Gerry Brooke takes a look at a new book about Kingsdown, Bristol’s first planned suburb

To-day’s younger generation just accept the fact that Kingsdown is THERE, not far from the city centre but probably a little beyond their means.

It’s fashionable, not in the trendy, arty way that say, Totterdown, Windmill Hill, or Southville is today, but in a comfortable, well heeled, middle class sort of way.

The sort of place, indeed, where architects and town planners might happily settle down.

But how many of the present generation are aware that the fine Georgian terraces and lanes that adorn the slopes were only saved from visionless politicians and the bulldozer by the first awakenings of an early conservation movement?

Only a handful, I’m sure.

Today, say the authors of new history book about the area, it is less threatened, in fact it’s been turned from a place of Blitzed dereliction and hopelessness into a thriving, well integrated community.

And as inner city living becomes ever more popular so that’s been reflected in soaring property prices.

The King’s Down, to give the area it’s old name, remained for centuries outside the medieval walled city as a separate place of little fields, green pastures and clean air - a place where citizens could get away from the crowded streets below.

One reason for this could have been because the land historically belonged to the monks of St James’s Priory, the newly renovated church next to the bus station.

The steep slopes, which rise to 250 feet above the city, played a key role in the ring of fortifications which surrounded Bristol during the civil war but it wasn’t until the mid 18th century that the city’s wealthy gentry started to really appreciate its attractions.

Family summer houses and gardens built here led on to more permanent structures, formally laid out and often surrounded by high stone walls.

So Kingsdown, which once housed the poet Sam Coleridge and his small family, was born.

Victorian times saw a vastly expanded city as the tram and train network enabled people to live further from their work and businesses.

Kingsdown, taking a back seat in all this prosperity, became shabby, neglected and run down.

Poor families, renting, moved in, pleased to have a roof over their heads but all the while dreaming of a nice new, warm council home on the city’s fringes.

By the 1950s things looked very bad for the suburb, which had also suffered its fair share of bomb damage in the war.

In the brave new, post war world of modernism Kingsdown wasn’t going to get a look in.

Seen as a slum area without any future, most councillors and most town planners were quite happy for it to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

The lower slopes, abutting King Square, were lost – to be replaced later by high rise flats – before people woke up to what was happening.

It was then that the long battle for Kingsdown began in earnest – a fight spearheaded by poets, architects, well wishers and residents against the big guns – local councillors, town planners, housing officials and hospital authorities.

A battle for the city’s Georgian heritage, it became so fierce at times that it made national headlines.

Some battles were won, some lost, but in the end enough housing remained to enable the suburb to recover and become a desirable and, indeed, fashionable place to live.

But the area isn’t all Georgian, not by any means.

There has been much housing infill, some of it good, some of it indifferent, but High Kingsdown, a high density modern grouping completed in the 1970s, won awards for its ground breaking design.

Joint authors, Penny Mellor and Mary Wright, both Kingsdown residents, have done a workmanlike job on this well illustrated publication of 100 pages or so.

The gaps – and there are still quite a few – where Bristol’s rich history remains to be chronicled are becoming rarer thanks to books like this.

Kingsdown – Bristol’s vertical suburb by Penny Mellor and Mary Wright is published by Phillimore and costs £16.99.