Review into plans to redevelop Bristol zoo site
10 minutes ago
Share
Save
Joe Skirkowski
BBC News, Bristol
Share
Save
PA Media
The site has been vacant since the zoo closed in 2022
A review has begun looking at a council's decision to approve plans to redevelop the site of a former zoo.
Bristol City Council approved the plans to build 196 homes, a café, playground and conservation hub on Bristol Zoo's Clifton site after it closed in 2022.
A group of residents have opposed the plans - citing concerns over a potential loss of bio-diversity and green space - and fears that public access to the site's historic gardens are not guaranteed.
"We really need spaces where people can enjoy and take a respite from the city and there are vanishingly few of them," said Carrie Sage, founder of Save Bristol Gardens Alliance.
"It's completely the wrong plan for the wrong site and many trees will be cut down as a result as they add car parking and a road through the gardens as a result," she added.
"The importance of green spaces in cities will become ever more relevant in the years to come and having a 12 acre walled garden with so many amazing trees and herbaceous borders is just wrong," said fellow member of Save Bristol Gardens Alliance, Bill Ray.
Under the current proposals - 80 of the 218 trees currently on the site would be removed - with 44 of those replanted and 470 new ones planted.
Bristol Zoo originally opened in 1836 and was one of the oldest in the world at the time of closing in September 2022.
The zoo maintains that it needed to relocate to a larger site on the outskirts of the city to meet modern standards and enable it to care for larger animals.
"It was clear that it wasn't fit for purpose and when you look at the new Bristol Zoo Project, not only is it much larger than the Clifton site but its also got a lovely variety of different habitats which are more suitable for the different animals," said Dr Justin Morris, CEO of Bristol Zoo Project.
They also state that the new development would allow access to the site's gardens for free for the first time and say that this is legally binding.
"We really wanted to ensure that the gardens continued to be a public space for the people of Bristol and that's something we're really proud of in the scheme that's been consented," said Dr Morris.
"For the first time in its history, it's a space that people can go into for free.
"That's guaranteed because it's enshrined in a legal contract called a section 106 agreement and any planning application has to be backed up by an agreement like that and the developer will have to abide by those terms," he added.
The review into the planning application will conclude on 7 May but a result may not be immediately available.
Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
35 minutes ago
- Telegraph
If you say ‘pardon' to sound posh, you're wrong on two counts
What do you say if you mishear someone? 'I'm sorry?' or 'what?', perhaps? Or maybe you're a 'pardon?' person. One of those silly surveys has just come out, declaring that Gen Z have given up saying 'polite' words such as 'pardon' and 'excuse me' in favour of 'what?' or 'come again?' Three quarters of young Britons deem 'pardon' too formal, says the survey, so they reply 'huh?' or 'you what?' instead. Is 'you what?' better than saying nothing at all, which is what half of the survey's respondents claimed to do? Instead, apparently, the youth nod along and pretend to have understood. Though we've all been there, haven't we, at a noisy drinks party, for example. You're desperately trying to understand the other person, but you don't want to stick your ear any closer to their face because they've just eaten a salmon canapé, so you smile broadly, nod and maybe let out a little laugh, only to realise with horror that they were telling you their mother had just died. Unfortunately, however, this survey has got it all wrong. Look, I try not to be a word snob (all the time), but I can't let this one slide. 'Pardon' is an abysmal word, not polite, and certainly not a word anyone posh would use. It is a Hyacinth Bucket word – one that people may use because they think it sounds grand, and better than 'what', but which actually marks them out as deeply middle class. Sorry, don't blame me. I'm only passing on the facts, and the fact is, 'pardon' is awful. When I once came home from school and reported to my mother that I'd been told off for saying 'what' to my teacher one day, and told to use 'pardon' instead, my mother called up the school to complain. Because 'pardon' is ever so slightly common, and 'what' is, honestly, more acceptable. It depends how you say it, of course. You can't blurt it out in the manner of Harry Enfield's Kevin – 'Wot?' Try to be more gentle. I'm a fan of 'What was that?' if I miss whatever I've just been asked. Somewhat contradictorily, 'I beg your pardon?' is also tolerable. But just never, ever 'pardon'. So, for today's lesson, we're going to have a quick trot through a few other words that people believe are polite, but which are, in fact, infra dig. Again, it gives me no pleasure to pass these on. I merely offer them up so you don't embarrass yourselves.
