1957 Bristol city centre

1957 The Ever Changing Face of Bristol's Centre

A sight to bring the old memories flooding back to our more mature people - an old horse-drawn vehicle clopping through the centre of Bristol. There is little traffic about in the Centre in this memorable view, and the cyclist calmly hogging the middle of the road in the days long before cycle helmets were required, would appear to be in little danger. He is approaching the notorious ‘scissors crossing’ caused by a merging of traffic, well remembered by Bristol motorists - especially those who merged more firmly than they intended, and suffered dented wings and smashed headlights! In 1957 this large traffic island was removed to bring an end to the problem. 

Some may well have checked their watches by the clock on the old CWS building, a landmark which was also doomed to be replaced by a modern block - albeit still with a clock. Adverts, too, belong to the city’s history, and the massive Table Waters sign by ‘you know who’ was part of our scenery for years. The Schweppes company took advantage of the spy fever that was raging in the 1960s, and those ‘you know who’ adverts made William Franklyn, who acted in various spoof spy situations, familiar to every household that owned a television set.