The Clifton Downs: Gorge, Walkers, Suicides and the Samaritans

The Clifton Downs cover 400 acres of open grassland above the Avon Gorge on the western edge of Bristol, owned jointly by Bristol City Council and the Society of Merchant Venturers under an arrangement that dates to 1861. The Downs are freely accessible, used daily by tens of thousands of people for walking, cycling, dog walking and recreation, and they end at the cliff edge of the gorge above the River Avon seventy-five metres below. The Clifton Suspension Bridge crosses the gorge at this point. The combination of height, accessibility and urban proximity makes this a location that has been used as a suicide site for as long as the bridge has stood.

The bridge was completed in 1864, thirty years after Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed it and five years after his death. It was built as a memorial to him by the Institution of Civil Engineers. Within a few years of opening, it had established a grim secondary reputation. Victorian newspapers reported deaths from the bridge with a combination of horror and prurience that would not be acceptable in contemporary reporting. The pattern continued through the twentieth century.

Scale and Response

Research published in the 2000s established that the Clifton Suspension Bridge was one of the UK’s highest-volume sites for suicide by jumping. The figures varied by year but consistently placed it among the top two or three such sites in the country. In response, Avon and Somerset Police, the Samaritans and the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust developed a series of interventions across the 2000s and 2010s.

The Samaritans placed phones on the bridge connected directly to their service and trained volunteers to patrol at times of higher risk. The phone presence alone is credited with a measurable reduction in deaths at the bridge. Signs with the Samaritans number were installed at the approaches. Crisis intervention training was given to the bridge staff who monitor the crossing and who have the responsibility for approaching people who appear to be in distress.

The Downs as a Whole

Away from the bridge the Downs function as one of Britain’s most valuable urban open spaces: free, unfenced, genuinely wild in parts, with views across the gorge to the wooded Somerset side and down the river toward the Severn estuary. The geology is Carboniferous limestone, which produces the characteristic white-grey rock face of the gorge walls, and the flora includes rare species that survive on the thin, alkaline soil of the cliff tops.

The tension between the Downs as a place of recreation and the Downs as a place where people come when they are at their lowest point is one that Bristol manages imperfectly and honestly. The presence of Samaritans signs alongside the kite-flyers and dog-walkers is unusual. Most places prefer to keep these things separate. The Downs cannot. The gorge is too present, the bridge too central to everything the city identifies with. Bristol has chosen to put the phones on the bridge and train its staff and put the number on the signs rather than pretend the problem is elsewhere.

The Suspension Bridge Trust publishes no figures on interventions, which is appropriate. The Samaritans do not publicise individual cases. What the research suggests is that accessibility to a crisis service at the moment of crisis makes a measurable difference, and that Bristol’s approach has contributed to a reduction that can be tracked in the data even if it cannot be tracked in individual lives.