Daily Mail
35 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
How the Queen Mother dealt with grandchildren's divorce misery: The profound effect marriage breakdowns had on the royal, dubbed 'imperial ostrich' over her views - on what would have been her 125th birthday
Today would have marked the Queen Mother 's 125th birthday and in her long and remarkable life she witnessed massive changes in attitudes within Britain. She lived to see the legalisation of abortion and homosexuality as well as the criminalisation of capital punishment. But the societal change that perhaps most impacted Elizabeth was the growing societal acceptance of divorce in Britain. Indeed, the Royal Family 's hostility to divorce in the 1930s was part of the reason her husband King George VI ascended to the throne. This came about after King Edward VIII caused a major constitutional crisis in 1936 when he made clear his wish to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. This ended with Edward abdicating and his younger brother taking his place. Looking forward 60 years, Elizabeth and George's daughter Queen Elizabeth II faced a cacophony of divorces, with three out of her four children in unhappy marriages. According to William Shawcross, who wrote the Queen Mother's official biography, the breakdowns of her grandchildrens' marriages affected her 'profoundly' and although she 'rarely committed her views to paper' she gave them as much support as they needed. Shawcross wrote the Royal Family were very aware of how unhappy Charles and Diana's marriage was long before their divorce. 'The births of their [Charles and Diana] two much-loved sons, Prince William in 1982 and Prince Harry in 1984, gave joy to them as well as to everyone else in the family. 'But hopes that motherhood would bring the princess fulfilment proved illusory. Within the family, enthusiasm and hopes for the marriage gave way to anxiety and concern.' And by 1986 the Queen Mother and other family members were very aware the Prince and Princess of Wales's marriage had 'all but broken down'. On top of this, Princess Anne had her own marital problems and she became Elizabeth's first granddaughter to separate from her husband, Captain Mark Phillips, in 1989 and by 1992 they were divorced. And then Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson's marriage started to deteriorate just six years after their wedding in 1986. By 1992 the Royals faced the prospect of not one but an unprecedented three royal divorces. In the midst of these crises, the matriarch of the Windsors was willing to give her grandchildren as much support as she could. However, while some wanted advice from her, Elizabeth always wished to avoid confrontation within the family. Shawcross said that her stance earnt the Queen Mother the unflattering nickname of the 'imperial ostrich' - in reference to her tendency to put her head in the sand duirng more difficult family affairs. 'She thought her role was not to try and change people's courses but to be an anchor,' he wrote. Even if she did want to metaphorically bury her head in the sand, the Queen Mother's grandchildren still leaned on her throughout this difficult time. In December 1992, Elizabeth was shown by Charles the draft statement to be made by the Prime Minister announcing his separation from Diana. The Queen Mother's old school views on privacy also clashed with how Diana and Sarah Ferguson handled the breakdown of their marriages. In June 1992, the Sunday Times started to serialise Andrew Morton's biography of Diana, which the Princess of Wales had covertly collaborated on. Then in August that year, damning photos of John Bryan, an American financial manager, sucking on Sarah's toes as she sunbathed were published in the UK press. Charles kisses his grandmother's hand. In December 1992, Elizabeth was shown by Charles the draft statement to be made by the Prime Minister announcing his separation from Diana Shawcross said: 'She [The Queen Mother] had been sympathetic to both the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York over the enormous pressure they faced from the media. 'But the washing of dirty linen in public was utterly abhorrent to Elizabeth. Her entire life was based upon obligation, discretion and restraint. 'The Princess's [Diana's] public rejection of her husband and his life was contrary to everything that Elizabeth believed and practiced.' Likewise, she 'regretted' when Charles sat down for a series of interviews with journalist Jonathan Dimbleby. In response, Elizabeth said: 'It's always a mistake to talk about your marriage.' One person she was particularly concerned about through the drama of 1992 was her daughter Queen Elizabeth II who went on to describe the year as her 'annus horribilis'. Shawcross said: 'She also talked almost daily to her daughter the Queen, who was distraught about what was happening to her children and the fact that it was taking place so publicly. 'Queen Elizabeth often asked members of the Household, "Is the Queen alright?" They in turn recognized that the frequent conversations between mother and daughter helped the Queen to maintain her sangfroid and sense of perspective.' One person she was particularly concerned about through the drama of 1992 was her daughter Queen Elizabeth II who went onto describe the year as her 'annus horribilis' The end of the year ended on a high at least when Princess Anne married Commander Tim Lawrence on December 12. The ceremony took place at Crathie church near Balmoral. However, the wedding happened to clash with one of the Queen Mother's parties at the Royal Lodge in Windsor. But in order not to miss her granddaughter's second wedding the 92-year-old flew to Scotland for the ceremony before flying back to Windsor in time for dinner with her party guests.
