Estate agents, a bank and a building society: the tenants we found

For years we knew almost nothing about who used Quay Head House after 1938. Seven hundred old newspaper adverts have changed that.

When Bristol Municipal Charities moved out in 1938, the building’s story went quiet. A search of the British Newspaper Archive for “Quay Head House” has turned up more than seven hundred mentions in the Bristol Evening Post and the Western Daily Press, nearly all of them adverts placed by the people working here. Together they name the tenants for three decades.

1959 to 1980: Edward T. Parker and Co

The earliest mention we have found is from 1959, and it belongs to the firm that would dominate the building’s address for the next twenty years: Edward T. Parker and Co, chartered auctioneers and estate agents, established in 1878. Hundreds of their property adverts end the same way, with Quay Head House, Colston Avenue, Bristol 1, and the telephone number 22581. Shops, warehouses, factories, offices and family homes all over the city were sold and let from here, and their auctions were often held at hotels nearby.

Parker’s were also the building’s own agents. When Quay Head House came up to let or for sale in the 1970s and 1980s, their name was on the advert.

1976: a rare opportunity, and a bank

In March 1976 the building was advertised to let as “a rare opportunity”. By August, Standard Chartered Bank had opened a new Bristol branch at Quay Head House, and in 1980 it was still advertising for staff here. Imagine the banking hall: counters and cashiers among the carved panelling.

1983 to 1987: the building society

In May 1983 the Leamington Spa Building Society announced that its Bristol branch had moved to Quay Head House. Its adverts for fixed-rate savings carried the address for the next few years. In March 1987 the building was offered for sale on the society’s instructions, described in the advert as an elegant period, self-contained office building of 2,251 square feet.

1987 to 1991: engineers and adult education

In February 1988 Parker’s reported that they had let the former building society headquarters on behalf of a local investor. That tells us the charity had sold the building by then. The new occupants included Frazer-Nash Consultancy, the engineering consultancy, which advertised jobs from its Quay Head House office until at least 1991, and REPLAN, a government-funded programme that helped adults back into education, based here from 1987 to 1990.

The quiet nineties

After 1991 the trail goes cold. In October 1996 the building was offered again as self-contained offices with plenty of character. Two years later it became a restaurant, which you can read about in The restaurant years.

Can you fill the gaps?

Did you work for Parker’s, Standard Chartered, the Leamington Spa Building Society or Frazer-Nash at Quay Head House?
Did you bank here, or sign up for a course with REPLAN?
Who was here between 1938 and 1959, and in the early 1990s?

Tell us what you remember. Photos of the inside from any of these years would be wonderful.

Sources: British Newspaper Archive: Bristol Evening Post and Western Daily Press, 1959 to 2001