Garden suburbs of Bristol

Steve Hunt, author of Bristol Radical History Group book, Yesterday’s To-morrow: Bristol’s Garden Suburbs, will discuss the principles and practical impact of the garden-city movement in our city at April’s North Bristol History Society meeting.

The 1918 Tudor Walters Report came with the well-known aspiration to build “homes fit for heroes” after the First World War. The interwar council housing boom that followed shaped much of the development of Bristol as we know it today. It aimed to create new neighbourhoods based on high-quality planning and housing design. This would transform the prospects for their residents by combining the best features of urban and rural life. There would be promises of employment within walking distance, and a cherry and apple tree in each garden. This talk will survey the influence of garden-suburb style planning upon Bristol’s spatial geography, from the beginning of the Twentieth Century to the immediate post-War period. It will reference North Bristol’s “lost” garden-suburbs influenced estate.