1-2 Redcliff Street1-2 REDCLIFF STREET, BRISTOL
Archaeological Excavations
Excavations and a watching brief at 1-2 Redcliff Street, Bristol will be completed by the end of February 2008. The work is being carried out for Hanover Cube on behalf of Scottish Widows in advance of the construction of a Civil Justice Centre. The site lies on the eastern side of Redcliff Street, immediately to the north of Thomas Lane, on the site of a former car park. The medieval suburb of Redcliffe lies to the south-east of the centre of Bristol and is separated from it by the Floating Harbour, formerly the tidal river Avon.
In the Anglo-Saxon period the site at Redcliff Street was outside the town of Bristol. The accessibility of Bristol by sea saw it rapidly become one of the most important and prosperous trading centres in western Britain. A direct result of the growing prosperity of Bristol was the laying out, from the second quarter of the 12th century, of two new suburbs on the south side of the Avon, known as Redcliffe and Temple Fees, linked to the city by Bristol Bridge across the river Avon. Redcliffe officially became part of Bristol when the city became a county in 1373. The site lies on the eastern side of Redcliff Street which was the main route southwards from Bristol Bridge.
Considerable archaeological work has been carried out in Redcliffe, especially adjacent to the waterfront. This work has demonstrated that the land to the western side of Redcliff Street was reclaimed from the Avon by the dumping of considerable quantities of domestic and industrial debris, as well as by the natural processes of silt accumulation. Redcliff Street itself lay close to the early medieval river frontage. Documents of the 14th and 15th century indicate that the land on either side of Redcliff Street in the vicinity of the site was occupied by tenements, arranged in long thin plots. These typically had a shop or store as well as a dwelling near the street frontage and workshops or other industrial structures towards the rear. This arrangement had the benefit of fitting a large number of traders along the street frontage and thus increasing the potential rent returns for landlords. The potential for growth of such properties was greatly restricted; extensions could only occur vertically or rearwards. In later periods, however, tenements could be combined to create larger holdings. Historical sources show that dyeing, as part of the cloth trade, was the major industry in the 14th to 16th centuries in Redcliffe.
