A guildhall stood on the west side of Broad Street, reaching back to Small Street, by the middle of the fourteenth century, and probably from the thirteenth. It was the meeting place of the town’s governing guild and later the home of its courts.
In 1788 the medieval Guild Hall hosted Bristol’s first open public meeting to campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, in a city whose wealth was bound up with it.
The old hall was replaced in 1846 by the present Gothic building, designed by Richard Shackleton Pope. For many years it housed the city’s courts.
After the courts left, the building stood empty for years. In 2015 plans were announced to turn it, with the former Bank of England next door, into a hotel with a rooftop pool and a new walkway through to Small Street. The building was squatted and later damaged by fire. Work began again in the 2020s for a company called Broad Street Hotels Ltd.