Finzels Reach is being built on a rich historic foundation. For more than a millennium the waterside site has been at the very heart of
the city.

It was at nearby Bristol Bridge that the city first started to take form in Saxon times. By the Middle Ages the Knights Templar had turned what is now Finzels Reach into a thriving district where artisans lived and worked.

Thousands of rare artefacts, which threw new light on the periods of Bristol’s past, were unearthed during the city centre’s largest archaeological dig, which took place at the start of development.

During the 18th and 19th centuries the area became the base for Bristol’s booming sugar industry and it is in honour of the industrialist and philanthropist Conrad Finzel, whose refinery on the site was one of the largest in the country, that the development has been named Finzels Reach.

At the same time, the area became the home of Bristol’s brewing industry and was most recently familiar as the home of the Courage Brewery, which closed in 1999.

The site’s history has remained an integral component of Finzels Reach and to respect the city’s past several historic buildings and facades are being preserved and incorporated into the development, complemented by high quality modern architecture to combine the old with
the new.