Longwell Green Retail Park, Bristol: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

Six separately owned schemes on the eastern edge of Bristol that everyone calls one place. The one actually named Longwell Green Retail Park has 72 parking spaces. The big sheds next door are Gallagher Retail Park, the cinema is a Vue at Aspects Leisure Park, and longwellgreenretailpark.co.uk — useful as it is — says on its own contact page that it does not own or manage anything here. Nobody publishes an opening year, a maximum stay or a set of park-wide opening hours. Here is what is actually on the record.

Last checked 12 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

Longwell Green sits about six miles east of Bristol city centre, on the South Gloucestershire side of the boundary, wrapped around the A4174 Avon Ring Road between Marsham Way and Aldermoor Way. If you live in east Bristol, Kingswood or Keynsham it is where you go for a fridge, a sofa, a cinema ticket and a big supermarket shop in one afternoon. It is one of the largest concentrations of retail warehousing in the region.

It is also one of the most confusingly named, and that is not a detail — it changes what you can find out about it. What people call "Longwell Green" is at least six schemes with at least six different owners, across the postcodes BS30 7DA, BS30 7ER, BS30 7ES, BS30 7ET, BS30 7TX and BS15 9LA. The scheme formally called Longwell Green Retail Park is the smallest of the retail elements: it has 72 parking spaces. The long terrace with Marks and Spencer, Next, Boots and River Island is Gallagher Retail Park. The B&Q and the Currys are a third holding again, bought by a different investor in a different deal. The cinema is at Aspects Leisure Park, which is not even in the same postcode district.

Start with the web address, because the master lists have this one wrong. The domain longwellgreenretailpark.co.uk resolves, loads properly and is genuinely about this destination — it is the most comprehensive single source we found, and on some points the only one. But it is not an operator site. Its own contact page says: "we do not own or manage the retail park itself — we're an independent website providing visitor information, guides and updates about shopping, dining and things to do in the area." It gives no company address, no phone number and no email. So far as we can establish, no scheme here except the leisure park has a website of its own at all.

This brownfield site, with its dilapidated industrial buildings, has lain vacant for a number of years. The owners are now set to reinvent the asset to create a vibrant mixed-use development that will complement the established retail and leisure facilities in this location. The early response to the scheme demonstrates strong demand.

The essentials

Opening times

Checked on 12 September 2026. The honest answer is that Longwell Green does not have park-wide opening hours, because it is not one park. Six schemes with six owners do not co-ordinate a trading pattern, and none of them publishes one.

There is exactly one park-wide statement in existence and it disagrees with itself. The independent visitor site's getting-here page says Monday to Saturday 9am to 8pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm. Its own store pages then say something different: its Next page gives Saturday 9am to 7pm and Sunday 10.30am to 4.30pm, and its Marks and Spencer page gives an 8am weekday opening — an hour before the park-wide line it publishes two clicks away.

The Sunday times matter. Large shops in England get six hours of Sunday trading, and the big units here cluster on 10.30am to 4.30pm. The visitor site's 10am to 4pm is also a lawful six hours — just not the same six hours. Half an hour decides whether you get in.

Nobody publishes bank holiday or festive hours for any scheme at Longwell Green. Not the visitor site, not the letting agents, not the retailers' scheme-level pages. There is no number to ring for the park as a whole either. Check the individual retailer's own store page before you travel on a bank holiday.

Getting there

By road

Use BS30 7DA for the retail parks, BS15 9LA for the cinema, and BS30 7ER or BS30 7ET for the trade units. Six postcodes are in use across the destination and they are not interchangeable — Aspects Leisure Park is in a different postcode district from the shops.

We are not printing a motorway junction, and that is deliberate. Our rule is that a junction number goes on the page only when the operator publishes it. There is no operator here, so the test cannot be met. What the property sources say is that the site is "adjacent to the A4174 Avon Ring Road with access via Marsham Way & Aldermoor Way", which is the practical instruction: get onto the ring road, come off at Longwell Green, and follow the signs. The independent visitor site does give route advice from named starting points, including M5 junctions 19 and 18A, but that is a third party's guidance and we have not promoted it into a fact about the site.

Parking

Four car parks, four different enforcement companies, and no published maximum stay in any of them. That combination is the thing we would most want a visitor to know:

• Gallagher Retail Park A and B — 402 and 525 spaces, 927 in total, enforced by UK Parking Control Ltd. No height restriction.
• Longwell Green Retail Park — 72 spaces, enforced by Evology Parking. No height restriction.
• Asda Longwell Green — 730 spaces, enforced by Asda Stores Ltd itself. No height restriction.
• Aspects Leisure Park — 1,020 spaces, enforced by Premier Park Ltd. The only one where "height restrictions may apply", with no figure given.

Those four figures come to 2,749; the same page also says "over 2,000 spaces". Both are printed above.