The Guardian
35 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The Confessions of Samuel Pepys by Guy de la Bédoyère review – sex and the city
Samuel Pepys's diary, which covers 1660 to 1669, is regarded as one of the great classic texts in the English language. Words spill out of Pepys – 1.25m of them – as he bustles around London, building a successful career as a naval administrator while navigating the double trauma of the plague and the Great Fire of London. Historians have long gone to the diary for details of middle-class life during the mid‑17th century: the seamy streets, the watermen, the taverns and, as Pepys moves up the greasy pole, the court and the king. Best of all is his eye for the picturesque detail: the way, for instance, on the morning of 4 September 1666, as fire licks around his house, Pepys buries a choice parmesan cheese in the garden with the intention of keeping it safe. Not all of the diary is in English, though. Quite a lot of it is in French (or rather Franglais), Latin, Spanish and a curious mashup of all three. Pepys increasingly resorted to this home-brewed polyglot whenever the subject of sex came up, which was often. Indeed, sex – chasing it, having it, worrying about getting it again – dominated Pepys's waking life and haunted his dreams, many of them nightmares. Putting these anguished passages in a garbled form not only lessened the chance of servants snooping, but also served to protect him from his own abiding sense of shame. As an extra layer of concealment, Pepys wrote 'my Journall' using tachygraphy, an early form of shorthand. Pepys's diaries were published in bowdlerised form in the 19th century, and it was not until the 1970s that they became available in 11 unexpurgated volumes. Even then, explains Guy de la Bédoyère, there were many transcription errors and, crucially, no attempt was made to translate the coded passages into English. Historians knew about them, of course, not least because all you needed was a bit of classroom French and Latin to work out their meaning. On 25 March 1668, Pepys records that he has given 'Mrs Daniels' eight pairs of gloves 'for tocar my prick con her hand', which is hardly likely to keep anyone guessing for very long. All the same, it has been easy to lose sight of the sexual thread of Pepys's diary amid all the chatter about navy ships and expensive cheese. Which is why, for the first time, De la Bédoyère has gone back to the original manuscript and translated all of Pepys's coded entries, publishing them end-to-end with only a minimum of contextual information. The result is an extraordinarily detailed snapshot of life seen through the eyes of a man for whom no day was complete unless he had managed to fondle at least one woman's 'mameles' (breasts) on his way to or from work. In the past, people have blamed Pepys's bad behaviour on the Restoration. These were the years when the dour pieties of Oliver Cromwell had been replaced by Charles II's permissive libertarianism. But there is much more – and much worse – to the occluded parts of Pepys's diary than mere bawdiness. On 3 February 1664, for example, he is travelling in a carriage down Ludgate Hill when he witnesses three men raping a woman and wishes he could join in. On 1 December 1660, he beats his maid Jane savagely with a broom, though it is clear that he is eyeing her up for a future assignation. He often uses the words 'towsing' and 'tumbling' to describe what he is doing with women which sounds jolly and bucolic until De la Bédoyère explains that these terms are euphemisms for violence. The only occasion on which Pepys might hold back was if he knew a woman was single, which would make any pregnancy impossible to explain away. (It was a mercy that he didn't realise that an earlier operation for a bladder stone had probably left him sterile.) For that reason, he badgered any girl he wanted to sleep with regularly to get married, so he could carry on regardless. As news of his behaviour got around, so others would try to exploit it. On 11 August 1665, an old waterman called Delkes presented Pepys with his daughter-in-law, who was willing to sleep with him in return for a guarantee that her husband would not be pressed into naval service. And then there was his marriage. Pepys had wed Elizabeth when she was just 14. He was proud of her beauty, congratulating himself on how much prettier she was than the many grand ladies at court whom he encountered on his way to becoming secretary to the navy. Everything else about her frustrated him. He grumbled about her untidiness, extravagance, moodiness and the fact that her heavy periods and a recurrent labial abscess meant that she often wasn't available for sex. Most of all, he resented the way that she had taken to hiring plain maidservants in the hope that he would leave them alone (it didn't work). Inevitably he took out his frustrations with his fists: on 19 December 1664 he gave Elizabeth such a black eye that she was unable to go to church on Christmas Day for fear of what the neighbours would think. While Pepys's dark side has long been known, it is something else to be confronted with the evidence laid out quite so starkly. The man who emerges from De la Bédoyère's meticulous filleting is no Restoration roustabout but a chilling embodiment of male entitlement. This newly explicit view of Pepys does not negate the continuing value of his diary – which remains a magnificent historical resource – but from now on it will be impossible to go to it in a state of innocence, let alone denial. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion The Confessions of Samuel Pepys: His Private Revelations by Guy de la Bédoyère is published by Abacus (£25). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
