Local community facilities at risk in Sea Mills and Lawrence Weston

The adjoining areas of Sea Mills and Lawrence Weston both began as council estates. In recent years, both have been quietly losing once-busy and loved community facilities.

Sea Mills currently hums to the sound of building: the northern end of the suburb is going through a period of change. Where the Hallen Drive Infants School stood until very recently there’s now just two enormous heaps of rubble. The site will accommodate a new school, built to cater to the needs of children with special educational and mental health needs.

A few streets away, on a site which used to host a children’s centre, a set of assisted living apartments are being built. The site of the old Sea Mills Training Centre, where building trades training used to take place, looks set to be developed by the Tiny House Community to provide affordable housing.

All that remains of the old infants school are two enormous piles of bricks. Photo – Mary Milton

One site, high on the hill, remains; seemingly ignored but very much on the minds of local people. The Sea Mills Community Centre closed just before Christmas 2019 – a sad end to what had been the estate’s centenary year. The building opened in 1959 and had been lovingly built by local people, who also financed its construction.

At the winding-up meeting of the Sea Mills Community Association, who ran the centre, there was anger and tears. Community groups and local businesses running events, social occasions, dance classes, sports and amateur dramatics were left without a venue, with little warning. Pre-Covid 19 they all found new venues, but none of them are based in Sea Mills anymore.

“I was devastated and heartbroken when we had to close,” says Lisa Dicker, who managed the centre as a volunteer. “We knew the importance of what it meant to people to have a space that was theirs, somewhere without judgement and where they felt comfortable.”

The Community Centre was built by local people in the 1950s. Photo – Sea Mills 100

Local people have not been able to use the community centre since, as it’s not considered in fit enough condition for public use. The lease has been handed back to Bristol City Council.

The building wasn’t perfect: it is single glazed and hard to heat, and there were building compliance issues which only came to light when the management applied for a grant to improve the facilities: the building survey, required before the release of the grant, showed that the money would be nowhere near enough. Nonetheless, with a lack of secular, sizable and accessible facilities in Sea Mills, it has left a gap.

The community centre site is currently attracting a lot of attention. It’s been covered in graffiti and surrounded with rubbish as set dressing for filming The Offenders, the Stephen Merchant series starring Christopher Walken which is currently being filmed around Bristol. The plot follows a group of offenders completing a community payback sentence, which, ironically, used to happen at the centre when it was open.

The sudden changes at the centre have reawakened the hurt people feel over its loss. Many have been expressing their frustration using social media, including local resident Leisa Evans who wrote: “It’s odd that it’s safe for them [the film crew] but not a yoga class or a kids’ party.”

Sea Mills Community Centre, closed to locals since 2019, is currently covered in graffiti for the filming of a TV show. Photo – Mary Milton

While some have pinned their hopes on the building reopening, others want a better facility for the area, including Andrew Wootton, acting chair of Sea Mills & Coombe Dingle Together: “Sea Mills Community Centre was a huge success when it was built by the residents, for the residents, but sadly it has come to the end of its useful life. The time has come to lobby the city council to help us replace it with a modern, fit-for-purpose replacement.”

There is hope that this will happen. Labour councillor for Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston, Don Alexander, has been pushing for a new community facility next to Sea Mills Library on Sylvan Way. He says Bristol City Council and mayor Marvin Rees are “absolutely committed” to this plan:

“The intention is to fund this through the building of a number of houses on the site as well. Whilst the situation is difficult at present due to the pandemic, we will be consulting with the community as soon as we have a proposal to discuss. Meanwhile, it would be helpful if residents could give some thought as to what facilities already exist in Sea Mills so that we all have an idea of what’s ideally required.”

Lisa Dicker welcomes a public consultation and is interested in the results.

“There may be a better-positioned site for a community space, more central. It was difficult for some people to access the centre because of the hill,” she says. It’s often been suggested locally that the Methodist Church on the Square, which has not been used for regular services since 2018, should be converted into a community hub.

Meanwhile, in Sea Mills’ newer neighbour Lawrence Weston, feelings are running high over another type of building Sea Mills lacks – a pub. In the 1920s, council estates were built without pubs because the Bristol Corporation (now Bristol City Council) didn’t allow them on their estates. Pubs serving Sea Mills have always been on its borders. Lawrence Weston once had five pubs but the last of those, the Giant Goram on Barrowmead Drive, closed late in 2019.

The last pub in Lawrence Weston, the Giant Goram, closed in late 2019. Since then, the local community have fought a planning application to demolish it and build housing. Photo – Mary Milton

The building is on Bristol City Council’s Local List of valued buildings, and an attempt by a developer to demolish it for housing has already been thwarted. Some local people hope it can be purchased back for community use.

Independent councillor for Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston, Jo Sergeant, was part of the campaign to save the pub from demolition, and wants to see it become a multi-use community building. “We didn’t just fight against a planning application, we fought for a community pub,” she says.

She’s aware of a community-run pub on a council estate in Brighton called The Bevy, and thinks the Giant Goram could be used in a similar way. She believes a re-imagined Giant Goram could provide a community facility for a part of Lawrence Weston that is furthest away from the estate’s other facilities.

The Giant Goram has always primarily been a pub, but it has housed community projects before: the skittle alley was until recently home to a bike project, providing low cost bikes to those who needed them. Sergeant doesn’t think the pub can viably reopen solely as a pub: she thinks aspirations should be even higher, perhaps serving quality meals or hosting a small market in the car park. “It’s got to change and it’s got to meet local need,” she says.

Ambition Lawrence Weston has recently been awarded £1m from the council and £150,000 from the Port Communities Resilience Fund for a new community hub.  ‘Ambition House’ will be purpose-built, sustainable and economic to run. It will be partly financed by building homes on the existing Ambition Lawrence Weston site at Long Cross.

No doubt the people of Sea Mills will be watching this scheme with interest, and hoping the council’s promise of a consultation means they will be next. Their predecessors may have built their own community building in the 1950s but today’s residents will be hoping that they don’t have to.

Mary Milton is reporting on Sea Mills as part of Bristol24/7’s community reporter scheme, a pilot project which aims to tell stories from areas of Bristol traditionally under-served by the mainstream media

Main photo by Mary Milton

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