''), in which an ''L'' sound is appended to words that end in an 'a' or 'o'.

Thus ''area'' becomes ''areal'', etc. Further Bristolian linguistic features are the addition of a superfluous ''to'' in questions relating to direction or orientation (a feature also common to the coastal towns of South Wales), or using ''to'' instead of ''at''; and using male pronouns ''he'', ''him'' instead of ''it''. For example, ''Where's that?'' would be phrased as ''Where's he to?'', a structure exported to Newfoundland English.

Stanley Ellis, a dialect researcher, found that many of the dialect words in the Filton area were linked to work in the aerospace industry. He described this as ''a cranky, crazy, crab-apple tree of language and with the sharpest, juiciest flavour that I've heard for a long time''.

Religion

In the United Kingdom Census 2001, 60% of Bristol's population reported themselves as being Christian, and 25% stated they were not religious; the national UK averages are 72% and 15% respectively. Islam accounts for 2% of the population (3% nationally), with no other religion above one percent, although 9% did not respond to the question.

The city has many Christian churches, the most notable being the Anglican Bristol Cathedral and St. Mary Redcliffe and the Roman Catholic Clifton Cathedral. Nonconformist chapels include Buckingham Baptist Chapel and John Wesley's New Room in Broadmead.

The Muslim community is served by three mosques. There are several Buddhist meditation centres, a Hindu Temple, Progressive and Orthodox synagogues and a Sikh temple.

Education, science and technology

Bristol is home to two major institutions of higher education: the University of Bristol, a ''redbrick'' chartered in 1909, and the University of the West of England, formerly Bristol Polytechnic, which gained university status in 1992. The city also has two dedicated further education institutions, City of Bristol College and Filton College, and three theological colleges, Trinity College, Wesley College and Bristol Baptist College. The city has 129 infant, junior and primary schools,

17 secondary schools,

and three city learning centres. It has the country's second highest concentration of independent school places, after an exclusive corner of north London. The independent schools in the city include Colston's School, Clifton College, Clifton High School, Badminton School, Bristol Cathedral School, Bristol Grammar School, Redland High School, Queen Elizabeth's Hospital (the only all-boys school) and Red Maids' School, which claims to be the oldest girls' school in England, having been founded in 1634 by John Whitson.

In 2005, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer recognised Bristol's ties to science and technology by naming it one of six ''science cities'', and promising funding for further development of science in the city,

with a £300 million science park planned at Emerson's Green.

As well as research at the two universities and Southmead Hospital, science education is important in the city, with At-Bristol, Bristol Zoo, Bristol Festival of Nature and the Create Centre being prominent local institutions involved in science communication. The city has a history of scientific luminaries, including the 19th-century chemist Sir Humphry Davy, who worked in Hotwells. Bishopston gave the world Nobel Prize winning physicist Paul Dirac for crucial contributions to quantum mechanics in 1933. Cecil Frank Powell was Melvill Wills Professor of Physics at Bristol University when he was awarded the Nobel prize for a photographic method of studying nuclear processes and associated discoveries in 1950. The city was birth place of Colin Pillinger, planetary scientist behind the Beagle 2 Mars lander project, and is home to the psychologist Richard Gregory.

Initiatives such as the Flying Start Challenge help encourage secondary school pupils around the Bristol area to take an interest in Science and Engineering. Links with major aerospace companies promote technical disciplines and advance students' understanding of practical design.

Transport

Bristol has two principal railway stations. Bristol Temple Meads is in the centre and sees mainly First Great Western services including regular high speed trains to London Paddington as well as other local and regional services and CrossCountry trains. Bristol Parkway is located to the north of the city and is mainly served by high speed First Great Western services between Cardiff and London, and CrossCountry services to Birmingham and the North East. There is also a limited service to London Waterloo from Bristol Temple Meads, operated by South West Trains. There are also scheduled coach links to most major UK cities.

The city is connected by road on an east–west axis from London to West Wales by the M4 motorway, and on a north–southwest axis from Birmingham to Exeter by the M5 motorway. Also within the county is the M49 motorway, a short cut between the M5 in the south and M4 Severn Crossing in the west. The M32 motorway is a spur from the M4 to the city centre.

Bristol is motorcycle friendly; the city recognises that motorcycle use eases congestion and encourages it by allowing motorcycles to use most of the city's bus lanes, as well as providing secure free parking.

Since 2000 the city council has included a light rail system in its Local Transport Plan, but has so far been unwilling to fund the project. The city was offered European Union funding for the system, but the Department for Transport did not provide the required additional funding.

As well as support for public transport, there are several road building schemes supported by the local council, including re-routing and improving the South Bristol Ring Road.

There are also three park and ride sites serving the city, supported by the local council.

The central part of the city has water-based transport, operated as the Bristol Ferry Boat, providing leisure and commuter services on the harbour.

Bristol's principal surviving suburban railway is the Severn Beach Line to Avonmouth and Severn Beach. The Portishead Railway was closed to passengers under the Beeching Axe, but was relaid in 2000–2002 as far as the Royal Portbury Dock with a Strategic Rail Authority rail-freight grant. Plans to relay a further three miles (5 km) of track to Portishead, a largely dormitory town with only one connecting road, have been discussed but there is insufficient funding to rebuild stations.

Despite being hilly, Bristol was named ''England's first 'cycling city in 2008, and is home to the national cycle campaigning group Sustrans. It has a number of urban cycle routes, as well as links to National Cycle Network routes to Bath and London, to Gloucester and Wales, and to the south-western peninsula of England. Cycling has grown rapidly in the city, with a 21% increase in journeys between 2001 and 2005.

Twin cities

Bristol was among the first cities to adopt the idea of town twinning. In 1947 it was twinned with Bordeaux in France and Hannover, the first post-war twinning of British and German cities. Twinnings with Porto, Portugal (1984), Tbilisi, Georgia (1988), Puerto Morazan, Nicaragua (1989), Beira, Mozambique (1990) and Guangzhou, China (2001) have followed.