Locally, people call the St James Barton roundabout in Bristol’s city centre.

Culturally, St. James Barton Roundabout and Stokes Croft have similar roots.

Known colloquially as “The Bear Pit” because of its fearsome reputation, this site has been a no man’s land since its creation. This area played host to the famous St. James Fair from the 12th Century.

Traders traveled to the Fair from across the known world until it was closed down in the 1830s.

The Fair was viewed by Corporation Authorities as a haven for ragamuffins and vagabonds, and, perhaps more importantly, it was extremely difficult to tax given the nature of the commercial activity that took place here.

The Bearpit. Rumour has it that the name was coined by street cleaners who thought that the layout of the 1970s subway system resembled the sunken bearpits commonly seen at zoos.

St James Barton has a history dating back to the Middle Ages and has seen many arrivals to the city in that time. With funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Bearpit Improvement Group has commissioned two wall panels for the subway ramps leading to the Bearpit to tell some of the stories of these people coming to the St James area of Bristol.

These wall panels cover the area’s long and colourful history using paintings, collages and other art created by students from local primary school, St Barnabas CEVC and City of Bristol College.

The Bearpit is now a site of extraordinary experiment.

In 2012 enlightened Council officials, in particular Graeme Sims who was then Deputy Chief Executive, declared the space a “Community Action Zone”, further adding that  they had no clear idea what that meant!

From these interesting beginnings has emerged the Bearpit Improvement Group, a broad based group of locals who have taken on the space, and presided over a refurbishment in conjunction with Bristol City Council.

PRSC has been deeply involved in the process:

The space is truly experimental, a cultural “commons”, where we can experiment different, incremental and gentle approaches to public space.

Over the years the Bearpit gained a number of refurbishments.

This includes its own mascot Ursa; an Outdoor Gallery and Community Cube, and an Open Air Theatre.

Bristol City Council cleaned up The Bearpit in 2019 at a cost of £250,000.
It was closed off to the public for six weeks as the council took action to evict squatters who had been living in the former bus, abandoned storage units and shipping containers.

In september of 2019 Ursa, the Bear removed from the Bearpit, the sculpture's owner was the PRSC , they wanted to move it to Stokes Croft.

In the Jun of 2022 the Bearpit try to go back its origin and bring a 'new life' to the Bearpit with a marketplace.

Sadly, the Bearpit Market at the end of 2023 closed its doors.