In the
medieval period Easton lay within the Royal Forest of Kingswood in the manor of
Barton Regis. The name Easton is probably derived from the
Anglo-Saxon East Tun meaning East Farm. The earliest documentary reference to Easton is Chester and Master's 1610 Map of Kingswood, which depicts three settlements: Upper Easton, which was centered on Easton Road, Lower Easton, which was centered on St Marks Road, and
Baptist Mills, on the east bank of the River Frome. In the
post-medieval period the area became increasingly industrial with large scale extraction of coal, clay and sand occurring across the area. In the 19th century most of Easton was developed for housing. In the late 1950s and 1960s,
Bristol City Council pursued large-scale
slum clearance and comprehensive redevelopment in parts of Easton, supported by
compulsory purchase orders and a long-term plan to rebuild substandard Victorian housing with modern council housing. The scheme, known as the
Easton Comprehensive Redevelopment Area, was approved in 1964 as a mixed-density estate of tower blocks, four-storey maisonettes and houses, with pedestrian–vehicle segregation, but reduced in scale after intervention by the
Ministry of Housing and Local Government. The project was publicly launched in 1965, when housing minister
Richard Crossman laid a foundation stone for the first tower, later Rawnsley House, and construction continued into the 1970s. Redevelopment also coincided with major road-building, including the A4320 Easton Way (planned as part of the
Outer Circuit Road) and the
M32 corridor, which reshaped parts of the district's street pattern and contributed to prolonged planning blight in areas awaiting clearance and rebuilding. During the late 20th century, Easton developed a reputation for crime and drugs problems, and by 2005 Stapleton Road was described by
The Sunday People newspaper as "Britain's most dangerous street". In 2002, the Home Secretary
David Blunkett visited Stapleton Road when announcing it as one of five areas with high crime rates to receive additional government support for policing. During this time, Easton was one of the most deprived areas in the south west of England, with the Lawrence Hill ward the most deprived ward in the region and one of the most deprived in Britain. This resulted in the area being granted
European Union objective 2 status and 'New Deal for Communities' status by the UK government which is only granted to the most underprivileged urban wards. In the 2010s, Easton's reputation began to shift to that of a neighbourhood experiencing
gentrification, with the
Bristol Post describing it as having been "in the grip of gentrification" since 2015. In 2019,
Time Out magazine named Easton one of its "top 50 coolest neighbourhoods" in the world. In 2020, one analysis of house prices named Easton as the British neighbourhood where prices had risen by the highest percentage over the last decade. ==Demographics==