Cribbs Causeway Retail Park and The Venue, Bristol: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times
The two open-air schemes at Cribbs that are not the Mall: a thirteen-unit big-box park on Lysander Road with Currys and Smyths, and a twelve-unit leisure park on Merlin Road with a twelve-screen Vue and a twenty-six-lane Hollywood Bowl. They share a brand, a website and a car park with The Mall at Cribbs Causeway, but they are separate schemes with separate postcodes and — crucially — separate opening hours. Almost every number published about “Cribbs” is a combined figure. Here is what belongs to which.
When people say “Cribbs” they mean a cluster of retail warehousing on the northern edge of Bristol, in South Gloucestershire, just off Junction 17 of the M5. Almost all the writing about it is really about the enclosed mall. This page is about the other two schemes the same operator markets under the same brand: Cribbs Causeway Retail Park, the big-box park on Lysander Road, and The Venue, the leisure park on Merlin Road.
They behave differently from the mall, which is why they are worth separating out. Drive to Cribbs at nine on a Tuesday morning for a fridge and the mall is closed while Currys is open; turn up at ten on a Friday night for a film and the mall has been shut two hours while the Vue has not finished.
There is no separate website for either scheme. Both are covered by mallcribbs.com, which we checked on 10 September 2026 and found properly server-rendered. That matters, because its store pages carry a location label (“The Retail Park”, “The Venue”) and per-store hours — which is how most of what follows was assembled.
The three-scheme picture our Mall page set out turns out to be an undercount: a fourth scheme, Centaurus Retail Park, sits in the same directory under different agents, and we have kept it out of the figures here.
What follows is the operator's own text, the Completely Retail scheme records, the developer Baylis Estates' project page, the Companies House record for the ownership vehicle, and the Planning Inspector's report on the 2018 mall-extension call-in. Where those disagree — and on the size of The Venue three of them disagree — we print every figure and name who published it.
The Mall is part of the out-of-town shopping area of Cribbs Causeway, which also includes a retail park of large format warehouses, a Morrisons and an ASDA superstore
The essentials
| Detail | Cribbs Causeway Retail Park & The Venue |
|---|---|
| What it is | Two open-air schemes marketed as part of Cribbs Causeway: a 13-unit retail warehouse park on Lysander Road and a 12-unit leisure park on Merlin Road. Neither is the enclosed mall, a third scheme. Centaurus Retail Park next door is a fourth and is not counted here. |
| Address | Lysander Road, Patchway, Bristol (retail park); Merlin Road, Patchway, Bristol (The Venue) |
| Satnav postcode | BS34 5TX for the retail park, BS10 7SR for The Venue The retail park uses at least five postcodes across its units: BS34 5TX, 5TS, 5UD, 5UL and 5UR. The Mall is BS34 5DG. |
| Opened | Not published No opening date for either scheme exists in any source we could reach. Baylis Estates, which developed The Venue, says only that it followed the Mall, which opened in 1998. |
| Size | Retail park 215,000 sq ft; The Venue 132,918, 133,000 or 145,000 sq ft depending who you ask 215,000 is agreed by Completely Retail and by the managing agent Sovereign Centros. For The Venue, Completely Retail gives 132,918, Sovereign Centros 133,000 and the developer Baylis Estates 145,000. Combined, about 348,000 sq ft on the lower reading. |
| Number of stores | 13 units on the retail park and 12 at The Venue, per the Completely Retail scheme records Units, not brands: Currys alone takes Units 1–2, so the count of things you can walk into is lower. |
| Anchors | Retail park: Currys 34,187 sq ft, Smyths Toys 14,911, ScS 14,672, Natuzzi 14,660, NCF Living 14,607. The Venue: Vue 51,253 Unit sizes from the Completely Retail tenant schedules. |
| Parking | Free, “over 7,000 free spaces in car parks A–K” plus “400 dedicated disabled parking spaces” Operator’s own wording, and a combined figure for the whole destination; no count exists for either scheme alone. The 2018 Inspector’s report put 6,670 spaces at the Mall itself. |
| Time limit | Not published No maximum stay is stated and no enforcement contractor is named for either scheme. |
