Broadcasting House

This list entry was subjected to a Minor Enhancement to amend the description and sources on the 23 August 2022

ST5773NE 901-1/3/1114

BRISTOL Clifton WHITELADIES ROAD Nos.21 and 23 Broadcasting House

(Formerly Listed as: WHITELADIES ROAD (East side) Nos.21 AND 23 BBC)

04/03/77

GV II

Pair of attached houses, now office. 1852. Built by JC Lee. Limestone ashlar with lateral stacks and a concrete tile hipped roof. Double-depth plan. Neoclassical style. Each of three storeys and basement; three-window range. A symmetrical front has projecting one-window wings with large Roman Doric porticos, banded ground floor in between, clasping Ionic pilasters to the wings and party wall, frieze, dentil cornice and parapet. The doorways have architraves, an overlight and double three-panel doors; right-hand one is blocked. Architraves, console cornices to the first floor, plate-glass ground-floor sashes, French windows to the middle first floor, and 6/6-pane sashes the rest. A first-floor tented balcony across the middle on stone brackets with wrought-iron railings in oval panels. Left-hand single storey late C19 block is banded, with two windows and a moulded parapet coping.

INTERIOR: entrance halls with dogleg stairs, cast-iron balusters and curtails, modillion cornices and six-panel doors. Nos 21-33 (qv) are linked into a single office.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) moved into its premises on Whiteladies Road, Bristol, in 1934. Originally providing only West of England services, the studios expanded rapidly with the onset of the Second World War as numerous BBC departments re-located from London. The BBC’s Natural History Unit was established here by Desmond Hawkins. Since the early C20, the BBC has grown into a public service broadcaster of international repute. Aiming to inform, educate and entertain, the BBC plays a prominent role in British life and culture.

The BBC was formed on 18 October 1922 as a Company, with the responsibility to provide a public radio broadcast service in Britain. It is the world’s oldest national broadcaster. The BBC’s first broadcast was a news bulletin on 14 November 1922. At first the daily six hours of news and entertainment programmes reached perhaps only tens of thousands of listeners. The Company’s growing national importance was recognised when it became a public corporation by Royal Charter on 1 January 1927.

Expansion of the BBC’s transmission station network, continuing increases in airtime and growth in the number of people owning a radio set licence meant that, by 1939, BBC programming was listened to in about 75% of British households. The BBC began broadcasting the world’s first regularly-scheduled high-definition television service on 2 November 1936. By the time of the BBC’s centenary in 2022, its radio, television and online services were being used by on average five million adults every minute of the day and night.

Listing NGR: ST5783073621