Portbury Ashlands
nature reserve in United Kingdom
Portbury Ashlands which is now known as Portbury Wharf Nature Reserve is a nature reserve between Portishead and the Royal Portbury Dock in Somerset, England. It was formed from the redevelopment of the area of Portishead formerly occupied by two power stations. To the east of the harbour, an area known as "the Ashlands" was used for over 50 years to get rid of power station waste which was dumped into lagoons on the site.
The Portishead power stations were coal-fed electric power stations. Construction work started on Portishead "A" power station in 1926. It began generating electricity in 1929 for the Bristol Corporation's Electricity Department. Construction of Portishead "B" power station began in 1949; it became operational in 1955. The stations used some local coal produced in the Somerset coalfield, which was delivered by train along the Portishead branch of the Great Western Railway (GWR). The main supply of coal was brought from South Wales, from Newport and Ely, Cardiff by boat into the dock; it was carried by Osborn & Wallis of Bristol.
Avon Wildlife Trust have taken over management of the area, which covers around 100 acres (40 ha), from the developers Persimmon plc.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 8, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7231532. Authority coordinates are 51.490, -2.746. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 1929, 1949 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Portbury Ashlands” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.