Historic maps & photos of Redland (Bristol Council)

You can now view the area now known as Redland Green – and indeed, much of Bristol – as it looked at intervals from the 1840s by going to www.bristol.gov.uk/knowyourplace.

In the 1840s, the area around what we know today as Redland Green was farmed. Coldharbour Farm – broadly, situated where today Coldharbour Lane and Harcourt Road meet – was one of only two settlements in the vicinity. The 1840s map also shows buildings at what later became known as Redland Farm. Unlike Coldharbour Farm, Redland Farm still exists today, though no longer a farm, but it wasn’t until the 1855 map that it was named as such in the maps. The site of Redland Chapel is marked as a place of worship from the 1840s. Until the 1880s, the fields between the two farms, and around the chapel remained. By the 1900s map, Linden and Cranbrook Roads have made their appearance, as has Harcourt Hill and a small section of Harcourt Road, going right from Harcourt Hill. Coldharbour Lane, giving access to Coldharbour Farm since the 1840s map, has enlarged, and the first developments along it have appeared: St Alban’s Church, Bayswater Avenue, Florence Park, and Devonshire and St Alban’s Roads, and the area between them along Coldharbour Road, can be seen in various stages of development. Between 1900 and 1946, most of the fields around the two farms and the chapel disappeared under roads and housing, leaving only the small remnant that the Green is today.

The addition of aerial photographs taken by the RAF after WWII shows Redland Green with the approximate shape that we would recognise today. However, most of Redland Green had been turned over to allotments during the war: the patchwork effect of the vegetable beds can clearly be seen.

If you have some spare moments, have a look at the Know Your Place website: it’s fascinating!

For background on the Know Your Place website, go to http://tinyurl.com/b8bwx85