Letters&Opinion Harbourside homes were designed for the nouveau riche

LETTER-writer Gerry Small (‘Antipathy for changes’, Letters, Nov 2) missed the point of my letter which bemoaned the decline of Bristol’s dockside in favour of ‘gentrified’ housing by widening the debate into Margaret Thatcher’s policy of selling off council housing.

Nice try Mr Small, but the luxury housing/flats which replaced dockside warehousing were beyond what indigenous Bristolians could afford. The ‘gentrification’ reference referred solely to the luxurious architectural ‘Harbourside’ housing designed not with any empathy for the man on the Clapham omnibus but Bristol’s nouveau riche!

He concluded his criticism of my concerns for the vanishing city of my youth with: “I am sorry about his antipathy to the way that Bristol has developed, but I hope he will continue to address the issues facing the city, though hopefully with more focus on possibilities for the future (not a chance!) rather than a threnody for a past irretrievably swept away by time.”

I am sorry to disappoint Mr Small, a Clevedon resident, but as a lifelong Bristolian I shall as long as I live always lament the wanton civic destruction of historic Bristol in favour of high-rise offices/housing.

Perhaps he can remember the glorious 1950s city centre gardens which were destroyed for what? A load of concrete slabs and some pathetic fountains somebody once described as a few old men with urinary infections. Moreover, another prime example of civic planners’ addiction for uninspiring concrete is Millennium Square with which to further Bristol’s Europeanisation.

While I disagree with Mr Small’s assessment of Bristol I would in the manner of Voltaire defend to the death his right to say it. However, I do mourn for: “...a past irretrievably swept away by time”, and wonder just how long it will be before Bristol’s motto ‘ Virtute et Industria’ (granted in 1569) is also swept away in favour of what?

R L Smith Knowle