The 1970s are often condemned as The Decade That Taste Forgot, but some things they got right. High Kingsdown, for instance.
There was no such thing as “High Kingsdown” until the name was coined by developers for their £1.5m scheme of modern housing in the late 1960s. Until then it was just, well, Kingsdown.
The area had been built on in the 18th and 19th centuries, a mixture of elegant town houses and rather more in the way of terraced housing and cottages for the less well-off. It doesn’t really feature much in the wider history of Bristol, though it had one notable son in the form of Sir George White, who was born here, the son of a decorator and a former housemaid. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey lived there briefly in the 1790s.
Kingsdown was hit by enemy bombing in the war and much of the area was acquired by Bristol City Council. By the 1960s, with tower blocks of council flats going up on “lower” Kingsdown, the plan was to build yet more up at the top.
This was the cause of some protest, but it was probably the need to raise some ready cash that prompted the local authority to sell a big chunk of the area for private housing. This generated protests among some on the Council’s ruling Labour group. At a meeting in 1967 one of them pointed out that these new houses might cost as much as £7,000 each, at a time when there were 6,000 names on the council house waiting list.
But it went ahead, with an initial proposal from Bristol architects Whicheloe, Macfarlane and Towning Hill being approved, and work began on this distinctive low-rise high-density development, much of which would be traffic-free and included a safe children’s play area, a village green, a pub (the King’s Arms) and supermarket (courtesy of Bristol retailer Gateway Foodmarkets), and which took much of its inspiration from Scandinavian developments from around the same time.
Modern “patio homes”, the estate agents called them by the time the first batch of 59 houses and flats were on the market by 1972. And never mind the £7,000 that some councillors were complaining about: a four-bedroom house in 1972 would have cost £15,000, but best get in quick; with inflation and popularity it’d be £16,000 a year later. Or you could get a two bedroom flat for £12,250.
Among the selling points were the modern homes, the self-contained little community, the privacy and, as several estate agents’ ads had it, you could “dispense with driving to work”. If you worked in the middle of town, the stroll to the office was easy (the uphill climb home again, less so …)
This was smart, urban living 70s-style, and the development won no end of awards, including even one from Belgium. It probably featured in lifestyle magazines and Sunday supplements, too.
It’s still there; 103 houses and 76 flats and many of those who see it for the first time probably at least half-want a place there. There’s an active community association, but given its proximity to Bristol University much of it is now occupied by students, most of whom probably have no idea what a radical new design it was in its time. The King’s Arms has long since been converted to student flats, too.
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