Welsh back gained its name as this is where the Welsh boats visiting Bristol Harbour used to moor, they would then unload the goods onto the back where convenient market-houses were built for securing goods when landed and protecting them from the weather.
A market was held on the Back every other Wednesday, where the Welsh boats, arriving at spring tides, discharge the produce of their country for sale; goods included fine salt-butter, poultry of all kinds, roasting geese ready for the spit and fruit like apples and pears. They also landed great quantities of cyder. Not far from the cache you will find a boat serving local cider today.
By 1882, establishments along the Back included salt, corn and flour merchants, tobacco and snuff manufacturers, leather factors, timber, bark and hop merchants, stationers, printers and bookbinders, wine and spirit merchants and a number of other businesses.
'Whilst here you can visit one of the most famous Bristol inns, in King Street, just off Welsh Back.
It derives its name from Llandogo, in Monmouthshire, from whence great quantities of bark and timber were once shipped, to Bristol, aboard sailing vessels called trows. Trows were a type of sailing barge once seen on the River Severn and used to transport goods. The mast could be taken down so that the trow could go under bridges.
Originally one of a group of five timber-framed houses, erected in 1664, the inn survived the Blitz of 1940 when two of the houses were destroyed. The three remaining gabled houses now form the premises of the inn.