| Height restriction | Not published Both are surface car parks, so a barrier is unlikely, but nobody publishes a limit either way. |
| EV charging | Not published by the operator The getting-here page does not mention charging at all, and we could not reach Zapmap or PlugShare to check independently, so we print nothing. |
| Owner | Cribbs Causeway JV Limited (company 05343227), whose only current person with significant control is The Prudential Assurance Company Limited at “75% or more” of shares and voting rights Prudential Assurance is the M&G entity, and Completely Retail names M&G Real Estate as owner of both schemes. Baylis Estates says The Venue “remains in the joint ownership of Baylis Estates and Prudential”; we cannot reconcile the two. |
| Managed by | Sovereign Centros, which manages the Mall, the retail park and The Venue as one asset for “Cribbs Causeway JV” |
| Letting agent | CBRE, on the Completely Retail record for the retail park Centaurus Retail Park next door is handled by Park Place Retail and Curson Sowerby Partners instead — one of the clearer signs it is a different scheme. |
| Footfall | 11 million visitors a year Sovereign Centros’ figure, for the whole destination including the mall. No scheme-level figure exists. |
| Website | mallcribbs.com Shared with the Mall. Neither scheme has a site of its own. |
Opening times
| Day | Hours |
|---|---|
| Retail park — Currys, Unit 1 | Mon–Fri 9am – 8pm, Sat 9am – 6pm, Sun 11am – 5pm operator store page and Currys’ own store finder agree exactly, checked 10 Sep 2026 |
| Retail park — Smyths Toys, Unit 5 | Mon–Fri 9am – 8pm, Sat 9am – 6pm, Sun 10am – 4pm |
| Retail park — Oak Furniture Land (Unit 7) and Wren Kitchens | Mon–Fri 9am – 8pm, Sat 9am – 6pm, Sun 10.30am – 5pm both identical |
| Retail park — Sports Direct, Unit 10 | Mon–Fri 9am – 8.30pm, Sat 9am – 7.30pm, Sun 11am – 5pm |
| Retail park — Next Home & Garden, Unit 12a | Mon–Fri 9.30am – 7.30pm, Sat 9am – 7pm, Sun 11am – 5pm |
| Retail park — ScS | Mon–Fri 10am – 8pm, Sat 9am – 6pm, Sun 11am – 5pm |
| Retail park — Ninja Warrior, Unit 3/4 | Mon–Sat 10am – 7pm, Sun 10am – 5pm operator; Sun 10am – 6pm Ninja Warrior’s own site, which also runs to 9pm on the first Friday of the month |
| The Venue — Hollywood Bowl | Fri 11am – midnight, Sat 9am – midnight, Sun 9am – 11pm Mon–Thu is printed by the operator as “11.00pm – 11.00pm”, which cannot be right; see the note |
| The Venue — Vue cinema | “Varies, see film listing for details” the operator’s own wording; Vue publishes no building hours either |
| The Venue — Mulligans | Mon–Thu 12pm – 9pm, Sat 11am – 11pm, Sun 10am – 8pm Friday is printed as “12pm – 11am”, a second obvious typo |
| The Venue — Bella Italia | Mon–Thu 11.30am – 9pm, Fri & Sat 11am – 10pm, Sun 11.30am – 9pm |
| The Venue — Las Iguanas | Mon–Thu 11am – 9pm, Fri 11am – 9.30pm, Sat 12pm – 10pm, Sun 11am – 9pm |
| The Mall, for comparison | Mon–Fri 9.30am – 8pm, Sat 9am – 8pm, Sun 11am – 5pm, bank holidays 10am – 6pm these are the mall’s hours and they do not govern either scheme on this page |
There is no such thing as “the retail park's opening hours”
Checked on the operator's own pages on 10 September 2026. Neither scheme publishes a scheme-wide opening time, and it would be meaningless if it did: these are big-box units and leisure operators, each on its own clock. What the operator does publish, and publish well, is per-store hours, which is what we have printed above.
The practical shape: most of the retail park opens at 9am on a weekday, half an hour before the mall, and shuts at 8pm with it. On Saturday that inverts — the mall trades to 8pm, the retail park mostly stops at 6pm. Sunday trading rules cap any shop over 280 square metres at six hours, and the operators pick different windows within it: Smyths 10am to 4pm, Currys and Sports Direct 11am to 5pm, Oak Furniture Land and Wren 10.30am to 5pm.
Three different figures for the same day, from the same website
The operator contradicts itself. On 10 September 2026 the homepage and getting-here page both gave Monday to Friday as 9.30am to 8pm. The Venue landing page, same day, said “Open Today 9:30 am - 8:00 pm” — the mall's clock stamped onto a leisure park where the cinema and bowling alley run past midnight. The dining and entertainment page, same day, said “Open Today 9:00 am - 8:00 pm”. Two answers to one question on one website, neither of them about these schemes. Use the per-store rows.
