Medieval and Post-Medieval Development within Bristol's Inner Suburbs

A planned medieval suburb does not always leave behind the crowded streets and houses we might expect. Four excavations in Bristol tell a surprisingly quiet story. At St Thomas Street in twelfth-century Redcliffe, substantial buildings appeared much later than the suburb’s early layout might suggest; investigations at Harbourside and Cabot House in Billeswick found similarly sparse traces of development.

The reasons were not necessarily the same. Land belonging to the abbey or cathedral in Billeswick remained valuable as meadow or parkland, while parts of Redcliffe seem to have developed slowly even outside that ownership. Edited by Martin Watts, these excavation reports follow the boundaries, modest timber structures and open ground that preceded the terraces, ropewalks and industrial activity of Bristol’s eighteenth-century expansion.