“Residents of Barton House have told the Evening Post they are still awaiting definite news and are complaining about the lack of information and the resulting insecurity”. That sentence could be written right now about the people from the Bristol tower block evacuated this week, but it wasn’t - it was the third paragraph of a report published in the Evening Post on May 14, 1970.
For this week’s sudden evacuation of residents from the 98 flats at Barton House wasn’t the first time fears over the structure of the building prompted the city council to tell people to leave - it has happened before.
But while the residents today in 2023 have already been told to leave and are now complaining of a lack of information from Bristol City Council about when or if they might return to their homes, back in May 1970 they were still in their flats waiting to be ordered out having been told the block was potentially unsafe, and complaining about the not-knowing when or if they would be evacuated.
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The Bristol Post’s archives give a fascinating insight on this week’s dramatic and traumatic events at Barton House, both the reports dating from 1958 when the building first opened, and the saga of the 1970 evacuation. As council surveyors grapple with trying to work out exactly how the 15-storey building was constructed, after the discovery at the start of the week that it wasn’t built to its blueprints, Bristol Live has shared the reports with the council to shed more light on what was said at the time around the building’s structure and the subsequent work to shore it up 12 years later. (article continues below…)
And the reports also show just how the building of Barton House was heralded at the time as an exciting new dawn by the people of Bristol in 1958, but had turned to an uncertain nightmare in just 12 short years.
The May 14, 1970 report also highlighted that there is nothing new in the world when it comes to the challenges of running a council’s housing department either. In response to the residents of Barton House demanding to know when they would be told to leave and where they would be sent, the then housing manager at the corporation, John Fleming, told the Evening Post: “The Corporation can only offer tenants alternative accommodation which is available. Unfortunately, it may not be possible to move individual tenants into precisely the type of accomodation they would like.”
And there was a familiar story to the technicalities of what was happening to Barton House in 1970 too - the man from the council, just like the council leaders this week, said it was all down to the ‘consultants’.
“The recommendations of the consultants about the best method of strengthening the flats are still awaited and it is hoped that the work will be started at these flats and other involved in the very near future,” Mr Fleming added.
“There is bound to be considerable inconvenience to tenants, and as soon as any definite information is available they will be informed - in the meantime every effort will be made to provide satisfactory alternative accommodation for those tenants wanting to move,” he added.
That last quote from Mr Fleming could easily have been part of one of the council’s updates this week to the 2023 residents of Barton House, grappling with the impossible situation of a council which suddenly finds itself needing to rehouse 98 tenants or families in a city with thousands of people already in temporary or emergency accommodation.
At that time, in May 1970, 30 of the households in the 98 flats had already left, and the other 68 were still occupied.
Why was there a 1970 evacuation?
In May 1968, a gas explosion in Ivy Hodge’s kitchen on the 18th floor of a new block of flats called Ronan Point in Canning Town, east London, sparked the collapse of the entire south east corner of the tower block. Four people were killed immediately and 17 injured, and the disaster brought about a sudden realisation about the construction methods of the thousands of tower blocks that had been built across Britain in the previous 10 years or so.
There were inquiries and reports and it was blamed on poor construction methods. Despite council officials and councillors this week playing down links between the Ronan Point incident, and the subsequent work done to Barton House and four other tower blocks in Bristol in 1970, the similarities are stark.
The Griffiths inquiry into Ronan Point heard that there were weaknesses in the joints connecting the vertical walls to the floor slabs - which is almost exactly the same concern quoted by the Mayor of Bristol this week when talking about why Barton House had to be evacuated, who said: “(The issues) include the apparent lack of structural ties between the floors and the load-bearing external walls.”
Another discovery made at Ronan Point was that the building’s defects and the way it was built weren’t fully known until it was eventually taken apart in 1986 - something which echoes with the Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees ’ statement this week that Barton House had not been constructed according to the blueprint. So how was Barton House built and what did happen in 1958?
The castles in the air
The Evening Post archives reveal that when Barton House first opened it was the wonder of the city. It was opened by the Lord Mayor of Bristol on Monday,June 23, 1958 and two ‘exhibition flats’ were fully furnished so that people could go in and look around.
Two days later, on the Wednesday that week, June 25, it was still drawing the crowds. The Evening Post’s headline ‘Flats Continue to Attract Crowds’ outlined how an estimated 3,000 people queued for hours on the Tuesday to be allowed in and the showhomes stayed open much later than planned that day, just because of the huge queues that snaked around this new attraction. At 8pm that evening, the queue was still 300 people long, and the showhomes stayed open until dusk to let everyone in to have a look.
For the people of Bristol, still picking their way across a bombsite pocked city just 13 years after the end of the war, a 15-storey building that people lived in was something never seen before in the city. There was an ominous sign of the decades to come however. On that Tuesday, many of those who went in and were allowed to go up to the roof had to climb the 210 steps to get there - one of the two lifts broke down because of an electrical fault and the other had ‘one or two breakdowns, probably due to misuse’, the Post reported.
How was it built?
There was no doubting who was responsible for building and fitting out Barton House - the story on page 12 of the grand opening that Monday was surrounded by adverts for the very companies who were involved, so proud were they of what they had done. The biggest ad space was taken by Cubitts, whose ad announced: “This fine building - the first 15-storey block of flats in Bristol… was built by Cubitts. We are pleased to have made this further contribution towards the city’s redevelopment and to have again demonstrated our ability to build quickly and cheaply, using up-to-date techniques,” the ad read, above a handy double address for the firm’s full name - Holland & Hanne and Cubitts Ltd - with offices in Dowry Square in Bristol, and in London.
The grassed areas at Barton House were laid by Hawthorns, from Druid Stoke Avenue, the roofing and balconies were lined by Rugusa Asphalte from Avon Street, and one of the biggest attractions of this brave new world - the continuous hot water and heating system - was installed by Richard Crittall and Company, from Clifton. Everyone wanted to bask in the glory of what they’d achieved.
But such was the interest in this new kind of building that the Evening Post also went into great detail about the construction methods. “Reinforced concrete slabs form the foundations of the west wing and the end of the east wing. The remainder of the foundations are of reinforced concrete beams,” the reporter wrote. “The structural frame is also of high-grade reinforced concrete and is constructed on a load-bearing cross wall system whereby very little load is carried on the external front and back walls. Most of the concrete structural members were pre-cast on the ground and hoisted into position by a large tower crane.”
According to those who dug into the walls and floors of three of the flats last week and reported back to council chiefs on Monday, those 1958 builders did not do what they said they would do in the original plans. That’s also, partly, what happened at Ronan Point - and when that disaster happened in 1968, the Government ordered every block of flats built in the same way to be reinforced with steel beams.
But initially, the plans to reinforce blocks of flats in Bristol didn’t include Barton House. In March 1970, the Evening Post reported what it said was a ‘shock announcement’ that Barton House was included. In the previous November, tenants living in blocks of flats in St Judes would have to move out while repairs took place, but on March 17, 1970 the news broke that Barton House was also involved: “Barton House, not mentioned in this connection before, now falls within the provisions of the ‘all out’ order,” the Post reported, adding that council officials thought the entire process might take 18 months or more.
Things happened gradually throughout 1970 and 1971, and the only part of the evacuation and repair work to make the news from there was an article in 1971 which involved councillors arguing about whether the costs of the work should come out of the housing corporation’s budget - which would mean council tenants would have to ultimately pay - or the general corporation’s fund, which meant every ratepayer in Bristol would have to pay.
