Demolition work is under way at Bristol’s most famous eyesore, bringing an end to a sprawling, derelict building that became a playground for squatters, illegal ravers and graffiti artists.

The former Royal Mail sorting office, which was once reportedly likened by the former prime minister David Cameron to the “entrance to a war zone”, is to be brought down to make way for a new university campus.

It will take four months to demolish the building and the regeneration project has prompted poetry and history projects that have studied the rich past of the site, which once housed the city’s cattle market, a factory that exported floor cloths around the world and a burial ground for people who died from cholera.

The writer Vanessa Kisuule characterised the building as “the chipped tooth in Bristol’s smile” in a poem called Brick Me produced to mark the start of this new phase for the site. She called it both a place of “honest work” and a “den of deviant pleasures”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Temple Quarter site is next to Bristol Temple Meads train station. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

Kisuule also neatly highlighted in her poem that because of the building’s proximity to the railway line, the demolition would not be a “blaze of glory” but the building would be “nibbled on”.

The start of this demolition marks a milestone in the creation of the £300m University of Bristol Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus.

Prof Hugh Brady, vice chancellor and president of the university, said: “The campus will help transform this previously neglected area into a vibrant new quarter of the city.”

Marvin Rees, the mayor of Bristol, said: “This eyesore building has been a blight on the landscape for too long. The redevelopment of the Temple Quarter will help deliver the gateway the city deserves.”

The history of the site is fascinating. John Hare and Co, the oldest British company to manufacture floor cloths – coated fabrics that were superseded by the likes of linoleum – was established in 1782 and based on the site.

About 400 people were employed by the firm in the mid-19th century, producing up to 5,000 square yards of cloth each week to export around the world.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An artist’s impression of the University of Bristol Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus. Photograph: University of Bristol

Visitors’ accounts described those who worked in the printing gallery as being so covered in paint they “looked as though they had been out in a storm of rainbows and forgotten to take their umbrellas”.

In 1830, the city centre’s cattle market moved to the site and was operational until the 1960s. Cattle, sheep, pigs, calves and horses were shipped in from as far afield as Canada.

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Brian Davies, who lived nearby in the 1960s, said: “I remember on market day the cattle being herded down the residential streets. Occasionally cattle would break loose and once one got stuck in the passageway of one of the houses.”

In 1938, the sorting office was formally opened by the mayor of Bristol who pressed a button to start the conveyor belts. By the 1950s, the office received about 75,000 items each week. Royal Mail moved its sorting office in 1997 and the site became known for illegal raves, urban explorers and graffiti.

The campus, which is due to open in 2022, will span the plot and part of neighbouring Temple Island. It will provide teaching, research and innovation space for 800 staff, external partners and 3,000 students, with accommodation on site for up to 1,500 undergraduates and postgraduates.