Winter 2010 - Shipshape Magazine Bristol

feature
They help start-up traders get a foothold on
the commercial ladder; they cut food miles
and packaging by sourcing local produce;
they make for a more inviting, sociable and
varied shopping experience, for city-dwellers
and visitors alike, than the corridors of your
average identikit hypermart. Bryony and
others see a Harbourside market as a crucial
step in turning Bristol into a market city – the
eventual aim being perhaps a dozen weekly
neighbourhood markets across town.
Before this can happen, though, they must
wait for the findings of the Markets Review, a
study commissioned by Bristol City Council into
the city’s markets landscape (and whose findings
have just been published – have a look at
bristol.gov.uk/retailcentres for details). BCC
– which runs the city centre’s only regular
market, St Nicholas – commissioned the Review
to investigate the current health of the city’s
“I want to offer a
living, breathing, sensory
experience of all that
makes living in the
South West so fantastic”
Bryony Morgan, Director of Love Local
markets, and the desirability of allowing further
markets to develop in the centre of town.
Bryony’s Harbourside Market would be a prime
candidate if any further markets were allowed.
The Markets Charter
So why is the Review so crucial to Bristol’s
market future? A quick history lesson, if you
don’t mind. Through its 650-year-old Markets
Charter (granted by Edward IV in 1462 as a
reward for Bristol’s support during the Wars
of the Roses), the Council has strategic control
of markets throughout the city. Most crucially,
it has the power to prevent any person
operating a market within 6.7 miles of any
council-operated market (ie. St Nick’s) without
Council permission. Thus far, BCC has used
these rights with discretion, allowing a clutch
of privately run markets to spring up at areas
including Whiteladies Road, Fishponds Park
Common Loaf Bakery
and Christmas Steps. Now, though, there is
growing pressure from Bryony and others
for markets around the Harbourside, one of
Bristol’s most historic and most visited areas
and also one of the zones most in need of
‘animation’ – a new lease of life and activity.
Those who consider that the Harbourside
would benefit from a street market (and we’ll
look more closely at the reasons why very
shortly) question the Council’s adherence to,
they say, an outdated piece of legislation.
Hence the newly published Markets Review,
for which BCC asked consultants Market
Squared (one of the founders of London’s
hugely successful food market, Borough
Market) and Roger Tym & Partners to
examine Bristol’s market landscape in detail.
The Review has studied a range of factors,
including current and future prospects for
markets in Bristol, public demand for more
markets, and whether the Council’s use of
the existing Charter is in the best interests
of consumers and stallholders.
Put simply, the findings may (or may
not) recommend allowing more markets
to develop around town, and it may (or
may not) find that the Council’s use of the
Charter is no longer appropriate.
“If the consultants find that there is room
for other markets in the city, I’d hope that
the Council would then look at our proposal
on the Harbourside,” Bryony continues. “A
Saturday food market in the eighth biggest
city in the country – how hard can that
be? Every market town in Somerset and
Gloucestershire has a Saturday food market.
And we know – from the trial back in June
– that we’ve got the food producers to make
it happen.”
The big idea
So when, where and what would the
Harbourside Market be? It would be sited
on Bordeaux Quay, the covered walkway
outside Watershed and the Tourist
Information Centre, although it could
also spill onto Narrow Quay opposite
and, on occasions, BQ’s neighbour,
Anchor Square. The initial proposal is for
a Thursday, Friday and Saturday food,
art and craft market, perhaps introducing
Sunday for a non-food browsers’ market
– antiques, books and records, plants,
etc. Opening hours would be 10am-3pm,
with the possibility of further opening
days and perhaps a late opening to catch
home-from-work shoppers.
“We don’t want to duplicate St Nick’s,
so we’d ensure that the food market would
be on a different day from Wednesdays
[when St Nick’s holds its farmers’
twelve
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