Tagged: bank
Recreating a Loxton Drawing on a Lunchtime Jaunt
05 Nov 2021
I did do a much longer wander earlier in the week, but that'll take me some time to process (and cast a plethora of photos into the "out-takes" pile!) In the meantime, here's my lunchtime jaunt, taken to give myself a break from doing the company bookkeeping to send to my accountant so the taxman doesn't sling me in chokey.
I've recently bought a slightly creased secondhand copy of Redcliffe Press's 1992 collection of Samuel Loxton drawings, Loxton's Bristol: The city's Edwardian years in black and white. It's a nice selection of Bristol Library's collection of the drawings. I'd noticed a drawing of 25 Royal York Crescent, a house I pass quite often, so I thought I'd wander up the crescent on the way to pick up some lunch and try to reproduce it.
On the way back I took a few photos of Clifton Hill Bank as the crowdfunder to make quite a lot of it into a wildflower meadow has just hit its target, so I figured some "before" shots might be a good investment for the future...
The crowdfunding effort has blown past its original £1400 target and stands at £1775 so far. The original target was to cover:
- £300 for wildflower seed to sow in the next few weeks
- £100 for non-plastic signage explaining what’s happening – crucial for public support
- £1,000 for plug plants to go in next spring
They also say that most of the existing popular daffodils will stay, which is nice, as that was my favourite spring feature of the bank.
I'm in the habit of going over to the Tobacco Factory Market on a Sunday. I think I've walked all the routes around that way, but as a Plimsoll Bridge swing let me cross the road to the far side of Brunel Way on my return journey and I took a couple of photos of the brownfield development at the old Ashton Gate Depot site I thought I'd call it a Wander and pop some photos up.
"STEEP DROP INTO MUD AND FAST FLOWING WATER".
This sign has been mildly annoying photographers since it was put up, getting a bit in the way of several alternative views from this bit of land. I presume it was installed in response to some kind of accident, but I'd hazard a guess that whatever difficulties someone got into probably wouldn't have been prevented by a sign that stated the completely bloody obvious.
I recently indulged myself by buying a little piece of history. I've mentioned Samuel Loxton and featured and linked to his drawings before, often in the eminently browsable Loxton Collection albums that Bristol Libraries has on Flickr. So when I saw a Loxton drawing of Hotwells pop up on eBay, I decided to get myself a little treat.
I don't think there's any Loxton drawing that features the road I actually live in—it's not very visible from anywhere else, not being one of these Clifton terraces that's perched at the top of a hill, or anything like that, and it's invisible in most views of the area. However, this Loxton drawing, Hotwells, Looking across the river from near the Clifton Bridge station, is probably the closest near-miss I've seen.
I decided to wander out one morning and see if I could reproduce the picture, and also take a photo or two of what's now become of the Clifton Bridge Station, which is still just about discernible in places.
(Then on an even stranger whim I decided to check out a possible little cut-through from Cumberland Road to the harbourside I'd been eyeing up on my commute to work, so walked to Wapping Wharf for a croissant via this potential new route, but that bit's not quite as interesting...)
I don't actually know what "we cap £" means. I do know that it always seemed irritating that the Metrobus worked by having to buy a ticket in advance at fiddly little machines next to the stops, and that being able to just buy a ticket by tapping a card once you were on the bus would seem wildly futuristic if I hadn't had a Oyster card decades ago in London...
Having just tried to read the 2,500-ish word explanation of Tap & Cap, I'm still not sure exactly how to use it, but hopefully it at least means that Bristol bus drivers will no longer swear at you if you don't happen to have exactly the right change sorted out in advance...
Every now and again some speedboat pops under Merchants Road Bridge and does a few quick loops of the Cumberland Basin. I guess that either they're allowed to go fast on the basin or they know they can get away with it...
Site of the Rownham Ferry. Follow the link for a charming Loxton ink drawing on Know Your Place, also viewable at the Bristol Libraries Flickr collection.
This was a later site for the ferry, which earlier was a tad further out along the river. It would have been a key crossing point at this end of Bristol before the arrival of any bridges near here. Before the Ashton Swing Bridge and the Vauxhall footbridge arrived, the next-nearest crossing point would have been the Vauxhall ferry, which was where Vauxhaull Bridge stands now, I think.