Two typos we are not going to silently correct. The operator's Hollywood Bowl page gives Monday to Thursday as “11.00pm - 11.00pm”; its Mulligans page gives Friday as “12pm - 11am”. Both are plainly wrong, but we do not print corrections we cannot source. Hollywood Bowl's own website is no help: on the day we checked it said “We are just updating our opening hours, please call us for the latest opening hours”. Its number is 0844 826 1458.
No bank holiday or festive hours are published for either scheme. The 10am to 6pm bank holiday line belongs to the mall. What Currys or the Vue do on Boxing Day is stated nowhere we could find, so ring ahead.
Getting there
By road
The operator publishes a junction, so we can print one: “Cribbs is north of Bristol, just off Junction 17 of the M5.” That is its own wording; Vue repeats “M5 Junction 17” and Completely Retail puts the park “off Junction 17 of the M5 motorway, north of Bristol City Centre”, about a mile from the junction and ten miles north of the city centre.
Use the right postcode: the two schemes are not on the same road or even in the same postcode district. The retail park is BS34 5TX, on Lysander Road; The Venue is BS10 7SR, on Merlin Road. A satnav sent to the mall's BS34 5DG lands you in a different car park with a walk ahead of you.
The retail park's store pages give five postcodes across thirteen units: BS34 5TX (Currys, Smyths, Oak Furniture Land), 5TS (Ninja Warrior), 5UD (Wren), 5UL (ScS, Next Home & Garden) and 5UR (Sports Direct). Collecting from a specific unit, take the postcode off that store's page. BS34 5TS is also used by Centaurus Retail Park, a different scheme again.
Parking
Parking is free. The operator says “over 7,000 free spaces in car parks A–K” and “400 dedicated disabled parking spaces”. Both are combined figures for the whole Cribbs destination and no breakdown exists; the Planning Inspector's 2018 report counted 6,670 spaces at the Mall alone, but we are not turning a subtraction into a claim. No maximum stay, enforcement contractor or height restriction is published for either scheme.
By bus, by rail, and on foot between the schemes
The operator publishes no bus route numbers and names no railway station. Its getting-here page says you can arrive by “car, bus, bike or rail” and then gives details for exactly one of those four. That is a striking gap for a destination of this size and we are not filling it with guesswork: check Travelwest or First Bus for services to Cribbs Causeway rather than relying on anything written here. Nothing is published for coaches, taxis or cycle parking either.
On foot, the operator says the big-box stores are “just a short walk away” from the mall and Patchway Journal puts The Venue “just across the road from The Mall shopping centre”, but nobody publishes a distance, a walking time or a step-free route for either leg.
The shops
Cribbs Causeway Retail Park — the thirteen units
Assembled from the Completely Retail tenant schedule and cross-checked against the operator's own store pages, which label each store with the part of Cribbs it sits in: Currys (Units 1–2, 34,187 sq ft, the largest on the park), Ninja Warrior UK (Unit 3/4), Smyths Toys (Unit 5), ScS (Unit 6, with a Poltronesofa concession inside it), Oak Furniture Land (Unit 7), Natuzzi (Unit 8), NCF Living (Unit 9), Sports Direct (Unit 10), Next Home & Garden (Unit 12a), Wren Kitchens and Magnet.
The character of the park follows from that list: five units are sofas, beds and kitchens. ScS, Natuzzi, NCF Living, Oak Furniture Land and Wren, with Magnet alongside, make this a furniture and fitted-kitchen park with an electricals shed and a toy shop attached. For clothes at Cribbs, you want the mall.
The odd one out: an obstacle course where the Argos used to be
Ninja Warrior UK occupies Unit 3/4 — and Unit 3–4 Block B is the address older listings give for Argos. It is an indoor obstacle-course venue licensed from the ITV programme, with soft play for under-threes, pre-book only and cashless. Its own site puts the entrance on Centaurus Way, off Lysander Road, which is worth knowing because it is not where the shop fronts are.
What has gone from the retail park
An unmaintained third-party directory still names Argos, Mothercare and its Café Nest, Harveys Furniture, and Carphone Warehouse and Team Knowhow within Currys. None appear on the operator's live directory, and all are consistent with well-known national collapses — but we could not source a dated closure for a single one of them here. Treat it as a list of names you may still see online, not a closure record.
The Venue — the twelve units
The anchors are the twelve-screen Vue (51,253 sq ft, with an EPIC screen and Lux and Ultra Lux recliners) and a twenty-six-lane Hollywood Bowl with a bar, a diner and an arcade. Mulligans is the third leisure operator: two twelve-hole crazy golf courses, pool and ping pong.
