It was the future once – the whole new suburb of Bristol that was marketed as a village with its own science park and a glass-fronted show home. And now, 11 years after the foundations for the first new house at Lyde Green were dug, the housebuilders are starting to pack up their tools, as the last few remaining homes of more than 2,000 new homes are being completed and sold.
The development began in a blaze of publicity back in 2014, after years of back and forth over the expansion of Bristol’s urban fringe beyond the A4174 ring road. Lyde Green was for centuries just the name of a farm in the South Gloucestershire countryside, but in the mid-2010s it became the busiest and biggest building site in the region.
August 2014 seems like yesterday, but also like a long time ago now. Barack Obama was US President, Israel was bombing Gaza amid ceasefire talks with Hamas, there was concern about an outbreak of Ebola virus and a war was erupting in eastern Ukraine.
In Bristol, Bristol City began what would prove to be their best season of the century so far – they finished champions of League One and won the Football League Trophy at Wembley – and Mayor of Bristol was doing what everyone else seemed to be doing that month, and having a bucket of cold water thrown over them in something called the Ice Bucket Challenge at the Mill Youth Centre in Easton.
But up on the edge of Bristol, in August 2014, people were so desperate to make sure they were the ones to be at the head of the queue for the first batch of the new homes at Lyde Green that they camped overnight outside the sales office at the entrance to the development.
Back then, the land behind the sales office and show home was still fields and muddy building sites, but over the 11 years since, a new suburb has been created, with a community centre, primary school and, on the edge by the dual carriageway, the Bristol and Bath Science Park.
“We are really proud of the community we have built at Lyde Green,” said Rob Curry, the sales and marketing manager at developers Taylor Wimpey. “Our team has worked exceptionally hard to deliver high-quality new homes, and it has been wonderful to see so many people find their dream home on the development
“With only a few plots remaining, I would encourage anyone who is interested to get in touch with our sales team as soon as possible,” he added.
Lyde Green was created through a consortium of 11 different companies, including some of the big names of the West Country housebuilding industry. As well as Taylor Wimpey, the likes of Barratt and Persimmon all got building there.
Back in 2014, the first phase of 400 homes were quickly built. New buyers could snap up a four-bed three-storey townhouse home for £290,000 – such has been the spiralling house prices in Bristol in the years since, that this seems like an absolute bargain now.
The marketing of the new suburb included an idyllic video with an emphasis on the amount of green space between the streets and homes, and the show home became something of a novelty – it was built at the entrance to the growing suburb with one side of the entire house glazed rather than with normal walls, so people could see exactly what the homes looked like inside, without even going in.
The first new arrivals soon found life on the new edge of Bristol had positives and negatives. The open spaces and green parks of the development were there, but other things, like the community centre, transport links and schools took years to catch up. It was a long time before Lyde Green started showing up on the front of buses as the routes were lengthened from next door Emersons Green to the new suburb, and while the primary school was eventually built, a secondary school has been hit by years of delays.
It was supposed to open in 2022 at the latest – timed to catch the demographics of people buying homes there in the mid- to late-2010s with young children that then need a secondary school place in the mid-2020s.
However that didn’t happen, and still hasn’t. Work finally began only in May 2024 and last July, Lyde Green parents said they had been failed by South Gloucestershire Council for the four-year delays – with the school not now expected to open until September 2026.
For those behind the development, it was something of a one-off – a partnership between housebuilders who normally are competing with one another. Between them all, the developers contributed more than £17 million to council coffers for everything from roads and schools, public transport and public art.
And by 2016, with improvements to a spur of the Bristol to Bath cycle path linking it for the first time, those selling the new homes hit upon a new marketing sell – with the development being promoted as a good one for cyclist commuters.
Now, with the final homes up for sale, it’s a bit of the end of an era. “The impressive site has been built over the last 11 years and includes over two thousand homes with lots of open green space, all in close proximity to all the amenities Emersons Green has to offer, including a library, primary school and village hall,” said a spokesperson for Taylor Wimpey.
“Offering two, three and four-bedroom properties, Lyde Green has proven to be hugely popular since its launch in 2014. With the last remaining homes now available to purchase, it’s buyers’ final chance to be a part of the legacy of Lyde Green,” she added.