I think this was about my best attempt to match the Loxton angle. The fact that my photo still has the edge of Entrance Lock in it suggests that Loxton's drawing was taken from a little further downstream, but there are trees there now, obscuring the view.
Much of the buildings further back are unchanged, as you can see, especially Windsor Terrace to the left and The Paragon middle top. The diagonal rise of Freeland Place is still there, too. What's mostly changed is the closer road, where a chunk of Hotwells, including the houses and Cumberland Hall you can see in the Loxton drawing, was swept away for the Cumberland Road flyover system. This probably also explains why there aren't so many pedestrians just enjoying the scenery—it's much noisier there now.
Here's a similar angle to my earlier attempt at recreating the Loxton view, only with a framing that gives a bit more detail of the buildings.
Hurrah! Cumberland Road is fully closed again, this time apparently for stabilisation works on the Chocolate Path, one of my favourite footpaths in Bristol, whcih has been closed since even before part of it actually fell into the river.
That there is an actual plan to re-open the path, that it's got funding, and that work is being done are all good signs, but I'm still trying not to hold my breath. This path's been closed since 2016. (And the entire new cut didn't take this long to dig in the first place...)
The Long Lunchtime at the End of the World
27 Nov 2020
I took an extra-long break at lunchtime today as I'd taken the day off my normal day-job to do the accounts for my previous side-job, which is still generating paperwork, though not much in the way of money. This took me through some undiscovered bits of Cliftonwood, including Worlds End Lane, which unexpectedly leads to White Hart Steps. That's certainly not where I expected the end of the world to lead to...
From what I can work out, the name of Vauxhall Bridge may be derived from the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens that were, for a while, somewhere in the Dowry Square vicinity, themselves named for the famous London original (as mentioned in Fanny Burney's Evelina, among other books) Not sure what the through line is, though, as the pleasure gardens in Bristol weren't that long-lived, and of course the New Cut is significantly newer, so it's not like there would have been a bridge here back then.
A long ramble, starting with trying to find the Hot Well of Hotwells and leading up the side of the Avon Gorge to the Downs and then through Clifton for coffee.
Fruitless Coffee Excursion
01 Dec 2020
Unfortunately by the time I got to Greville Smyth Park I was already about halfway through my lunch-hour, and the queue was too long to wait to actually get a coffee. Is that a fruitless excursion? Presumably a coffee bean is technically a fruit...
This kind of vague musing was sadly overshadowed by my delay at Ashton Avenue Bridge on the way back, where someone—hopefully still a someone, rather than a body—was being stretchered up the bank of the river, presumably having just been rescued from the water. As I made my way home the long way around, avoiding the cordoned-off area at the back of the CREATE centre and its car park, I saw an ambulance haring across the Plimsoll Bridge, siren running, presumably on its way to the BRI. I'd like to think that was a good sign.
Nothing New
02 Dec 2020
This may be the very first time I've gone for a One Mile Matt wander and not actually gone down any new roads, trod any new steps. I just wanted a coffee, frankly, so I went the same old way to Imagine That in the marina and back again.
Strangers' Burial Ground
04 Dec 2020
I tried to find the Strangers' Burial Ground the last time was up in Clifton, but I'd not realised that Lower Clifton Hill continues further on after the turning with Constitution Hill. Sadly it was chained shut, but it still looks beautifully-maintained, perhaps by the same man referenced by this story from John Hodgson, which helped me find it. Apparently Thomas Beddoes is buried here.
Bedminster, Ashton, Ashton Court sunset walk
12 Dec 2020
A walk with Sarah focusing on Ashton and the surrounds, taken on a day with really nice light around sunset. Just what I needed.
Drained Basin
15 Dec 2020
On the down side, I got to Bedminster and found long enough queues at both Mark's Bread and Hopper Coffee that I gave up on the idea of buying a drink and a pasty (from the former) or a mince pie flapjack (from the latter.) On the up side, I got to take some pictures of Cumberland Basin being drained and sluiced out, part of its regular maintenance cycle.
This is the next stage of the Cumberland Basin cleaning cycle. In the earlier pictures, you could see they'd emptied the basin. Now, with the Entrance Lock gates open, they sluice out the basin with an inrush of fresh water. This helps wash out accumulated silt and also freshens the water—it's usually done just before the occasional traithlon that takes place here, otherwise the swimmers would be even more at risk from E. Coli and other things than they are!