‘People who couldn’t point out St Jude’s on a map want to turn our area into a trendy quarter’

On Monday morning, residents living on Wade Street considered themselves to reside in St Jude’s. Come Tuesday evening, they found themselves living in a ‘Cultural Quarter’.

Nothing had changed in the interim other than their neighbourhood had been carved into four trendy quarters and they had been allocated the cultural one.

The revelation came through a postcard to locals urging them to take part in the consultation for the draft Frome Gateway framework.

Riverside Park runs through St Jude’s next to the River Frome

The development plan aims to tackle Bristol housing shortages and inform future planning. It will change the face of St Jude’s unrecognisably in the years to come.

According to the consultation, housing under occupancy in Wade Street is causing consternation.

A ‘Big Move’ also aims to relocate private industrial businesses on Little Ann Street to an ‘Industrial Quarter’. This will see the area cleared for flats.

Bristol City Council acknowledges that the ‘Big Move’ would be “practically and technically very difficult” needing “significant public sector funding and leadership”.

It also says it will need to engage with the current landowners to “explore the feasibility of this”. So already, the Cultural Quarter hangs on thoughts and prayers.

“St Jude’s desperately needs investment and redevelopment” says local resident Jen Smith

St Jude’s Community Room is on the ground floor of Tyndall House on Great George Street

St Jude’s desperately needs investment and redevelopment. For families, it currently has next to nothing other than Riverside Park and a tiny play area. Much of the current housing is depressing with families struggling with overcrowding or unsuitable properties.

Bristolians will likely see the Frome Gateway framework as a no-brainer. But they are also likely to be the same people who couldn’t point out St Jude’s on a map.

Despite Wade Street existing since the 1700s, the location of St Jude’s baffles most Bristolians. This is not helped by conflicting boundaries and information online.

St Jude’s has long been an area of deprivation or low income with a history of people being moved on. It’s not surprising its location confuses.

Cabot Circus car park in St Jude’s was built on the site of the former Broadweir swimming pool

St Jude’s was the location of Victorian slums

As Victorian slums in the 1880s, St Jude’s was variously described as a place of misery, abject poverty and social wrong. If you take a walk down Wade Street at the wrong time of day, it can feel like a lot hasn’t changed.

There are large amounts of antisocial behaviour as a result of the complex needs of some residents in an era where support services are cut to the bone.

There are huge issues with drug dealing locally. It’s often done openly and exacerbates violence crime, knife crime and aggressive behaviour.

Young teens are also becoming involved in the local drugs trade. It’s no longer men selling heroin out of their pants on side streets. In the evenings, students heading to local nightspots openly take their drugs outside children’s bedroom windows.

Additionally, new competing needs with the development of live music in empty industrial units is clashing with established housing, causing antisocial behaviour issues well into the early hours.

The Jam Jar is one of the cultural venues now in St Jude’s

The Swan With Two Necks pub has recently had a change of ownership

Crime and antisocial behaviour on Wade Street and surrounding areas is likely to be under-reported.

So much happens hour by hour that calling the police for any incident has a very high threshold. If it looks like someone might die right then and there, you reach for the phone. Anything less is par for the course.

As well as Victorian slum clearance, post-war clearances saw industrial units in Great George Street compulsory purchased in the 1950s for new council flats.

In the 1960s, the M32 saw local homes flattened for miles, causing families and communities to be dispersed across Bristol.

Even the local St Jude’s swimming pool – Broadweir – is under Cabot Circus car park.

The M32 ripped the area in half

Jen Smith says that current residents of St Jude’s and building like the Salvation Army’s Logos House do not fit into plans for a trendy new ‘quarter’

The dispersal of people for the new Cultural Quarter weighs heavy on architect sketches. The cheery people strolling along tree-lined pedestrianised spaces. Butterflies flit through the air as people gaze in wonder.

In reality, for local people in St Jude’s, it’s likely to be all poor doors, no butterflies, no ball games and farewell to the Salvation Army’s Logos House. They don’t fit into the picture. It’s time to move on again.

This is an opinion piece by Jen Smith, who lives in St Jude’s

All photos: Martin Booth

Read next:

• Vision laid out for land around River Frome
• Urgent call to save youth project that has served community for 130 years
• ‘I love St Jude’s but it’s as if the area doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter’

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