Wine Street, together with

High Street High Street is a common street name for the primary business street of a city, town, or village, especially in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. It implies that it is the focal point for business, especially shopping. It is also a metonym fo ...

, Broad Street and

Corn Street Corn Street, together with Broad Street, Wine Street and High Street, is one of the four cross streets which met at the Bristol High Cross, the heart of Bristol, England when it was a walled medieval town. From this crossroads Corn Street an ...

, is one of the four cross streets which met at the

Bristol High Cross Bristol High Cross is a monumental market cross erected in 1373 in the centre of Bristol. It was built in Decorated Gothic style on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon cross, to commemorate the granting of a charter by Edward III to make Brist ...

, the heart of

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

when it was a walled mediaeval town. From this crossroads Wine Street runs along a level ridge approximately 175m north-eastwards to the top of Union Street. Wine Street was for centuries an important shopping street but, following wartime destruction and the decision to move Bristol's main shopping area to Broadmead, it now contains little notable architecture and acts as barrier between the Old City and Castle Park. Bristol City Council are now seeking to repair this by redeveloping the area.

History

Wine Street, together with High Street, Corn Street and Broad Street, formed the earliest nucleus of Bristol. Ricart's Plan of 1479, one of the first English town plans, shows Wine Street with the High Cross at one end and Newgate at the other; the other three cross streets are also shown, each ending at their own gate in the city wall. The name ''Wine Street'' is thought to be a corruption of ''Winch Street'', after a winch-operated pillory which stood at the eastern end of the street. It was a commercial street from its earliest days: in 1286, Thomas de Westone and his wife Roysia took out a lease on two shops there for thirty years 'at a poetical rent of a rose at the feast of St John the Baptist yearly'. By the 14th century, the four cross streets and Bristol Bridge were a clearly defined shopping centre:

Bristol Bridge Bristol Bridge is a bridge over the floating harbour in Bristol, England. The floating harbour was constructed on the original course of the River Avon, and there has been a bridge on the site since long before the harbour was created by impo ...

, the prime site, was the location of jewellers and

mercers The Worshipful Company of Mercers is the premier Livery Company of the City of London and ranks first in the order of precedence of the Companies. It is the first of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies. Although of even older origin, the c ...

;

was home to

wool Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool. ...

draper Draper was originally a term for a retailer or wholesaler of cloth that was mainly for clothing. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. History Drapers were an important trade guild during the medieval period, ...

s; and linen drapers were to be found on Wine Street. Samuel Pepys, his wife and servants came to the Horse Shoe Inn on Wine Street for a day in 1668, and described Bristol as 'in every way another London', though he noted that there were 'no carts, it generally stands on vaults, only dog-carts'. In the early 17th century an open-sided corn

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

was built in the middle of Wine Street. Shown on Millerd's Map of 1671, this was wide by long. It left only a narrow passageway on either side for those who wished to go along the street, and was demolished in 1727. Eventually a Cheese Market was erected between its former location and Mary le Port Street.

Thomas Cadell Colonel Thomas Cadell (5 September 1835 – 6 April 1919) was a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. ...

, who went on to make a fortune in bookselling and publishing, was born on Wine Street in 1742; his father, also Thomas Cadell, was a bookseller.

Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...

Poet Laureate A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch ...

from 1813 to 1843, was born on Wine Street in 1774; his father, also named Robert Southey, was a linen draper. Southey is commemorated by post-war Southey House, though Southey's birthplace was actually at the other end of the street. By the 1820s, it seems the drapers of Wine Street were becoming complacent: William Ablett came from London to manage a shop here and wrote that 'trade was conducted in a droning sort of way', and shocked the local traders by his new-fangled ideas about

window-dressing A display window, also a shop window (British English) or store window (American English), is a window in a shop displaying items for sale or otherwise designed to attract customers to the store. Usually, the term refers to larger windows in the ...

