".. a rush of 2000 Bristol housewives and a number of men ...Ahead of them all was Mr W. G. Smith, of 22 Rodbourne Road, Westbury-on-Trym. He began queuing at 2pm yesterday ... "I've never been first at anything since I won the egg and spoon race in my younger years." Bristol Evening Post, 30 May 1957

When Jones department store opened in Broadmead in 1957 thousands of excited shoppers turned out.

Bristol's historic shopping streets with their myriad of specialist independent shops were decimated by bombing during World War II and slowly replaced by modern new shops in Broadmead. The local press followed the development with regular images and updates, and when the two giant department stores Jones's and Lewis's opened in 1957, people queued for hours to get in. Jones and Lewis's, with its 'futuristic' roof garden, were the flagship buildings of the new shopping centre. These buildings represented a new era, a celebration of mass production and mass consumerism.

Bristology - Many concrete and futuristic shopping centres sprang up across the country in the late 1950s. Sir Hugh Casson, the architect of the Royal Festival Hall in London, drew up a design for the same in Bristol but it never came to fruition.