The place that doubled as Rochdale’s High Street was East Street.
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When the film-makers wanted to recreate the grim streets of Rochdale for the BBC drama series Three Girls - which told the even grimmer story about grooming gangs targeting young girls in a decaying northern town, they didn’t, or couldn’t film it in Rochdale, so needed somewhere that looked like it could be.
In the years since, the Internet has sucked up much of the trade that remained. Before the turn of the century, great out of town developments, supermarkets and retail parks took people into their cars and away from places like East Street. Now it's their grandchildren, and things have dwindled.Įast Street suffered more than most places from the double whammy that occurred either side of the year 2000. People who moved out either side of the war to the South Bristol estates still came back. It was, and still is, not just Bedminster’s High Street, but the High Street for the whole of South Bristol, and continued to be, long after the tobacco factories closed and moved with the people up to Hartcliffe. This is Bedminster Parade, looking towards East Street, with the old Tobacco factory on the right, in the early 1970s Those opposed to the development have stressed it’s not just about the views being lost from Windmill Hill, on the other side of the railway line, and the imposition of such huge buildings on the cityscape.Ī view not much changed from today, apart from the sheer numbers of people. The arguments about Bedminster Green have ebbed and flowed for years. Given they’ll be living in high-rise flats, they’ll most likely be young couples or single people rather than families.Īnd on East Street, the main shopping street, the prospect of a host of new people is being seen as a Godsend - albeit one people are also worried about. No one is quite sure how many new people it will bring in the end, but some estimates have put it at 3,000. The Bedminster Green development will change Bedminster. And now, at last week’s planning meeting, one of them finally got permission. It’s no wonder, then, that developers have been trying to build, and build big, here for most of the 2010s. And what’s more, the swanky new Wapping Wharf is less than half a mile away, Temple Meads and the city centre itself less than a mile’s walk. It’s a prime location - on a main route, with buses, the metrobus and a railway station running through it. The collection of half a dozen brownfield sites sit either side of Malago Road, the main A38 out of the city centre just half a mile away, towards Bristol Airport.Įither derelict or filled with light industry, a group of developers have been vying to build hundreds of new homes here, climbing up into the sky.ĬGI of a 316-home development approved for Bedminster (Image: Bristol City Council Live / YouTube) It was the first application in what developers and planners are calling the ‘Bedminster Green’ development to get planning permission and, now that the precedent has been set, more similar developments will surely follow. Last week saw what could prove to be the most important moment of the 21st century for Bedminster so far.Īt a council planning meeting, despite strong objections from hundreds of people, councillors voted to give permission to a development of flats in a series of buildings up to 16 storeys high. It’s been slowly withering on the vine for years, but could now, finally, something be happening in East Street?
Inside Kaz's Barbers, the newest outlet in East Street (Image: James Beck/BristolLive)įor East Street, one of Bristol’s most famous thoroughfares, the High Street for generations of people right across south Bristol, is about to change.
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