It is Monday morning and commuters are walking through the fast-gentrifying Stokes Croft area of Bristol on their way to work. Not far from the city centre they pass a sorry-looking patch of land, its fire-scorched earth strewn with empty spirit bottles and cans of strong cider, discarded clothing and used drug baggies.

The scene is similar to what you might find under a highway overpass on the outskirts of town, but Turbo Island isn’t tucked away – it’s wedged between the A38 and the B4051, smack in the centre of one of the busiest parts of the city. You might expect passersby to stop and wonder what happened there over the weekend, but they don’t. It’s like this every day.

In a part of Bristol that is being rapidly redeveloped against the wishes of some locals, this scrap of abandoned land is a complex example of clashing public and private interests. It’s a story that involves air raids, sell-offs, squatters, gentrification, activism and dereliction. At the heart of it all is an important question: if private owners allow land bought from the council to fall into ruin, does the community have the right to step in and fix it?

Banksy’s Mild Mild West graffiti in Stokes Croft. Photograph: Keith Ramsey/Alamy

A ‘space left over after planning’

The Stokes Croft area was bombed heavily during the second world war. The patch of land now known as Turbo Island used to be the site of a shoe shop, until it was destroyed one night in 1940.

After the bombing, the council decided that a new building in that location would obstruct drivers’ views of other vehicles as they approached the Jamaica Street-Stokes Croft junction. So the stretch of land became what is known in town planning circles as a “sloap” – space left over after planning.

A shoe shop stood on the site of what is now Turbo Island. It was destroyed during the second world war. Photograph: Courtesy of People's Republic of Stokes Croft

It was an area with no immediate use and little scope for development. In the 1950s, an advertising hoarding was installed. In 1985, five years after Stokes Croft was declared a conservation area, the council sold the plot to Insite Poster Properties. The scrap of land below the billboard was of no interest to the company and fell into ruin.

The billboard is a hot topic for the community. Local grassroots art cooperative, the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC) – which is responsible for the conservation of a lot of the street art and, as a result, much of the area’s cultural capital – launched a failed campaign in 2008 to buy Turbo Island on behalf of the community.

But over the years, the PRSC and its associates have redecorated Turbo Island, creating murals and holding events such as art classes for the street drinkers who gather there, or helping to conduct an archaeological dig on the site.

“In a perfect world,” says Chris Chalkley, chairman of the PRSC, “we, the community, would buy it back. It could be under the Land Trust so that it could become a communal area. And the corporate advertising space, particularly in Stokes Croft, could be used for the arts and become part of the draw to the area.”

There are a number of theories for how the plot of land got its name. One local suggested it was after the uppers that got bought, sold and consumed there. Chalkley gives perhaps the most credible explanation – that Turbo Island was named after a bygone brand of cider, Turbo, which was a hit with street drinkers in the 1980s.

One thing for sure is that the name has stuck – it is even on Google Maps. And Turbo Island remains close to the community’s heart – there used to be a sign there that read: “Turbo Island, the heart of Stokes Croft.” There’s also a collection of prints and T-shirts by a local illustrator named after it. It says something about the resolutely contrarian vibe of this part of the city that an area best known for all-hours public drinking isn’t a gripe, but a treasured landmark.

Graffiti supports a campaign to save community hub Hamilton House from being redeveloped into flats. Photograph: Alamy

Creeping gentrification



Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Turbo Island is that it still exists. After the war, a lack of investment in the area kept property prices low, attracting a mix of artists, bohemians, squatters, punks and other creatives. It’s a familiar prelude to a story of gentrification that plays out in cities across Britain and the rest of the world.

The change has been stark. The graffiti remains, as do some of the clubs and bars that provide the late-night rowdiness the area is known for. By day, though, the vibe is increasingly urbane.

All of the extraordinary artwork and cool activity that has taken place here has benefited the landlords Chris Chalkley

Stand on Turbo Island and to the west you see Poco, “a global tapas bar”. To the east you have Hamilton House, a community hub that earlier this year evicted a third of its tenants ahead of a planned redevelopment into flats. To the north are the long-abandoned Carriageworks – a Grade II-listed factory once described as a masterpiece of Victorian commercial architecture – which has been derelict for 31 years and is slated for a £20m redevelopment into luxury flats. Beyond that is Bishopston, home of Gloucester Road, which was named by the Times as one of the best places to live in the UK in 2018.

Asked what he thinks of the changes, Chalkley pauses. “That’s quite complex,” he says. “Stokes Croft has been an extraordinary place for a long time. It was very down at heel. Most of the positive change was through direct affirmative action from local artists and community groups … but all of the extraordinary artwork and cool activity that has taken place here has benefited the landlords. There is no way of harvesting that back for the people who have been instrumental in making this place a success.”

Far from being recompensed, local artists are now likely to be pushed out. Earlier this year, a group of artists whose studios used to be in Hamilton House created a public project to highlight the exodus of artists from the area – 1,000 bright orange figurines streamed out of the doors and into the street. They appeared in groups, lining the pavements and window ledges, heading out of Stokes Croft in the direction of the city centre. “Artists are leaving the neighbourhood,” Alice Tatton-Brown, one of the artists behind the project, told the Bristol Post. “People here have been silently leaving since last June – and not just leaving the building, leaving Bristol … They can’t deal with the precariousness of the situation.”

An art project earlier this year saw orange figurines appear on the street in Stokes Croft to highlight the exodus of artists from the area.

The community and the council have been at odds for a number of years. In 2011, tensions ignited following the opening of a Tesco and the raiding of a well-known local squat, Telepathic Heights. The Stokes Croft riots made national news but did little to slow the process of gentrification. The squat closed, the Tesco remained.

In 2016, Bristol’s longest-running squat, The Magpie, a two-minute walk from Turbo Island, was shut down. The vacant plot of land was sold to Australian businessman Jonathan Dalton for £300,000, who said he planned to lease the building to two local businesses, a bakery and a farm shop. “This is not gentrification,” he told local magazine Bristol24/7. “Somebody has to get things moving.”

Things are certainly moving. What makes Turbo Island remarkable is that it seems to be going in the opposite direction.

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