several times a week with lavish displays of shawls and bolts of fabric. Thomas Jones, whose department store started in Wine Street in 1843, was considered outrageous for selling not just drapery, but anything that would make a profit. His business grew into High Street and Mary le Port Street, and incorporated the Guard House, where soldiers had once been billeted during the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. At the turn of the 20th century, Wine Street still formed part of Bristol's chief shopping centre and contained many of Bristol's most exclusive shops and department stores. In 1915 the globes and lanterns of its street lamps were painted blue to dim their light as an air raid precaution; in the event Bristol suffered no aerial attacks during the First World War. Things were very different 25 years later, however: almost all buildings on Wine Street were destroyed or damaged beyond repair by aerial bombing on 24 November 1940, including the landmark

Dutch House Electro house is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by heavy bass and a tempo around 130 beats per minute. The term has been used to describe the music of many ''DJ Mag'' Top 100 DJs, including Benny Benassi, Skrillex, Steve Aoki ...

which stood on the corner of Wine Street and High Street. An eyewitness described the scene: Wine Street had for many centuries been an important shopping area, and a key part of Bristol's pre-war shopping axis which ran from Queens Road and Park Street, through St Nicholas Market, Wine Street and Castle Street and onwards to Old Market Street and Stapleton Road; nonetheless post-war planners decided to move Bristol's main shopping area to Broadmead, where the larger sites required by the bigger retailers could be accommodated. Wine Street was widened in 1956, and new buildings were erected on the north side of the street. Plans for the area to the south of Wine Street to become a new Civic Centre, including a city museum and art gallery, were eroded by the leasing of the Bank of England and the Norwich Union sites and then dropped on the grounds of cost. Finally, it was decided to create a 'really splendid' park.

Hugh Casson Sir Hugh Maxwell Casson (23 May 1910 – 15 August 1999) was a British architect. He was also active as an interior designer, as an artist, and as a writer and broadcaster on twentieth-century design. He was the director of architecture for t ...

, Neville Conder and Partners produced a plan for this, but in the end the Parks Department laid out their own 'emasculated' version of the park.

Wine Street today

The north side of Wine Street now has just three buildings: The Prudential Building, now let out as office suites; across The Pithay, the Vintry Building which also offers rental office suites; and Southey House, now a block of 38 flats. Andrew Foyle, in his

Pevsner Architectural Guide The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were published b ...

to Bristol, describes Wine Street as 'perhaps the saddest post-Blitz transformation'. He is dismissive of the buildings on the north side, berating the Prudential Building's 'dull stripped classicism' and describing the Vintry Building and Southey House as 'singularly unimaginative'. He is scornful of the Bank of England building on the south side, 'merely occupying the land, with bleak fenestration and a puny entrance', its 'weak' extension 'weakly set back over a parking access ramp'.

Bristol City Council Bristol City Council is the local authority of Bristol, England. The council is a unitary authority, and is unusual in the United Kingdom in that its executive function is controlled by a directly elected mayor of Bristol. Bristol has 34 ward ...

is seeking redevelopment of the area south of Wine Street and around Mary le Port Street, to help connect the markets area with the shopping quarter at Broadmead. This would include reducing the width of Wine Street to more closely resemble its historic proportions. The redevelopment of this area 'offer perhaps the greatest potential of any site in the city to demonstrate the ambition of Bristol and to realise a connected and coherent historic core'. Wine Street is within the Old City and Queen Square Conservation Area.

Listed buildings

There are no

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

s on Wine Street. There is, however, one unlisted building of merit:

Gallery

File:Wine Street with the entrance to the Guard-house in the seventeenth century, Bristol.jpg, South side of Wine Street with the entrance to the Guard-house, 17th century File:Mediaeval town of Bristol.jpg, Millerd's Map of 1671, showing Corn Market (marked 'O') in middle of Wine Street File:Corn Market, Wine Street from Millerd's Map.jpg, Corn Market, Wine Street File:VintryBuildingWineStreet.jpg, Vintry Building File:BankofEnglandWineStreet.jpg, Bank of England building, with mediaeval crossroads beyond File:Southey House Bristol 2018.jpg, Entrance to Southey House

References

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