Eating is Nando's, Pizza Express, Bella Italia, Las Iguanas, Frankie & Benny's, a Burger King and a KFC drive-thru. Four carry an explicit “at The Venue” suffix in the directory, because the mall has its own Nando's, Pizza Express and Burger King. The operator's Las Iguanas page is headed “Las Iguanas at The Mall” and then gives a Merlin Road, BS10 7SR address: the address is right, the heading wrong.
Two Venue names that have quietly stopped appearing
TGI Fridays (6,008 sq ft) and Chiquito (4,525 sq ft) are both still named as tenants by Completely Retail, TGI Fridays is still on the developer's own project page, and both appeared in a 2022 planning statement for a neighbouring site. Neither appears anywhere on the operator's live directory. Given what happened to both chains nationally that is unsurprising — but no dated closure for either branch was published by anyone we could reach, so we record the absence, not a date. Anytime Fitness is the mirror image: named by Baylis and by Completely Retail, absent from the operator's directory, and we cannot tell whether it is trading.
Next door, but not these schemes
The operator's own directory mixes them in, so: Halfords is at Centaurus Road, BS34 5TS — that is Centaurus Retail Park, 81,500 sq ft of TK Maxx, Hobbycraft, HomeSense, Tapi and Dreams, let by Park Place Retail and Curson Sowerby Partners rather than CBRE. Planet Ice, Sytner Jaguar Land Rover and Polestar share The Venue's BS10 7SR postcode on Merlin Road, but a 2022 planning statement calls them part of a separate complex. Neither they nor the Morrisons, Asda, B&Q and Wickes beyond are counted in the 13 and 12.
Useful to know
Accessibility
Nothing scheme-specific is published for either park. The operator's accessibility information is written for the mall: flat access between levels, large electric doorways, parent and child parking, baby changing, and 400 disabled bays across the destination. Whether any of those 400 are on the retail park or at The Venue is not stated, and we found no AccessAble guide for either.
The tenants are more useful than the landlord here: Currys says its store “has a number of extra-wide parking bays”, Hollywood Bowl confirms free and disabled parking at The Venue, and Vue runs accessible and autism-friendly screenings and welcomes assistance dogs.
Toilets, Changing Places and the rest
The operator advertises Changing Places facilities at Cribbs but does not say where they are, and every indication is that they are inside the mall — so if a Changing Places toilet decides your trip, plan around the mall building. Free Wi-Fi and the outdoor play area read as mall facilities too. No toilet locations are published for the retail park; at The Venue the operators have their own, but you are relying on being a customer. No dog policy, lost property arrangement or tenant-by-tenant gift card list is published for either scheme.
Clean air and low-emission zones
Bristol operates a Clean Air Zone in the city centre. Cribbs Causeway sits about ten miles north of it, in South Gloucestershire, and Junction 17 of the M5 does not take you through it. Driving out from central Bristol on surface roads, check your route against the current Bristol City Council zone map — the operator addresses this nowhere.
Phone numbers worth having
The operator publishes direct numbers, which beats a switchboard: Smyths 0117 959 0055, Currys 0344 561 1234, Ninja Warrior 0117 203 4425, Hollywood Bowl 0844 826 1458, Vue 0345 308 4620, Mulligans 0117 387 8030.
How it got here
Nobody publishes when either scheme opened
We looked across the operator's pages, the developer's project page, the Completely Retail records, the Planning Inspector's 2018 report, a 2022 planning submission for the adjoining site and Companies House. There is no opening date for either scheme. The closest thing is a sequence: the Mall opened in 1998, and Baylis Estates says on its own project page that The Venue was “jointly developed by Baylis and M&G” and completed shortly after it — so late 1990s, without a month or a year we can print. On the retail park, which is older in character than either, the sources are silent entirely. The one date that does exist, 26 January 2005, is the incorporation of the ownership vehicle, and it is a financing event dressed up as history if you treat it as anything else.
What the Inspector saw in 2018
The most authoritative description in print comes from the call-in inquiry into the Mall's proposed extension. At paragraph 13 of her report — published with the decision letter of 1 October 2018, signed off by decision officer Andrew Lynch for the Secretary of State — Christina Downes wrote of the leisure park: “To the south of this is a large distribution centre, car showrooms and The Venue, which is a leisure area of restaurants, a multi-screen cinema and bowling centre.”
The ownership chain, from the Companies House record
The vehicle is Cribbs Causeway JV Limited, company number 05343227, registered at 10 Fenchurch Avenue, London EC3M 5AG — an M&G address — under SIC code 68209. It was incorporated on 26 January 2005 as 3408th Single Member Shelf Trading Company Limited and renamed that March: the standard shelf-company pattern, which tells you nothing about the buildings.
