News / bristol city council

Demolition crew bring down 1970s bridge

By Chris Brown  Monday Sep 29, 2014

Traffic was heavy in the city centre throughout the weekend as a demolition crew brought down the 1970s concrete footbridge over Rupert Street.

Work began on Saturday morning to remove the walkway and, by the end of the day, the structure had been removed.

Rupert Street was closed all weekend though, with a diversion onto Bridewell Street, along Nelson Street and Christmas Street and back onto Rupert Street near the centre.

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The footbridge was part of an ambitious vision of the future of cities, in which the entrance to shops and offices would be taken above street level.

Pedestrian walkways ‘in the air’ would provide access to buildings, leaving street level free for traffic – pavements could have been removed in favour of dedicated cycle lanes.

Bristol started this system from Old Market past the Marriott Hotel, linking with the multi level car park and onto Castle Park. The high level pavement also ran down the other side of Bond Street.

The plan was to extend this towards Broadmead, but the project was discarded, leaving a few remnants in place such as in Rupert Street and Nelson Street. Meanwhile, a planning application was successfully sought to demolish the walkways at the Old Market roundabout last year, though there is no sign of demolition work so far.

The demolition of the Rupert Street bridge is part of a plan to demolish the former juvenile and domestic courts, to be replaced with student accommodation.

The plans have caused controversy though, with groups such as the Bristol Civic Society opposing. While the society supported the demolition of the building and the footbridge, describing it as “an excellent opportunity to mitigate one of the city’s worst planning disasters”, they were dismayed by the plan to replace.

The student block will be three floors taller than Bristol City Council advises, leading the society to say: “Far from promoting or enhancing Rupert Street Bridewell Street and Nelson Street, the ‘landmark’ tower will aggravate the area’s urban blight and planning dysfunction. The ‘landmark’ tower will perpetuate the planning disaster that created Rupert Street.”

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