Section: No. 51
Homes upstairs
In 2001 the upper floors, offices for generations, were turned into three flats. Photographs taken during the work show the building stripped back to its bones.
me:me
Sally James’s business at No. 51, after NetGates.
Wild At Heart
A shoe shiner on the pavement, and inside a haircut, teeth whitening, flowers, a wedding dress or a party.
Ironworks Supply Co.
An Australian-style café bar with its own clothing corner, opened in seven weeks and three days in the summer of 2015.
The Gothic rebuild, 1867 to 1868
Archibald Ponton’s polychrome front, with its arcades, its carved dragons and a billiard room behind the great first-floor arches.
Wine merchants and a Café d’Italie
William Stevens and his stoneware flagons, the Best Brand Company, an auction at the Grand Hotel and an Italian café.
Fire, Accident, Marine, Life
Four words carved into the roundels of the first-floor arches tell of a new life for the building as an insurance office.
City NetGates: Bristol’s first internet café
“The pit stop on the information superhighway”: Pentium PCs, Windows 95, cappuccino and a balloon flight over Bristol.
The Grammar School’s tenements, 1532 to 1700
For almost three centuries the plot helped pay for one of Bristol’s oldest schools.
The Innholders’ Hall and the Cyder House
Behind the street front stood the meeting place of Bristol’s innkeepers, and later a cider house that gave its name to the passage beside No. 51.