Its register of persons with significant control has three entries. The Prudential Assurance Company Limited is the only active one, notified on 6 April 2016, holding “75% or more” of both shares and voting rights. That is the band the register records; it is not a statement that the holding is 100%, and we are not going to print one.
Two have ceased. Intu Shopping Centres Plc held more than 25% but not more than 50% of shares and voting rights, plus the right to appoint and remove directors, from 6 April 2016 until 15 August 2023. On that same day Palma Cribbs Bidco Limited was notified in the same band, ceasing on 16 August 2024. It is a Jersey company, incorporation number 146541, at 47 Esplanade, St Helier, with a UK establishment opened 15 August 2023 and a matching Palma Cribbs Holdco registered the same day.
So the minority half of the joint venture left intu's hands in August 2023 for a Jersey vehicle, and left that vehicle's hands in August 2024. Who stands behind Palma Cribbs Bidco is not something Companies House answers, and we could not source it elsewhere. Our Mall page records M&G increasing its stake in September 2024; the register's date for the Palma cessation is 16 August 2024. Both are printed; nothing reconciles them to one date.
The one ownership statement we cannot square
Completely Retail names M&G Real Estate as owner and landlord of both schemes. Baylis Estates, on its own project page, says The Venue “remains in the joint ownership of Baylis Estates and Prudential” — and Prudential and M&G are the same corporate family, so that half agrees. Whether Baylis still holds a share is a question the public record does not settle: the JV's PSC register does not name it, but joint ownership of a property need not appear on one company's register.
Still being built out
Cribbs is not finished. A design and access statement lodged in July 2022 by the Bristol architects AWW, for “Site 20, Merlin Road”, proposed a drive-thru and an outline unit under an earlier hybrid consent, PT18/1459/F, and calls its site part of a “larger newly developed retail & leisure complex” with the ice rink, the car dealership and a drive-thru coffee operator. The cluster keeps adding schemes; the “three parts of Cribbs” story is already out of date.
The 2018 call-in happened at all because Cribbs and central Bristol have been arguing in planning terms for thirty years. For the other side of it, Cabot Circus is the city-centre scheme Cribbs is habitually weighed against; The Mall at Cribbs Causeway is the one that applied to extend.
What we could not check
- No opening date exists in any source we could reach for either scheme. The developer places The Venue only "shortly after" the Mall, which opened in 1998.
- The Venue's floorspace is published three ways: 132,918 sq ft (Completely Retail), 133,000 (Sovereign Centros) and 145,000 (Baylis Estates). We have not chosen between them.
- The 7,000 free spaces, the 400 disabled bays and the 11 million annual visitors are combined figures for the whole Cribbs destination; no count is published for either scheme alone. No maximum stay, enforcement contractor or height limit is published either.
- No EV charging is mentioned by the operator anywhere, and we could not reach Zapmap or PlugShare to check independently.
- The operator publishes no bus route numbers and names no railway station, despite listing both as ways to arrive. No coach, taxi or cycle provision is published either.
- The operator gave two different "open today" times on its own pages on the same day: 9.30am to 8pm on three pages, 9am to 8pm on the dining page — and neither is about these schemes.
- The operator prints Hollywood Bowl Monday to Thursday as "11.00pm - 11.00pm" and Mulligans Friday as "12pm - 11am". Both are obvious errors, uncorrected at source. Ninja Warrior's Sunday closing differs between the operator (5pm) and its own site (6pm).
- No bank holiday or festive hours are published for either scheme; the 10am to 6pm bank holiday line belongs to the Mall. Hollywood Bowl's own site was not publishing hours at all when we checked.
- Who stands behind Palma Cribbs Bidco Limited, the Jersey vehicle that held a 25-to-50% stake between August 2023 and August 2024, is not on any public record we could reach. The Prudential holding is recorded only as "75% or more" — a band, not a statement of full ownership.
- Whether Baylis Estates still co-owns The Venue is unresolved: Baylis says it does, Completely Retail names M&G alone, and the JV's PSC register does not name it.
- TGI Fridays, Chiquito and Anytime Fitness are named as Venue tenants by the developer and by Completely Retail but are absent from the operator's live directory, with no dated closure or opening found for any of them.
- Whether Planet Ice, Sytner Jaguar Land Rover and Polestar belong to The Venue or to the separate Merlin Road complex is not settled; we exclude them from the counts. BS34 5TS is shared with Centaurus Retail Park.
- No Changing Places location, toilet location, dog policy or lost property arrangement is published for either scheme, and there is no AccessAble guide for either.