How a younger community has breathed life into a high street on the edge of Bristol
An area in north-east Bristol has changed significantly over the past decade. Depending on who you ask, some of this change in Fishponds has been for the better and some for the worse.
Attempts to bring new life into the main road, which sits on one of the main arterial routes into the city, the A432 Fishponds Road, has seen a rise in gentrification that is clear in both the new shops and cafes, as well as the people using them.
It was only three years ago Bristol Live visited Fishponds to be told there was “nothing” here. Now various cafes, shops, pubs and restaurants fill the high street on both sides.
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In 2013 there stood Osbourne’s stationers, back when stationery shops were popular and you couldn’t go a block without seeing one. But nowadays the site is home to micropub ‘Snuffy Jack’s’, which has been open for six years.
The high street has experienced countless changes, some due to local forces and others much further afield. Blockbuster video had a prime spot on the street 10 years ago. You can still go there and order what you’d like, but you would end up with a pizza from Domino’s instead of a movie.
This forms part of a wider trend in Fishponds where more families and young couples have moved into the neighbourhood in recent years. Staff at the popular Crafty Egg say they have seen first hand how the high street has gone from the same few shops that had been there for years, and developed into a high street for a new community.
Ed from the Crafty Egg told BristolLive in November 2023 : “There is what I call an ‘old Fishponds’ and a ‘new Fishponds’. Places like ours foster the new community and it is essential for the high street. The high street needs places like that for the community to interact with one another as more and more suburbs in Bristol have their own community.”
His colleague Luke added: “This new community is younger and more affluent, you get more characters and this means locals are staying in the area rather than going to the city centre. Every time you go on the street you’ll know someone.”
Fishponds high street has had to evolve to somewhere you’d want to be and spend your money, in order to fight off the convenience of online shopping.
Ed added: “We celebrate our local community by holding events, supporting local artists and using local coffees and beers, and the sense of community is essential to us. We get a lot of families and a lot of professionals coming in because of our chilled atmosphere in a relaxing environment.
“Fishponds is building its own community with local shops and cafes. Places like Easton and Bedminster have their own communities and their own characters, and whilst there’s still work to do and a long way to go, Fishponds is getting there.”
The influx of new businesses and new people in the area has started to put a wedge between the ‘old Fishponds’ and the ‘new’. One local told Bristol Live that all her 'favourite places were going and soon there will be nothing for her'.
One notable landmark still in place after 10 years is The Old Post Office, a pub that has defied recent trends and stayed open. A regular local, who wished not to be named, said that places like The Old Post Office are still needed even as changes keep happening.
“We need places like this so we still have something left of our community. It is good that the high street still has life, but what’s the point if we have nothing left?”, he added.
There’s a fine balance to be struck between the old and the new in order to keep the high street going as a positive force for the suburb of Fishponds. Ed adds: “Some locals might have problems with the gentrification as older shops and places are replaced with newer businesses. But I do know that it would be quite a depressing place without the high street in Fishponds.”
This article was first published in November 2023 and was republished in November 2024.