Fight continues to save neighbourhood’s last pub from demolition 

A community in Bristol is continuing the fight to save the last pub standing in its neighbourhood from demolition.

The Giant Goram in Lawrence Weston has been under threat from development since it closed in 2019, despite it being given protected status by Bristol City Council.

Back then, plans were put forward by Clevedon-based construction firm Hawfield Homes to convert the building into seven flats, none of which were classed as ‘affordable’. The plan was refused permission by Bristol City Council before an appeal by the applicant was also dismissed.

Now, proposals have been submitted to knock down the building. The Giant Goram, on Barrowmead Drive, is also currently listed for sale by estate agents Sidney Phillips with a guide price of £349,000.

Save the Giant Goram, a campaign group which sprung up to save the local watering hole, is battling to buy back the building, which, built in 1958, includes a skittle alley and a two-bedroom flat, and convert it into a community-run asset.

Jo Sergeant is a former Labour councillor for Lawrence Weston who resigned to join the Greens – photo: Betty Woolerton

Save the Giant Goram member Jo Sergeant, who lives in Coombe Dingle, wants the pub to reopen, rather than be replaced with homes, because it would provide a social space for locals to come together in a neighbourhood which “lacks community cohesion”.

“It would not be run as a boozer, it’d be run as a community space, where alcohol is available,” said the former councillor for Lawrence Weston.

“We’ve been looking at maximising the use of the whole space, making sure that every bit of it is able to provide a service to the community for which we could attract funding, from health and wellbeing to food and drink to social activities.”

The Lawrence Weston Community Pub Community Benefit Society is working with Ambition Lawrence Weston and the Plunkett Foundation, a charity that helps community groups to organise themselves to rescue buildings from development, and is applying for funding and commissioning architects as part of its plans.

Planners said the “total demolition of the existing building would fail to respect the historic and social value of the building and would harm the character and local distinctiveness of the area” in response to original plans to demolish the pub – image: Nash Partnership

Some in the community, sandwiched between Avonmouth and Sea Mills, would rather see the “eyesore” building gone, with one resident telling Bristol24/7 the pub used to be “full of criminality”.

“Of the very, very few people that used it were local drug dealers, shoplifters selling their goods, people doing cocaine on the benches and urinating outside”, they said. “We are completely and utterly saying ‘no thanks’ to it being a pub again.”

If permission is granted, two two-bedroom maisonettes and six three-bedroom houses would be built. So far, 22 objections and four supporting comments have been lodged on the council’s planning portal.

The Giant Goram sits in the middle of an estate, surrounded by housing developments which were constructed at the same time – photo: Save the Giant Goram

Sergeant admitted it is “an unloved site”, but wants to “fight back on behalf of the community”.

She said: “The problem is a lot of people in the community have quite worn down by all the sort of stuff that gets thrown at them.

“At the moment, some people will say if you ask them ‘oh, it’s an eyesore. Get rid of it’, but they don’t know how complicated it is.

“The reality is there is a deep long-term impact of losing the very last community space of this type in the area on their kids and their future.”

Sergeant added: “People are leaving the community because they’re not making friends in the local area. It has become fractured and you just never have that sense that everybody belongs.

“If you’ve got nowhere people got nowhere to go, problems will arise. Without community spaces, antisocial behaviour, social isolation, health problems will just get worse.”

Save the Giant Goram joins other similar community asset schemes like the Save Redfield Cinema campaign, the Knowle Jubilee Pool campaign and Jacobs Wells Baths in its fight to bring local spaces into the hands of the community.

Lawrence Weston has no pubs or bars, despite there once being five.

Main photo: Betty Woolerton

Read next:

• Historic pub brought back to life
• ‘I found a Bristol pub guide and a lot has changed’
• ‘We need to declare a hospitality emergency’ 

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