Mike Bone
BIAS continues to keep a watching brief on developments in the city. Plans for major schemes at Wapping Wharf and the Bristol Brewery site have still to be deposited with Bristol City Council but we will continue to monitor progress. The development process now frequently involves a series of ‘stakeholder’ meetings prior to submission of plans. The latest of industrial interest has involved Huller House’ and the ‘Cheese’ warehouse near Redcliffe Bridge and the WCA building. These are, I believe, the last of the old waterside warehouses to be converted. The developer is Angel Property, a firm with an excellent track record of adaptive re-use (jam factory in East London and the Dartmouth Pottery [ex brewery but originally a papermill] in Devon). The plans look good with much original fabric kept (Huller) and the ‘Hennibique’ pre-cast concrete frame (Cheese warehouse) kept but with new cladding. BIAS Journal 13 (1980) has an article ‘Feno-Concrete’ on this system by the late Roy Day. In addition to former ‘industrial’ sites, much is happening in Bristol and other ‘stakeholder’ events have featured in the redevelopment of the former Bristol and West tower (on the Centre) and access from here to the refurbished Queen Square, i.e. the area of the roundabout currently used for buses to turn. We can also expect some interesting reports from archaeological work on ‘developing’ sites at Canons Marsh (gasworks) and Avon Street (glassworks).