Debbie stands in her doorway and takes a sharp intake of breath through gritted teeth. “Oh now you’re asking,” she replied slowly, but with a smile. “I reckon everyone on this street would say something different. Some would say they hate it, some love it, some put up with it, some make a nice bit of pocket money out of it, and for some it’s a right pain. But everyone here just gets on with it. You’ve got to, because that stadium is not going anywhere anytime soon.”
She pointed down the road without even looking - knowing that above the roofs of her neighbours further down loomed the shiny white image of Ashton Gate Stadium.
It has changed, will change again, and there is always something going on there - but what is it actually like to live in the shadow of the biggest venue in Bristol and the whole of the south west?
Read next: How Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter will change South Bristol in years to come
They’ve been playing football on the marshy grass next to Colliter’s Brook on the south western edge of Bristol for at least 126 years, and the first professional match was played there in 1898 when Bedminster FC entered the Southern League.
Back then, the field was known as a cricket and football ground, and lay between the Ashton Rolling Mills and the road out to Ashton Court, the home of the Smyth family who owned pretty much most of the land in South Bristol at the time.
Back then, this was a rural area, rapidly industrialising with coal mines, mills and factories springing up all around. Gradually, the late Victorian and Edwardian terraces of Ashton got nearer, and then the stadium was bounded to the south by streets of 1930s council housing. But unlike other famous old football grounds in big cities, Ashton Gate was never and still isn’t surrounded by cramped terraced streets. It’s still pretty much on the edge of the city, with two main roads, a park, a retail park and industrial estates on almost three sides, and the streets of Ashton, Southville and Bedminster running off to the east and south east.
So in terms of the sphere of its influence on residential areas, that is funnelled east. Time was when the core support for the teams in red who played there lived in those terraced streets of Bedminster and spacious council estates of Ashton. Now, a changing demographic in BS3 means most people travel to watch - and that means the most common subject local residents will say when asked what it is like to live near a big stadium is parking.
“You have to know when there’s a match on,” advised Emma, looking down her road in Bedminster at her parked car 50 yards away. “Or you get caught out. You could go pop to Asda in the car for an hour on a Sunday lunchtime and by the time you get back there won’t be a parking space for a mile around. It basically means you either stay in when there’s a match on, or time your trip out to make sure you’re back well before it. Or stay out all day. It does have an impact. That’s why people get so irate about it.
“Personally, I put up with it, because I moved here knowing that’s what it would be like, so you can’t really complain. But people do, and it can get quite nasty.”
Emma, like Debbie and everyone we spoke to in the area, were cautious about talking about it. It’s not that there’s anything sinister going on, but it’s just that these are arguments that have been repeated on a loop for years. There’s a long history between some local residents and the stadium - or more particularly, the football fans, and most people just like to keep their heads down. Most people who spoke didn’t want their names used, the rest were just fine with first names.
These are arguments that are played out on community social media. There’s even an anonymous Twitter account calling for parking restrictions around the ground, that has regularly posted examples of issues. More recently, things have become a bit weirder. Back in April, one local bought some expletive-laden mock parking ticket stickers and went around slapping them on the windscreens of the cars left blocking corners and pavements. The irony is, as Debbie explained, a lot of the cars you see badly parked all over the road are the vehicles belonging to the residents themselves.
“One of those cars that got stickered was outside its owner’s house,” she laughed. “A lot of people around here move their car out at lunchtime before a game, park it on the street, then sell their driveway using one of those apps and get a tenner or £15 maybe.
Read more: 'Insanely dangerous' parking is forcing people to move away from BS3
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“You’ll have people who come back to the same drive game after game, year after year. They’re friends now with the people in the house. It’s quite nice actually,” she added.
