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Portskewett Pier with the Severn Tunnel works at Sudbrook beyond, from Thomas Walker's memoirs of the tunnel's construction
In 1881 during the construction of the Severn Tunnel, the old timber pier at which ferry steamers docked, burnt down. That its demise should have coincided so closely with the completion of the tunnel that would in any case have made it obselete is itself interesting, however of more interest at the time was the question of whether the fire had been started by striking workers from the Sudbrook works.
In the view of the Severn Tunnel's builder they were innocent of this charge. It was his belief that the fire had started accidentally as a result of the pier's timbers drying out in dry weather.
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