Is it free? Probably, and we are not going to state it flatly. The only park-wide claim of "free on-site parking" is one line on the independent visitor site, and Vue says parking at Aspects is free. No scheme confirms it on a page of its own, and no tariff, grace period or maximum stay is published anywhere. With four different operators running four car parks a few hundred yards apart, the terms are very unlikely to be identical.

By bus and train

First Bus services run to Longwell Green from both Bristol and Bath — that is the whole of the published guidance, with no route numbers, stop names or frequencies on any source we could reach. There is no station at Longwell Green and nothing close enough to walk from. The advice that exists is to travel to Bristol Temple Meads or Bristol Parkway and continue by local bus or taxi; no walking distance, bus connection or journey time is published for either. If you are coming by rail from outside Bristol, budget properly for the last leg. No cycle parking is published for any of the six schemes.

Accessibility

This is the weakest part of the record and we want to be blunt about it. The only accessibility information published for either retail park is that Blue Badge spaces exist in all four car parks. There are no counts, no bay dimensions, no locations, no accessible toilet information, no Changing Places toilet, no Shopmobility scheme and no wheelchair or scooter hire published by anyone for either retail park. The leisure park is better served: Vue publishes accessible and autism-friendly screenings at Bristol Longwell Green, assistance dogs are welcome at all its venues, and it takes access questions on 0345 308 4620 — though Aspects is also the one car park where a height restriction "may apply". If a facility decides whether the trip is possible, phone the retailer. There is no number for the park.

The shops

The independent visitor site's directory listed 30 stores when we counted it on 12 September 2026, spread across every scheme at Longwell Green. No individual scheme publishes a directory or a unit count of its own.

The anchors, scheme by scheme

• Gallagher Retail Park — anchored by a 26,000 sq ft Marks and Spencer, with Next, Boots, New Look, Greggs, River Island, Clinton Cards, Clarks and Starbucks.
• Longwell Green Retail Park — the letting agent names Lidl, Smyths Toys, Asda, Costa, DFS, Subway and Marks and Spencer as the anchors, with Tapi Carpets, Popeyes and Carpetright among the occupiers. The agent is describing the pitch, which takes in neighbouring schemes as well as its own.
• The B&Q and Currys buildings — two purpose-built retail units of approximately 120,000 sq ft between them, in separate ownership from both retail parks.
• The trade park — Halfords Autocentres, Toolstation, Screwfix, Formula One Autocentres, City Electrical Factors and Arco took the seven units when it was built. Wickes, Buildbase (Huws Gray) and Mountain Warehouse also trade at Longwell Green.
• Aspects Leisure Park — a 13-screen Vue with more than 2,680 seats, Hollywood Bowl and The Gym Group, with Frankie & Benny's, Nando's, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Kaspa's and the Wishing Well pub restaurant around them.

What has arrived

Nothing at Longwell Green has been reported as opening, with a date, by any trade or local outlet since August 2015. Eleven years. That is not a claim that nothing has opened — it is a statement about what is published, and it is unusual for a destination this size.

The last properly dated arrivals all come from the trade park's letting campaign: Screwfix took 5,500 sq ft, announced 14 May 2013; City Electrical Factors (2,930 sq ft) and Arco (2,960 sq ft) took Units 3 and 4 on ten-year leases at £12 per sq ft, reported 23 August 2015, completing the letting of all seven units. Popeyes and Tapi Carpets appear on the letting agent's occupier list and on no other source we read, with no dates attached.

What has gone — and what we refuse to call a closure

Outfit is the only departure anyone can date, and only indirectly. The Arcadia-owned fashion brand had a unit at Gallagher Retail Park. A full planning application dated 27 July 2022, by Ropemaker Properties Limited, proposed subdividing "the former Outfit unit" into three — E1, E2 and E3 — with a new service corridor, at BS30 7ES. So the unit was empty by 27 July 2022. No closure date is published by anyone, and we could not find the decision.

Carpetright and Arco are absent from the 2026 directory and we are not writing either off. Carpetright was named as a tenant in the January 2016 sale coverage and is still on the letting agent's occupier list today; Arco took Unit 4 on a ten-year lease from 2015. Carpetright collapsed nationally in 2024, which makes it tempting to join the dots — but nothing published says what happened to this branch, and a shop missing from a third-party directory is not a closed shop. Directories here are demonstrably stale: one still listed Outfit in September 2026, four years after the planning application that calls its unit former.

Useful to know

Work out which Longwell Green you are going to

This is the practical heart of it. Six schemes, six owners, six postcodes, and the names are contradictory at source. Next's own store page puts its shop in "Gallagher Retail Park". Clarks' own store page puts its shop, a few doors away, in "Gallagher Shopping Park". The independent visitor site files the same Next store under "Unit C Longwell Green RP". The trade estate is called Longwell Green Trade Park by its developer, Gallagher Trade Park by one property listing, and Longwell Green Gallagher Trade Park by Screwfix. If a website, a delivery, a taxi or a click-and-collect slot sends you to the wrong one, that is why.

