A new road on the site of a former South Bristol tobacco factory will be named after the city’s first female lord mayor after Marvin Rees vetoed the idea of honouring a cigarette brand. The 70-home affordable housing development at Imperial Park, Bishopsworth, will have Florence Mills Brown – who held the role in 1963/64 – in its title.
But Tory ward Cllr Richard Eddy, who appeared to have won a campaign to link the street to the area’s industrial heritage, has criticised the mayor for “imposing” his will on locals “as if we were the inhabitants of some occupied territory”. He said the late Cllr Brown was a Labour politician who represented two wards miles away in north Bristol and had no links to Bishopsworth.
Cllr Eddy said he was “profoundly disappointed” with the decision, which followed an outcry from health campaigners against calling the Curo housing association development Navy Cut Road after a product manufactured at the former Imperial Group tobacco factory. Florence Brown worked at the Wills tobacco factory in Bedminster as a tobacco stripper and trade union rep and later became a city councillor and alderman, serving for almost three decades before being appointed Bristol’s first woman lord mayor.
