Districts
Districts within the town include Filton Park and Northville. East Filton, which has grown up east of the Bristol-South Wales railway line, contains the offices of the Ministry of Defence Defence Procurement Agency, plus a shopping park.
Filton can be reached from Junction 1 of the M32 motorway, or from Junction 16 of the M5 motorway. The town has a railway station, Filton Abbey Wood.
Filton has an aerospace connection dating back to the early days of the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Aerospace companies in Filton include BAE Systems, Airbus, Rolls-Royce and MBDA factories, all located around Filton Aerodrome. On 26 November 2003, Concorde 216 (G-BOAF) made the final ever Concorde flight, returning to Filton to be kept there permanently as the centrepiece of a projected air museum. This museum will include the existing Bristol Aero Collection which is kept at Kemble Airport, 33 miles (53 km) from Filton. This collection includes a Bristol Britannia aircraft.
Other organisations include the MOD, Viridor, Hewlett Packard and the Royal Mail. Filton is also home to the regional blood processing facility, NHS Blood and Transplant Filton.
Filton's educational facilities include South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, Abbeywood Community School and several primary schools. The University of the West of England is at nearby Frenchay.
Filton has two main shopping areas - the Shield Centre (on the site of the former Shield Laundry) and Abbey Wood Retail Park, as well as other shops. To the east of the town there is a small area of woodland known as Splatt's Abbey Wood.
Bristol Cars was a manufacturer of hand-built luxury cars, based in Filton. Bristol Cars had no distributors nor dealers and dealt directly with customers; they had a showroom in Kensington in London. They claimed to be the last wholly British-owned luxury car builder. The company went into administration on the 3rd March 2011.
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