Floating harbour fight
Bristol city planners nearly destroyed Bristol in the ‘60s with a series of disastrous plans to create another Birmingham. Then the residents decided enough was enough.
The seeds of the citizen’s revolt that scuppered the mediocre Crest Nicholson plan for Bristol harbourside were planted in 1969. That was the year the city planners came up with a plan which was so breathtakingly awful it scarcely seems credible today. They wanted to fill in the Floating Harbour and Feeder canal.
More than £1bn is currently set aside for developing Bristol - much of which appears never to have recovered from Hitler's efforts.
This was a council that wanted a hotel in Avon Gorge, a roundabout on The Downs, and to rip up much of Clifton, Cotham, Montpelier, Easton, Totterdown and Bedminster for a monstrous outer-circuit road with tunnels, flyovers and giant roundabouts. It built Broadmead, Britain’s worst big city shopping centre, and tore down hundreds of historic buildings that had survived the war. Even worse, decisions were taken in secret and Bristolians were told to accept what experts had decided was best for them.
But, in the late ~ 60s, and to the councillors’ horror, their normally docile subjects rebelled. The Gorge Hotel plan was thrown out, and the outer-circuit road plan held up (and finally killed) by the fiercest public inquiry ever seen in Bristol. The planners fought back by announcing without warning that the ancient city docks were to close and navigation rights cancelled. That might have been acceptable; the additional idea of filling in the Floating Harbour was not.
The news was announced rather casually in the council’s Civic News of August 1969. The master plan was to fill in the stretch of water from the Cumberland Basin locks to the junction of St Augustine’s Reach and the whole Feeder canal; to use the land for offices, workshops and warehouses, and to drive the outer-circuit road through the middle.
Another road down The Grove would then cut through the Shakespeare pub in Prince Street and cross the Reach and Canons Marsh to a big new roundabout at the bottom of Jacobs Wells Road. Once again, there was a citizens’ rebellion. A series of public meetings were held with professionals of all disciplines offering their services to fight the plan. Amenity societies, from the Civic Society to the Inland Waterways Association, united to fight a scheme aimed to destroy what was once Britain’s premier west-coast port.
The council fought back strongly, insisting the closure was essential if the old docks area was to be used for public enjoyment. There were dire warnings that this was the only way forward and that delay would be fatal a theme echoed many times since then.
Bristol MP Arthur Palmer managed to get the Bristol Docks Bill amended in the Commons to prevent any reduction in water surface and to preserve navigation rights for small boats. The council responded by appointing Sir Hugh Casson as consultant for the redevelopment. Unfortunately, Sir Hugh came out strongly against the whole idea of big new roads across the docks.
Opposition grew even more fiercely after the Evening Post organized another public meeting and campaigners united in the Bristol Docks Group. Support for the fight came from across the country as the battle became national news. But the most important breakthrough came with the astonishing public welcome for the return of the SS Great Britain in the face of council apathy; the outspoken support of Prince Philip for the restoration of its old dock, and a series of successful water festivals and powerboat races.
The Arnolfini led the way in showing how old dockside buildings could be reused and others soon followed. The council finally caved in, abandoned the bill and gave the public what it wanted - an open harbour with plenty of public access and interesting developments around it.
It was a long hard battle and one which forced the council to become more open and actually ask the public what it wanted instead of arrogantly imposing the ideas of a few upon the city. But the battle isn’t completely won - public opinion lost the battle to have the river beneath the Centre opened up again and Bristol was given a bleak civic water feature instead.
Public rebellion stopped the dismal Canons Marsh redevelopment, but an amended version is going ahead. As Sir Hugh Casson said after the docks battle: ‘What has happened is the beginning of a customers’ revolt a refusal any longer to be totally the victim of experts, a growing insistence on having more say in the shape of our surroundings’.
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