Mar 7: Songs about locations: The Underfall Yard

This is a location in Bristol.

The Underfall Yard is actually linked to Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The 23 minute title track, "The Underfall Yard", is a song about Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the great Victorian engineers. The Underfall Yard itself is located in Bristol and is an engineering solution, partly developed by Brunel, to maintain water and silt levels in the city's harbour. 

The song explores Enlightenment themes, contrasting the rationalism of the Victorian era to a coming 'age of unreason'. 

The Underfall Yard was initially inspired by Richard Fortey's The Hidden Landscape. 

In the book, Fortey describes a journey along Brunel's Great Western line, where, as the author travelled west, the rocks are found to be older.

It's also the 6th album by the band Big Big Train.

In 2020, the band re-recorded this classic long form track, and added a new guitar solo from Francis Dunnery, late of It Bites.