This paper will outline the history of Portishead Docks and, in particular, will focus on the decontamination and remediation works undertaken to date at the dockside site of the former Albright & Wilson phosphorus smelters. Apart from the removal of elemental phosphorus - both the yellow (spontaneously combustible) and the red allotropes were present - and the massive substructures associated with the 1950s buildings, bioremediation techniques, amongst other techniques, were employed to deal with the extensive hydrocarbon residues from an oil refinery that underlay and predated the phosphorus works.