The primary reason for a separate chapter on the residential, or fashionable, suburbs of Victorian Bristol – principally Clifton, Redland, Cotham and Tyndall's Park – is to emphasise that these areas differed in a number of important ways from the expanding neighbourhoods discussed in Chapter 3. Although the development process was much the same the product was very different, making a significant contribution to the changing residential character of the town. As mentioned in Chapter 1, as Bristol grew the physical separation of the social classes became increasingly apparent, and driving this process was the clear preference of the middle class to live in exclusive suburbs. Strategically located on higher ground and upwind of the smoky city centre, these were predominantly residential and were the areas where many of Bristol's leading citizens chose to live; the importance of Clifton can be judged from the fact that it accounted for almost half of the rateable value added to the city by the boundary extension of 1835, and in the period 1845–1900 between one-third and two-thirds of town councillors lived here. In marked contrast to Bedminster and east Bristol, factories, tanneries, breweries and so on were largely absent, and the railways made only a minor impact on the landscape and environment. The houses were not only larger but also mostly semi-detached and built at lower density. These ‘suburbs of privilege’, which were matched by similar developments in London and other cities such as Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow, represented something entirely new, inverting the traditional relationship between the centre and the periphery and reshaping the city. Urban change in the nineteenth century has often been associated with the degradation of the urban environment, but for the better off the residential suburbs provided oases of comfort and respectability.

The first part of the chapter discusses the notion of suburbs of privilege and seeks to establish the importance of these areas in the restructuring of towns and cities. This is followed by accounts of the growth of Clifton and Redland in the Victorian period, drawing on detailed archive research on the pattern of landownership and the process of residential development.