Shirehampton Keeping the character
Proposals are being made to protect more of the area’s historic buildings. Eugene Byrne explains how you can get involved
BRISTOL City Council has recently launched a consultation on extending the Conservation Area which covers part of Shirehampton, and wants public feedback by November 23.
Conservation Areas are intended to protect the buildings and landscape from excessive development, and preserve its historic character.
Shirehampton was developed as a largely working-class suburb in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it contains a number of homes and public buildings which are of historical importance.
The original Shirehampton local conservation area was established in 1975 and last reviewed in 1993. Since then, says the council, “a reassessment of the town’s special character was long overdue.”
The intention is to provide a framework for changes that are needed in the area, while still respecting its historical significance and unique character.
The council proposes to widen the Conservation Area boundaries to take in areas that are important to Shirehampton’s “visual and historic character.”
The new areas being proposed are include Passage Leaze, Springfield Avenue, Priory Road, Walton Road, Bradley Crescent, Bradley Avenue, and an extension to include much of Station Road to the south of the Public Hall.
The extension would take in the “Bristol Garden Suburb”, an early experiment in providing decent housing for working people which pre-dates large-scale council housing.
In 1909 a company, Bristol Garden Suburb Ltd, was established to build workers’ housing on “garden city” principles laid down by social reformer Ebenezer Howard and others.
Garden suburbs were a reaction to the slums and back-to-back housing that so many British workers had to content themselves with.
The Shirehampton initiative was largely led by two women, the social reformer and suffrage campaigner Elizabeth Sturge, and pioneering local doctor Eliza Dunbar. Their vision for Shirehampton was a local equivalent of Welwyn Garden City or Letchworth – though on a much smaller scale.
The First World War put much of the development on hold, and it was never completed; what was built is almost all on two streets, Springfield Avenue and Passage Leaze.
On the other hand, the principles behind it did come into being in some of the better council estates built between the wars, notably in neighbouring Sea Mills.
Cllr Nicola Beech, cabinet member for spatial planning and city design, said: “Shirehampton has such a unique history … We recognise that the area has lost a lot of character and interesting buildings over the years, even with the Conservation Area in place, but we hope that this first reappraisal in almost 30 years can mark a new beginning, and empower people to take a role in championing it.”
As well as the review of the existing boundaries, the council’s draft Conservation Area Character Appraisal document (downloadable from the link below) includes details of the area’s history and new insights into its development.
The areas covered in the consultation have been extensively researched and some BT readers, who may have no opinions to offer the consultation, will find it rewarding reading.
We learn, for instance, that the Victorian streets developed within the tight narrow confines of old medieval strip fields, and Station Road was laid out by the architect Frederick Bligh Bond.
Bligh Bond’s work is also in evidence elsewhere in buildings around Shirehampton and Avonmouth. He was famously eccentric and once kept a pet lemur, and after WWI he gained notoriety by researching the history of Glastonbury Abbey by allegedly communing with the spirits to dead monks there.
His legacies to Shirehampton include the Public Hall, where Ralph Vaughan-Williams’ The Lark Ascending was first performed 100 years ago in December.
To find out more, and share your views, see www.bristol.gov.uk/ shirehamptonCA
For a paper copy or the information in an alternative format email conservation@ bristol.gov.uk or call 0117 3521 128.
Comments, queries, and suggestions should be emailed to Bristol City Council’s Conservation team before 23 November 2020 at conservation@Bristol.gov.uk or posted to: Shirehampton Conservation Area Consultation Conservation team, City Design Group, City Hall, PO Box 3399, Bristol City Council BS1 9NE