Reckless Engineer pub sign, Bristol

Introduction

The photograph on this page of Reckless Engineer pub sign, Bristol by Jaggery as part of the Geograph project.

The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.

There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk

Reckless Engineer pub sign, Bristol

Image: © Jaggery Taken: 8 Nov 2012

The pub sign hangs from a bracket attached to the wall of this pub. http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3216105 It depicts a young Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Why reckless? Perhaps the namers of the pub wished to draw attention to the flaws in a complex character. Though Brunel unquestionably produced much excellent work, he had many failures too. One example was the short-lived atmospheric railway between Exeter and Newton Abbot, which had many design faults. The Bristol historian John Latimer, writing in 1887, described Brunel as an "inexperienced theorist enamoured of novelty, prone to seek for difficulties rather than to evade them, and utterly indifferent as to the outlay which his recklessness entailed upon his employers".

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Image Location

coordinates on a map icon
Latitude
51.44841
Longitude
-2.583896