It’s opening within days and a well-known community figure is behind it
16:32, 31 Jul 2025Updated 17:52, 31 Jul 2025
Pharmacist Ade Williams at his new premises, Bedminster Pharmacy, Thursday 31 July 2025, on East Street Bedminster Bristol. also joined by architects Paul Cannon and Jesica Morell-Riera. (Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
One of the best-known community leaders in South Bristol has spoken of his race against time to find another site and save his pharmacy business. But popular figure Ade Williams said he has ended up with the pharmacy of the future, after a challenging rebuild of a new premises just across the road.
Ade is best known for his role running Bedminster Pharmacy, but is also a prominent figure in the community, as the chair of the Bedminster Winter Lantern Parade, and with roles in other community organisations like the former Business Improvement District. In 2022, he was made an MBE for his services to the community in BS3.
But he faced a challenge when the owner of the pharmacy premises on Cannon Street in Bedminster gave notice that the business would have to leave. Last year, Tariq Muhammad was awarded planning permission to create a six-storey co-living residential development on the corner of Cannon Street and East Street, with a bigger dentist practice on the ground floor, on a site that includes the former HSBC Bank building and Bedminster Pharmacy next door.
That meant Ade had to find another location nearby – and quickly. He identified a former fabric shop across the road on East Street, but there was a big problem – the building was in a state of near collapse, so had to effectively be completely rebuilt.
“The back of the building was pretty much open, and inside had Bedminster’s biggest colony of pigeons,” said Ade. The building had to be gutted and rebuilt, with four, one-bed flats above the new modern pharmacy.
“The concept is really to create a future-looking pharmacy here, a place that is in tune with what Bedminster is, what it’s going to become, and also where the NHS is going,” said Ade. “So that’s more consultation rooms and the right ambience.
Pharmacist Ade Williams outside his new premises, Bedminster Pharmacy(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
“There’s a lot of change happening in Bedminster and what we want people to do is to step in and think ‘this is where I want to be’, and feel welcomed,” he added.
Paul Cannon, from 310 Studio architects, based nearby on East Street, worked with Ade on the design. Paul said: “Ade was in a situation where he had to respond to his business having to move.
“He had to find somewhere in close proximity to serve the same community. He moved with incredible speed to essentially save his business that was threatened by this redevelopment happening in his current place.
“So he identified this site, he approached us, but despite that pressure on him in respect of his business, he also had this incredible capacity to conceive of a better pharmacy, of a better kind of pharmacy environment, of what it can be rather than what it’s typically perceived to be,” he added.
Pharmacist Ade Williams at his new premises, Bedminster Pharmacy, Thursday 31 July 2025, on East Street Bedminster Bristol.(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
With underfunding of GP surgeries and job cuts at both Bristol’s main hospitals, pharmacists are being raised up as a place to receive expert medical advice and treatment as a first port of call without troubling a doctor.
So the new Bedminster Pharmacy, which opens on Monday, August 4, has three consulting rooms to enable people to speak to a pharmacist in private.
Paul said he and fellow architect Jessica Morell-Riera took inspiration from what pharmacies are like in the rest of Europe – after discovering they are very different from the pharmacies in the UK.
“We went away and did research on pharmacies on the continent in Germany and and Netherlands and France and Spain, where they are much more open, they’re much more kind of welcoming than they typically are here. Because Boots dominated the model here for so long, and it’s all just white, cleaned, almost kind of clinical or acerbic. And that’s not universal, that’s just the UK really,” said Paul.
The pharmacy inside isn’t the stark white, clinical medical atmosphere, or even much like a shop either, but Ade and Paul said the aim was to create a softer, more welcoming environment which recognises the changing role of pharmacies in the NHS in the 2020s.