Draft:Turbo Island

Turbo Island is a small triangular plot of land at the junction of Stokes Croft and Jamaica Street in Bristol, England. A privately owned but informally used open space, it has for decades been a gathering place for street drinkers, homeless people, artists and partygoers, and is known for bonfires, impromptu parties and street art. It is widely regarded as a symbol of the alternative and countercultural identity of Stokes Croft, while also being a long-standing focus of complaints about anti-social behaviour.

The plot was created by bomb damage during the Bristol Blitz of the Second World War, and for much of the later 20th century carried an advertising hoarding whose rear wall became a street art canvas. Its name is generally said to derive from a cheap, strong cider associated with the street drinkers who congregated there; it is sometimes also called "Cider Island". In 2009 it was the subject of a community archaeological excavation of a "contemporary homeless place", later published in a peer-reviewed journal.

After the landowner laid tarmac over the site in 2022, the plot was put up for sale in 2024 and sold privately to an advertising company, prompting a community campaign to register it as a town or village green. A public inquiry into that application opened in June 2026.

Location and description

Turbo Island is a roughly triangular traffic island of around 0.03 acres (120 m²) on the eastern side of Stokes Croft, north of the Cabot Circus shopping development. Bristol City Council describes it as lying at "the junction of Jamaica Street, Stokes Croft and Thomas Street", while other accounts place it at the meeting of Stokes Croft, Jamaica Street and City Road. In archaeological terms it has been characterised as a "SLOAP" (space left over after planning).

The site lies within the Stokes Croft Conservation Area, which was designated by Bristol City Council on 18 June 1980 and extended on 6 September 2000. The council's 2007 conservation area character appraisal explicitly names the plot as "Turbo Island" and lists it among informal open spaces that "provide some relief from the dominant built form and add to the character of the Conservation Area". A wall along one side of the plot, formerly the base of an advertising hoarding, has been used as a changing canvas for street art, and an adjacent flyposting board is used to advertise local events.

Name

The origin of the name is not definitively documented. Local accounts generally attribute it to a cheap, super-strength cider associated with the street drinkers who gathered at the spot – although they do not name a specific commercial brand – with several sources dating the nickname to the 1980s; the site is also sometimes called "Cider Island".

History

Origins

The plot was created by bomb damage during the Second World War. According to a 2014 archaeological study of the site, three buildings addressed 71, 73 and 75 Stokes Croft – which included a shoe shop – stood on the plot until they were struck by a German bomb during the war, around 1940, an explosion that killed a resident, Mrs Parsons. The study states that the damaged buildings were not finally cleared until a road-widening scheme in 1961, after which the resulting gap site evolved into the open space later known as Turbo Island. Popular and tourism accounts often give a simpler version, describing the site as having been created when a "shoe warehouse" was destroyed by bombing in 1940 and the empty plot then left undeveloped to preserve drivers' sightlines at the junction. A 2010 University of Bristol account noted that local stories about the site – including claims that it had been a Speakers' Corner, a place where pirates were hanged, or that it contained the remains of a bombed wartime building – were "interesting but contested".

Advertising hoarding and ownership

An advertising hoarding has stood on the plot since the mid-20th century, although sources differ on the date: community accounts variously give the 1940s or 1950s, while the 2014 archaeological study dates the hoardings to 1994. The People's Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC), a local arts and campaign organisation, has stated that Avon County Council sold the land to an advertising company for £32,500 in the mid-1980s, some years after the 1980 conservation-area designation; a community source citing a property record instead dates the sale to December 1995, when the freehold was reportedly sold to a firm called Maiden Poster Properties for the same sum. The 2014 study records the owner at that time as the advertising firm Insite Poster Properties Ltd. In 2014 PRSC opposed an application by Insite to replace the hoarding with an internally illuminated LED sign, which it characterised as a step towards gentrification; the application was refused. By the early 2020s the land was owned by Wildstone (also called Wildstone Investments), a London-based outdoor-advertising company.

Community use and culture

For decades the site has been a gathering place for homeless people and street drinkers; a 2010 University of Bristol account stated it had been frequented by them for around 40 years, and a 2024 feature in Huck dated its use as a homeless hangout to the 1960s. It has also hosted bonfires, free parties, raves and impromptu drum and bass events. Huck described it as a rare "third space" where people from different backgrounds mix. Lisa Furness of PRSC described it as somewhere "a cross section of the community could be together", while a PRSC director, Benoit Bennett, said that if "the fire goes out on Turbo, then that's radical Bristol dead".

