Friars, Quakers, Industry and Urbanisation: Cabot Circus, Bristol

The development of Cabot Circus shopping centre presented a rare opportunity to investigate a large part of the Broadmead suburb of Bristol. The presence of a former Dominican Friary and later a Friends’ Meeting House were already well known. Surviving buildings from both remain within a large open piazza in the west of the new development. Further elements of the friary complex, including remains of the church and two cloisters, were revealed in various archaeological interventions, enabling a reconstruction of the precinct and its environs to be made. The project has also shed light on other aspects of the suburb’s past that were previously less well known, including evidence for small-scale tree clearance during the later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Later, a floodplain had remained as mud flats until the development of the Broadmead suburb in the 12th century, and the arrival of the Dominicans in the 13th century.