The particulars of the urban planning of the areas of housing around Ashton Gate mean the roads nearest the grounds are pre-war spacious former council estates, or tree-lined 1930s semis, where most homes now have a drive for a front garden. Over towards the Ashton end of North Street, and east into Bedminster, the tighter-packed Victorian and Edwardian terraces have on-street parking that is chock-full on an average Thursday night anyway. That is where you’ll find the residents already tearing their hair out about parking, with the added pressure of matchdays.
But while parking is the one thing people will mention when you mention the stadium, it’s not the only thing. “I actually love it, to be honest,” said Peter, who has lived in Bedminster for 10 years. “There’s always a buzz around the place when there’s a game on, or a concert. And when you hear the roar of the crowd when a goal goes in or they score a try - that’s magical, and you don’t get that anywhere else.
“It’s swings and roundabouts really. You put up with the hassley bits, but as long as you don’t get too stressed about it, there’s the benefits too. There’s loads of pubs and bars around here that owe a lot to the stadium. It feels like a community, when you see everyone gathering and walking to the ground. It’s been here a lot longer than any of us,” he added.
"It's a bit of a tricky one," added Mark, who moved to Ashton 15 years ago. "It's a great area to live. Every time you see something about parking problems or other issues around Ashton Gate, you'll get Bristol City fans with the usual response that local residents moaning moved next to a football ground that's been there more than 100 years. And that is a fair point. But the thing is that it's changed a lot over the past few years, especially with the new stadium in 2016. Yes, I moved here knowing there was a football ground, but back then City were getting barely 10,000 fans attending - now it's always over 20,000 AND there's rugby too. That does make a difference, and that's why people speak out I think.
"But overall, you get used to it. You adapt. It is a pain, but then you can sit in your garden and listen to The Killers play live," he added.
Many local residents are fans - either of the football or the rugby, or both. Perhaps the most famous Ashton Gate resident of recent years, after Chris Garland got the lift down from his home in the tower block overlooking the ground to play on the pitch for a good 15 years, was Ben Swift.
The sales manager lived the dream of many a Bristol City fan for a short while in 2014, and was able to watch games - for free - by standing on the roof of his shed.
Ben gained cult hero status as ‘Shedman’ for a few months that year, after the club knocked down the old Wedlock Stand that used to form the end of his garden in Raynes Road, and before they started building the new South Stand, he was able to watch the action over the fence. He even constructed a viewing platform out of scaffolding and invited his mates over.
“When we first bought our house, the plans were going through for the club maybe to go to Ashton Vale,” he said at the time.“ Then we realised that wasn’t going to happen, they were going to demolish the stand and this one (the Wedlock) was going to be first. We thought ‘happy days’, there’s going to be a couple of free tickets for me on top of my shed,” he added.
When his free view was eventually obscured by the new stand, Bristol City offered Ben a season ticket for the rest of the year.
The post-war housing programmes of South Bristol saw many a City fan move out to places like Knowle, Withywood, Hengrove, Brislington and Hartcliffe. Over time still more come in from Weston and Taunton and Bridgwater and the towns and villages in between.
For many it might well be a dream to move back to living in the streets of Ashton Gate, but the 21st century housing crisis, coupled with the slow steady gentrification of BS3 means that’s probably out of reach for most. The big 1930s homes nearest Ashton Gate might now go up in the North Street estate agent windows for £750,000, and even an old two-up-two-down can go for approaching half a million.
Ashton Gate has mirrored this change. Once a classically hotchpotch ground, almost ramshackle with different stands built in different decades, it’s now a stadium in reality as well as in name, thanks to the incredible mid-2010s transformation. More change is coming too, with the Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter, an ambitious and area-changing project on the other side of the stadium from the houses.
That too has, largely, been welcomed locally - with the usual concerns about traffic and parking, of course - but soon the residents will be talking about concerts and basketball just as much as football and rugby.
Read next:
- Ashton A to Z and what makes Bristol's Gate, Vale, Park and Court so great
- The A to Z of Bedminster - the 26 things (and more!) that make Bemmie the best
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