English Heritage (EH) has awarded £200,000 towards urgent repair work at Cabot Tower on Brandon Hill in Bristol, Somerset, UK.

The grant will go towards a £400,000-£420,000 project by owners Bristol City Council to restore the tower and allow it to be re-opened to visitors. The grant is based in part on calculations of the likely costs of the repair work, the nature and extent of which will not be known until further investigations have been made. The tower, a Grade II Listed building which stands on top of a medieval fortification, is a commemorative public viewing tower built between 1896 and 1898 as a monument to the 400th anniversary of John Cabot's voyage from Bristol to America in 1497.

It was closed to the public in November 2007 after cracks started spreading in the tower's masonry, subsequent checks showing that these were caused by severe corrosion in the steelwork set in the concrete floor slabs of the tower's viewing platforms. The grant from EH will help fund repairs including rebuilding and reinforcing the concrete floors, stabilisation work above the lower balcony arch and stonework repairs and the clamping of steel-reinforcing bars to the ballustrades.

Brandon Hill, on which the tower sits, has been a public open space since medieval times. In the 17th century it formed a key part of the outer fortifications of the Parliamentary defenses of Bristol in the First English Civil War. The sandstone bastion and curtain wall and ditch survive to the north-west of the tower. The fortification is currently on the English Heritage 'At Risk Register'.