Former German cargo ship turned popular live music venue
Most people have heard of Thekla: yep, it's the Bristol live music venue and club on a boat. It's one of the city's most unique venues, and one of its most popular.
Over the years, the moored boat has welcome acts from across the globe and continues to run a range of established, weekly club nights.
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Thekla has a long history
The boat itself was built in 1958 and started life as a coastal trading vessel. It carried a variety of cargoes between Northern and Western European ports, particularly timber from ports of the Baltic Sea.
Sometime later, the vessel ran aground off the coast of Northern England and was left half-submerged in a derelict dock in Sunderland.
But in 1982, Ki Longfellow-Stanshall and her husband Vivian Stanshall came to Thekla's rescue. They assembled a team and set sail for Bristol's Floating Harbour one year later.
There, the Stanshalls founded the Old Profanity Showboat – a venue of theatre, cabaret, comedy and live music shows. Sadly, The Old Profanity Showboat closed its doors in August 1986.
Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Thekla was taken over and run as an underground nightclub, becoming a key part of Bristol's drum & bass scene. And in 2006, the boat came under the ownership of DHP Family, where it has since become a home of weekly gigs, late-night DJ sets and established club nights.
In June 2019, Thekla underwent a £1 million renovation, which provided the boat with a new hull, to keep it afloat. One hundred tonnes of steel and three tonnes of weld wire later, the vessel returned to its rightful place in Bristol's Floating Harbour, on 9 September 2019.
Onboard Thekla
Today, expect to see small-to-medium-sized indie bands and alternative acts perform onboard Thekla. The venue runs gigs most nights of the week. While gigs are Thekla’s bread and butter, the boat also plays host to DJs and producers, mostly at the weekend, who play sets late into the night.
Theka’s gig space is located in the hull of the boat, and the ship’s deck is used as the moking area; where fairy lights hang above. Back inside the venue, Thekla also has a mezzanine, where you can watch acts from above.
Other ventures
In 2020, in response to the onset of COVID-19, Thekla launched a new podcast, titled Isolation Discs. The series features in-depth interviews with a range of musicians, who chat (remotely) to presenter Chris Arnold.
In July 2020, Thekla launched a brand-new, socially-distanced bar, Dockside Bar.
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