The plot has long been associated with the Bristol street-art scene; according to the People's Republic of Stokes Croft and the Visit Stokes Croft directory, the wall has been painted by various artists, including Sepr, who painted it during a Stokes Croft arts festival in 2014. The wider Stokes Croft area is noted for its murals, including Banksy's The Mild Mild West, which is located nearby on Stokes Croft rather than on Turbo Island itself. PRSC says it began carrying out improvement work at the site around 2007.

Archaeological excavation

In December 2009 the site was the subject of a small community archaeological excavation as part of a "homeless heritage" project. The dig was led by the English Heritage archaeologist John Schofield and the urban archaeologist Rachael Kiddey, working with the University of Bristol (where Mark Horton was professor of archaeology), Avon and Somerset Police and PRSC, and was funded by the Council for British Archaeology. Homeless people took part in the dig and were described in the resulting study as "colleagues" who helped to excavate and interpret the finds, which numbered 1,063 artefacts and were dominated by alcohol bottles and items relating to drug use. The excavation was filmed for the BBC regional programme Inside Out West, broadcast on 22 February 2010, and the findings were published in 2014 in the journal Post-Medieval Archaeology.

Anti-social behaviour and 2022 clearance

Because the land was privately owned, Bristol City Council had limited direct authority over activity there. Following the COVID-19 lockdowns, the council and police recorded a rise in street drinking, drug use and fires at the site; Avon Fire and Rescue Service was reported to have attended Turbo Island 44 times between April and July 2022. Complaints were made to the local MP, Thangam Debbonaire, and the then Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, publicly supported action to address the problems. The council issued a community protection notice (reported by some outlets as a "community protection order") to the landowner, Wildstone, requiring it to deal with the litter, waste and anti-social behaviour at the site.

In response, Wildstone fenced off the plot and laid tarmac over it. The company's operations director, Philip Allard, said the works – which the firm paid for and which also included installing cycle parking – began on 24 October 2022 and would take about a week; the site was reported to have been cleared and surfaced over by November 2022. Reactions were mixed. Some nearby residents and businesses welcomed the change, with the deterioration of conditions cited as a factor in the closure of a local restaurant; one shopkeeper said it was a relief no longer to witness violence and fumes from burning plastic. PRSC and other campaigners criticised the clearance as superficial, arguing that it displaced visible poverty and homelessness rather than addressing its causes; one representative called it "a surface level clearing out of people from the city centre".

2024 sale

In August 2024, Wildstone put Turbo Island up for sale through the Bristol auctioneers Hollis Morgan, with a guide price of £50,000 and an auction scheduled for 16 October 2024. The Stokes Croft Land Trust, a community body set up by PRSC, said it had offered £100,000 for the plot but was turned down, while a separate community crowdfunding campaign aimed at raising £50,000 reached only around £2,000. Shortly before the planned auction, the land was instead sold privately for £100,000 to an initially anonymous "local" buyer.

The purchaser's identity was not made public at the time. In July 2025, Bristol City Council committee papers identified the buyer as Out Of Hand, an advertising company, which had previously denied to reporters that it had bought the land before acknowledging its ownership.

Town and village green campaign and public inquiry

Following the 2024 sale, campaigners associated with PRSC applied to Bristol City Council, as commons registration authority, to register Turbo Island as a town or village green under section 15 of the Commons Act 2006 – a designation that would protect public access and prevent development. Such registration requires evidence that local people have used the land for lawful sports and pastimes for at least 20 years; the applicants argued that the site had been used for "picnics, drinking, chatting, informal meetings, parties, bonfires and barbecues" for far longer. The application was opposed by Out Of Hand, Avon and Somerset Police and National Grid, which operates an electricity substation at the site.

In 2025 the barrister Douglas Edwards KC advised the council that no "trigger event", such as a relevant planning application, had occurred that would block the bid, and the council's Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee agreed to hold a public inquiry to determine the application. Figures presented in connection with the case indicated that crimes at the site had been reported to police on average about every other day during the previous year, including arson and robbery.

The public inquiry, conducted by Douglas Edwards KC as inspector, opened at the St Paul's Learning Centre in Bristol on 16 June 2026 and was scheduled to sit until 18 June; the inspector is to report his findings to the council, which will then decide the application.

External links

• turboisland.info – a website dedicated to Turbo Island

Category:Geography of Bristol Category:Street art in the United Kingdom Category:Homelessness in the United Kingdom