blue plaque · Bristol

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (, French: [maʁk izɑ̃baʁ bʁynɛl]; 25 April 1769 – 12 December 1849) was a French-British engineer who is most famous for the work he did in Britain. He constructed the Thames Tunnel, the world's first underwater tunnel, and was the father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Born in France, Brunel fled to the United States during the French Revolution. In 1796, he was appointed Chief Engineer of New York City. He moved to London in 1799, where he married Sophia Kingdom. In addition to the construction of the Thames Tunnel, his work as a mechanical engineer included the design of machinery to automate the production of pulley blocks for the Royal Navy. Brunel preferred the given name Isambard, but is generally known to history as Marc to avoid confusion with his more famous son. In 1841, Marc was knighted by the young Queen Victoria in anticipation of his successful completion of the Thames Tunnel.

Their TributeLegacy page

Tribute page

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

Nearby locations in Bristol

Browse all memorials in Bristol

Data sources

Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) - never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

Editorial descriptions, photography and tribute links are original TributeLegacy work, layered on top of the open data.

Directions to here