If you want the covered malls instead

Longwell Green is retail warehousing: big boxes, big car parks, no roof over the walk between them. If you want an enclosed centre, Bristol has two very different answers. The Mall at Cribbs Causeway is on the other side of the city to the north, with Cribbs Causeway Retail Park and The Venue beside it if you want sheds and a cinema in the same trip. Cabot Circus is the city-centre option.

Things nobody publishes

We could find no confirmation of cash machines, toilets, baby changing, a Changing Places toilet, free Wi-Fi, lost property arrangements, a dogs policy, coach parking, cycle parking, a taxi rank, gift cards, or any accessibility provision beyond Blue Badge bays. Most of those almost certainly exist — a destination with three supermarkets and a cinema has toilets and cash machines. The point is that nobody publishes anything, because no scheme has a website. If one of them decides your trip, ring the individual retailer.

How it got here

Nobody publishes an opening year for Longwell Green, and we looked hard. Not the letting agents, not the developers' own project records, not the trade press, not the planning documents. The earliest dated construction anywhere on site is 2012, and both 2012 schemes were infill or refurbishment on a retail park that already existed. We are not going to guess at a decade.

Before the shops there was a coachworks. Grace's Guide records Longwell Green Coachworks, "Motor Body Builders" "of Longwell Green, Bristol", formerly W. J. Bence and Sons. Its only dated entry is a 1953 directors' listing — C. G. A. Harding as managing director, A. E. Morrish on sales, A. S. Atkin as works director. It gives neither a founding nor a closure date, and no source establishes that the coachworks stood on the land the shops now occupy. All we can say honestly is that the name belonged to industry here long before it belonged to retail.

2012: rebuilt twice over, by two developers who did not mention each other

In October 2012, IM Properties completed a seven-unit trade counter scheme on Aldermoor Way — units of 2,920 to 14,350 sq ft, with Halfords Autocentres in Unit 1 and Toolstation in Unit 2. Screwfix took 5,500 sq ft, announced 14 May 2013. The last two went on 23 August 2015: City Electrical Factors took Unit 3 at 2,930 sq ft and Arco Unit 4 at 2,960 sq ft, both on ten-year leases at £12 per sq ft, and the scheme was fully let.

January 2016: two sales in one month, and nobody noticed

On 13 January 2016, Metric Income Plus Limited Partnership sold three retail parks for £29.5m in total, and Longwell Green Retail Park went to CBRE Global Investors for £12.6m — the others being Camborne at £9.9m and Cambridge Road, Haverhill at £7m. The tenants at the point of sale were DFS, Carpetright, Costa and Subway, all on 15-year leases. Andrew Jones, LondonMetric's Chief Executive, said the three assets "have benefited from yield compression of 200bps since their acquisitions in 2012 and, following recent lettings and rent reviews, have now delivered on their business plans."

In the same month, the acquisition agent Clay Street closed its second purchase for CCLA: "The B&Q & Dixons in Longwell Green in Bristol", two purpose-built units of approximately 120,000 sq ft, for £32,325,000. Two investors bought two separate parts of Longwell Green in the same month for a combined £44.9m, and neither account mentions the other deal. CBRE Global Investors was renamed CBRE Investment Management in 2021.

2021: the applicant's own evidence argued against more shops

In February 2021 an outline application — P20/22431/0 — was before South Gloucestershire Council for the Kingswood Industrial Estate, the land west of Marsham Way including the former Saville's Freights depot. The applicant was CBRE Global Investors on behalf of West Midlands Pension Fund, the landowner, with two options: an employment-led scheme with a food and drink zone, or a version with retail space and a hotel, each drawn with 252 to 339 parking spaces. We could not find any decision on it.

The striking document in that file is the applicant's own retail evidence. A report by a specialist out-of-town retail and leisure advisory firm, prepared for CBRE Global Investors and quoted by The Week In, stated: "There simply is no demand for new retailers to occupy additional space at Longwell Green at anything approaching the rents that have been achieved on the adjoining Retail Park and would be required to make the scheme commercially viable." The firm is not named and no individual is named, which is why that passage appears here as a document rather than as this page's quote.

2022 to 2024: the Outfit unit, then the diggers

On 27 July 2022, Ropemaker Properties Limited applied to subdivide the former Outfit unit at Gallagher Retail Park into three, adding no retail floorspace. Then the Marsham Way site moved: demolition was completed in November 2023, and CBRE Investment Management, acting for a Separate Account mandate, was reported as starting construction in the new year on a 12-acre mixed-use scheme with Alder King and Curson Sowerby as agents. Phase One was one trade unit of 18,126 sq ft, pre-let to an unnamed "national trade occupier", for delivery in Q4 2024. Later phases were to bring a trade zone, drive-thrus and retail warehousing — which is what Curson Sowerby markets today as Longwell Green Retail Park: five trade units of about 37,700 sq ft, three drive-thru units and three retail warehouse buildings, with Unit 14 at 20,000 sq ft under offer and Units 15 and 16/17 still to let in September 2026.