Look closely at the roundels in the heads of the three great first-floor arches. They read Fire, Accident, Marine and Life: the four main classes of insurance business. Photographers who have put the building on Wikimedia Commons describe it as the former Avon Insurance building.
When the building went up in 1867, the press described coloured carvings in the window heads symbolising its purpose as a bar. At some point those were replaced or recut for an insurer. The most likely time is after Morris and Co.’s lease ran out in 1927, and the steel-framed windows on the Cider House Passage side suggest a twentieth-century refit. Which company took the building, and when, is one of the questions we most want to answer. Bristol’s trade directories for the 1920s and 1930s should hold the answer.
War damage
Wine Street and Castle Street, a few steps away, were devastated in the Bristol Blitz of 1940 and 1941. Broad Street did not escape either. In 1948 permission was granted to reinstate war damage at No. 51, with structural alterations. The application was filed together with the Grand Hotel next door.
Offices and an employment agency
No. 51 was listed at Grade II on 4 March 1977, as an office. In 1986 a plan to refurbish the ground floor as a modern office and redecorate the entrance lobby was refused. In 1988 new shop signs went up for an employment agency, with an illuminated fascia and a projecting sign. In 1989 the entrance doorway was reset at a splayed angle, with a York stone floor, a brass plaque and a downlighter in the lobby.
In 1990 metal gates were put across Cider House Lane, between Nos. 51 and 52. By the middle of the 1990s the ground floor was ready for something very different.
