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Monday, November 17, 2008, 08:00
THIS was the November week in 1969 that Apollo 12 astronauts Charles (Pete) Conrad and Alan Bean landed on the moon.
There was much excitement nationally – but what was happening in Bristol?
Two major stories were dominating the headlines – the mass evacuation of 400 people from the multi-storey flats in St Jude’s, and the ongoing row over a Parliamentary Bill to close the City Docks to commercial shipping.
The St Jude’s evacuation – the biggest since the wartime blitzes – was because the Corporation feared another Ronan Point-type disaster in the city.
Ronan Point, in East London, had partially collapsed in May 1968, after a gas explosion, leaving four dead and 17 injured.
Cheap construction methods using pre-cast concrete slabs were blamed.
The Corporation, which wanted the St Jude’s flats thoroughly investigated by expert structural engineers, believed that they could be adversely affected by high winds.
The gas supplies to the flats, it said, had also been cut off as a precautionary measure.
By 1969, Bristol had 63 high-rises, housing 6,000 people.
But many of these buildings had been constructed differently and the St Jude’s tenants were the only ones having to move out while remedial work was done.
But Frederick Clarke, of Clarke, Nicholls and Marcel, the structural engineers for the 10-year-old flats, said that the evacuation was unnecessary.
“You could set a stick of gelignite in there,” he told the Post. “A number of sticks in fact, and they wouldn’tfall down.
At the time the flats were built they were well within the safety limits,” he said, adding that the St Jude’s buildings were not of the same construction as Ronan Point.
The other major news, the possible closure of the City Docks (Floating Harbour) to commercial traffic, was also causing a bit of an uproar.
The four bodies opposed to the closure – the Civic Society, The Clifton and Hotwells Improvement Society, the Cabot Cruising Club and the Inland Waterways Association, represented by Paul Chadd QC – had called a meeting in the Folk House.
Chadd claimed that the closure was being pursued with some urgency because the Corporation wished to build two road bridges over the water.
“Even if the Minister approves the bridges,” he told the Post, “there is still no need for navigation rights to be extinguished.
The bridges could be built with sufficient headroom for small craft.
The real reason is so that the Corporation can fill in part of the Floating Harbour.”
In other news, more of Warmley’s industrial heritage was being lost as two 90ft-high chimneys were blown up.
This was the last stage in the demolition of an 18th-century pipe works, with the only remaining building being the clock tower, which was to be used as an arts lab.
Work would start shortly on a new factory and office block on the site.
It’s hard to imagine today, but in 1969 many viewers in our area were still waiting for transmissions of both BBC2 and colour.
But help was on the way via the new Mendip transmitter which would shortly begin broadcasting both.
In Weston-super-Mare, thousands of people lined the streets to see the town’s first Winter Carnival for 32 years, organised by the Lions Club.
“Headed, fittingly, by two of the town’s beach donkeys the huge, decorated floats turned the centre into a gay winter pageant of colour,” said the Post.
A carnival queen, 16-year-old Rachel Sanders, plus her two attendants, added to the novel occasion.
But if carnival failed to grab you then there was Dennis Hopper’s award-winning movie, Easy Rider, on at the ABC in Whiteladies Road.
Starring Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, people left the cinema in stunned silence after the dramatic, and unexpected, ending.
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