This week Gerry Brooke looks back on the ss Great Britain, Bristol Water, the M32, St Paul's and St George.

This was then week when an Arab oil embargo against countries which supported Israel triggered the 1973 energy crisis.

Cheap energy in the UK would now become a thing of the past.

In Bristol Prince Charles was paying a visit to the ss Great Britain in order to keep a long standing promise with the ship’s millionaire backer, Jack Hayward.

While staying at Hayward’s home in the Bahamas during naval exercises in the spring the Prince had said that he would visit the project.

Princes Edward and Andrew, as well as the Duke of Edinburgh, had already been on a conducted tour during a Royal visit in August.

Richard Goold-Adams, the project chairman, told the Post that the Prince seemed very interested, asked many questions and was anxious to return when the ship was fully restored.

It was a busy day for the Prince who was also officially opening a new £8 million water collecting scheme on the Sharpness canal at Purton.

The Bristol Waterworks Company, which had inaugurated the scheme, would now be able to supply 70 million gallons of water a day, if needed, to householders and businesses in the greater Bristol area.

Water from the canal – initially from the River Severn itself – was being pumped to a holding reservoir at Pucklechurch.

Blagdon and Chew Valley lakes, they stressed, would continue to top up the city supply at Barrow tanks.

Prince Charles was amused to hear about the company’s sophisticated pollution monitoring system – guppies in a fish tank which would react immediately if there was any toxicity in the water.

In other news it was announced that the M32 – then known as the Parkway – would not be completed until 1975.

Not only was the highway going £1.6 million over budget but it also running nine months behind schedule.

The Planning Committee were told that an extra million had to be spent anyway because of the difficulties of the site.

In fact the M32 didn’t open fully until 1979 – an incredible eleven years after it was first started.

The Housing Committee heard that a survey in St Paul’s by the Medical Officer of Health had revealed that one in five houses in the area was unfit to live in.

One remedy, they heard, was to acquire the houses, demolish them and then re-develop the area.

Many of the sounder houses, said John Fleming, the Housing Director, suffered from damp and disrepair.

The problem was exacerbated by landlords who were happy to take rent but did nothing about the condition of their properties.

When more surveys had been carried out it could lead, he said, to the declaration of “Housing Action Areas.”

Bristol planners were also visiting St George, where the parish church was going to be demolished, to see if there was any chance of saving the tower for posterity.

The church was demolished, along with its tower, in 1976.

The council had no wish, apparently, to maintain yet another “Bristol folly.”

Sheltered housing now covers the site.