Bristol could have been a very different city indeed if this design for a bridge across the Avon Gorge had been built.

Now for the first time, the span designed by the aptly-named William Bridges in 1793 has been digitally recreated to see what it would look like today.

Bridges’ bridge would have almost been a small town. The arch was to be flanked by six 40-foot storeys of rooms and galleries, containing homes, a granary, corn exchange, chapel, tavern, museums, general market, library, marine school, offices and stables.

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Two windmills were housed in the spandrels (the almost triangular space between one side of the outer curve of an arch), and the structure would have been surmounted by a lighthouse with a wind-vane.

But the social and economic impact of the Bristol Bridge Riot and the French Revolution made the proto-steampunk construction impossible, and young Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have his day instead.

If you want to find out more about buildings in Bristol that were never built, get your hands on a copy of the book Unbuilt Bristol: The City that Might Have Been 1750-2050 by Eugene Byrne, which gives fascinating insights into schemes that never made it off the drawing board.

The CGI above is just one of a number of glimpses of unbuilt cities created by QuickQuid.

Here are the others:

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