Topping out at shopping centre

The new shopping centre should be open in 2008

A topping out ceremony took place on Thursday at Bristol's £500m Cabot Circus site.

The ritual marked the completion of the highest point on the new development, with council leader Helen Holland laying the final piece of concrete.

Visitors also took a look at the development's progress from the eighth floor of one of the buildings.

If the work continues on schedule, the shopping centre should be open at the end of 2008.

Trading past

Cabot was chosen as the official name for the centre after a public vote last November.

Other names considered were All Saints and Great West.

Some groups had complained the first suggested name, Merchants' Quarter, was offensive because of its connotations with the city's slave trading past.

Bristol Alliance, which is behind the project, chose to add Circus.

Other suffixes considered were Quarter, Court and Square.

A poll on the BBC's Where I Live website revealed 63% of voters wanted the name Cabot.

John Cabot was a 15th Century Italian explorer, also known as Giovanni Caboto, who moved to England and settled in Bristol, from where he set off on many of his epic voyages.