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Banksy is one of Bristol’s most famous cultural exports, which is a slightly odd phrase to use about an artist whose identity remains officially unconfirmed and whose early career depended rather heavily on not asking permission. The museum doesn’t name him, but it gives his date of birth as 1974, which aligns with the long-running claim that Banksy is Robin Gunningham, a Bristol-born figure who has repeatedly been linked with the artist, although the anonymity remains part of the performance and should probably be treated with a little caution. Still, when a museum gives Banksy a birth year rather than leaving him floating entirely in the mist, it feels like a discreet nod towards the most widely accepted theory.

The Grim Reaper is a very Bristol object because it belongs to that awkward middle ground between mischief and heritage. Painted in 2003 on the side of Thekla, the former cargo ship turned nightclub in Bristol Harbour, it shows death rowing along the hull with a pleasingly bleak sense of purpose. It worked because of its setting: a skeleton in a boat, on a boat, in a harbour city. The work was later removed from the vessel because exposure to the elements was damaging it, and it now survives as a conserved object rather than as something glimpsed outside in its original setting.

I know that Banksy blurs the lines between graffiti and art, but his work is intriguing and interesting, usually drawing a crowd who want to see it. And this feels like one of the most appropriate places for one of his artworks to end up, all very lovely.

There is something rather pleasing about a street sign that has survived since 1755 and still does exactly what it was made to do which is to announce, without drama, that this was West Street. It comes from Bedminster, now part of Bristol, but historically a separate place south of the Avon, with its own parish, streets and identity before the city expanded around and into it.

I like random stuff like this because residents walked past this sign on their way to work, to market, to church, to the pub or to whatever little arrangement the eighteenth century had decided to inflict on them that day. Most of them presumably ignored it completely, which is usually the fate of useful things. Now it sits in a museum, looked at by people like me, apparently emotionally invested in carved municipal directions. I probably shouldn’t try and attribute meaning to so many things, but I doubt that very many of these survived.

I’ve been to M Shed a couple of times before, it’s a free museum situated in the heart of the former Bristol dockyards which is already a strong start. It appears to be in quite a state at the moment, probably around half of the interactive exhibits are out of order and it all feels a little beleaguered. There is something quite dispiriting about a button that promises excitement and then delivers only silence, although admittedly that is also a fair summary of much of adult life.

It’s also one of the most interestingly curated museums that I’ve seen, with some erratic descriptions of items and an odd flow with no clear narrative as if numerous museum concepts have been asked to share a space and they’re trying to be very polite about it. The slightly annoying element for me was often trying to find where they had put the description of an item, it was too often in small white writing on glass nowhere near the actual exhibit. I won’t linger on this point, but I suspect some of the signage was developed by someone with excellent eyesight and a dangerous level of confidence in reflective surfaces.

I fear that this is one of those museums which has been underfunded and I wonder whether they’d be better shuffling the exhibits here into one of the other city museums and looking to repurpose this back into the Bristol Industrial Museum that once stood here. It felt to me that the museum has tried to put various themes into the exhibits over the years that now don’t flow together and there are great chunks of Bristol’s social history missing or underplayed. There are also empty spaces in the museum where more history could be told, but that might be again due to underfunding which I suppose is a monument itself to austerity.

Entertaining as some exhibits were, and helpful as the staff members were, I’m not entirely sure that I discovered much during my visit in a way that I’d normally expect from a museum. However, there are nice views over the river from the viewpoint on the first floor and the Banksy artwork was an appropriate and interesting exhibit. And I can’t complain much, despite hinting at that here, since there’s no admission charge and also no pressure to make visitors give a donation and that is genuinely appreciated.

Anyway, I’ll now witter on about some of the exhibits, so that’ll be exciting for everyone. Well, something like that. I appreciate this may not be the sort of promise that makes people cancel other plans, but my two loyal blog readers know by now that this is the level of jeopardy on offer.

This is a ticket for the opening day of the Clifton Suspension Bridge on 8 December 1864, which I think is a rather lovely little survival from one of Bristol’s great civic set-pieces. The ticket was issued to Mr Henry Nockless (although more on that in a moment), who was requested to be at the entrance roadway opposite the Clifton Hotel. The bridge had taken a very long time to reach this point, having been designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), who rather inconveniently died five years before it opened.

The bridge itself had been discussed, delayed, redesigned and generally subjected to the kind of long civic gestation period that makes modern planning disputes seem almost brisk. It used chains from Brunel’s demolished Hungerford Bridge in London, which is pleasingly thrifty in a grand Victorian way. This ticket belongs to a particular morning, a particular entrance, a particular man and a particular instruction to arrive precisely on time. It’s a nice reminder of history and at least back then they didn’t just send a PDF.

Back to Henry Nockless and I don’t understand where the museum has got that name from. There was no Henry Nockless in the country at that time and I think that ticket reads Henry Nickless, of which there were numerous locally. No Henry Nockless has ever been mentioned in a UK newspaper, but I find it highly unlikely that the museum hasn’t checked this.

Posted without any real comment, just I’m not sure that I’ve seen pub signage on an inter-war building quite like this. Made up of bits of wood nailed together it’s quite quirky and has some character, although I suppose quite thrifty…… But if you need a sign and have some wood, it’s perhaps a sensible choice.