Tagged: cloud
Nipping Up the Zig Zag to the Shops
19 Aug 2023
It's been a long while since I did one of these walks.
I'm thinking of finishing up the project by walking one or two last bits of road, thus being able to declare with all honesty that I've done my best to walk every public road within my mile (and quite a few alleyways besides.) As a prelude, and just because I felt like it, I decided to drag out the camera and GPS on this little wander to the local shops.
I may not personally be a fan of evangelical Christianity, but at least they keep the place looking nice. It's still very tidy since the recent renovation, installaltion of solar panels on the roof and repainting of the HOPE CHAPEL sign.
I would absolutely love to have lived in this area before World War II, before the widening of the road knocked down so many interesting things and replaced them with a few busy lanes of traffic, before the tramways were bombed into oblivion, and while you could still wander down to these moorings and catch a White Funnel boat out to Ilfracombe, or at least wander down to Hotwells Station and catch a steam train out to Shirehampton, Sea Mills or Avonmouth. Pre-1934 I could even have skipped the arduous walk up the Zig Zag and taken the 40-second ride up the funicular railway to Clifton Village...
The Hotwell Road really needs more facilities for pedestrians. I spotted plenty of other walkers just on my brief trip along this short section, but all of us were being forced out to share the road with the busy traffic or prevented from crossing to the safer side and back as we made our way.
Thin pavements and a lack of crossings really show how much the car is king in this bit of Bristol, despite the gorgeous landscape.
The reward at the top is the viewing platform of the Suspension Bridge, always busy with tourists.
I was actually planning to take an unexpected short-cut through a pub as an interesting little diversion on this wander, but sadly the pub was closed—I suppose before midday it's a bit of a reach to expect any pub to be open, even on a Saturday—so I headed for the shops instead. I'll have to do the short-cut trip one afternoon...
First I browsed the books at Rachel's & Michael's Antiques on Princess Victoria Street, where I bought CFW Dening's Old Pubs of Bristol as it mentions Hotwells a few times, then I grabbed my lunch from Parsons Bakery. There didn't seem to be anything new or interesting to snap along the way, so we'll now skip to the last couple of photos I took on my way home...
Mardyke then and Now
18 Mar 2021
Reproducing historical photos seems to be a developing interest for me. On today's wander I just went for my normal coffee at Imagine That, but along the way I stopped at Baltic Wharf (the modern housing estate; historically-speaking, I was probably in between Canada Wharf and Gefle Wharf—about here, in fact) to reproduce a 1930s photo of the Mardyke area from the Tarring collection.
Mardyke, from what I can work out, means "a ditch along the margins". Before my researches, I only really knew the name from the Mardyke pub, a big place on the Hotwell Road. Everyone knows the Mardyke, partly because of its size and signage, but I've only been in once or twice, too long ago to remember much of what it was like. However, the wharf there used to be known as Mardyke Wharf, and the area in general as Mardyke. (I just found an 1826 painting by Thomas Leeson Rowbotham of "Mardyke seen from near Hilhouse's Dock, showing the 'Clifton Ark' floating chapel" that shows the area before much development had happened, incidentally, and now I feel like I need to find out a bit more about the floating chapel...)
I enjoyed snapping the "after" photo; the process involved moving a group of swans out of the place I needed to stand to get the photo; luckily I've started carrying waterfowl food along with my on my harbourside jaunts, so I could use bribery rather than a more confrontational approach. Not sure I'd fancy my chances against a swan, though I did once team up with another passerby to shoo a recalcitrant one off the Redcliffe bascule bridge so a busful of commuters could continue their journey to work...
Via Know Your Place Bristol/the Tarring Collection.
The Mardyke area—apparently Mardyke means a dyke on the margins, which would make sense for the location—in the 1930s. That's got to be a Campbell paddle steamer from their White Funnel fleet, but I don't know which one. Looks to be a similar configuration to the Princess May, though the paddles look a bit different. In the background, the Mardyke Pub still stands today, but the three largest buildings do not. They are:
Top right: the Clifton National School (there's a Loxton sketch uploaded to this Wander where you can see the name on the front.)
Directly in front and below the Clfiton National School, on the main Hotwell Road: The Clifton Industrial School, Mardyke building.
Standing halfway up the hill, more towards the middle of the picture: the Clifton Industrial School, Church Path Steps building.
Lots of info to be found on the Industrial Schools here:
In addition to their classroom lessons, the boys were employed in tailoring, shoemaking and brush-making, with basket making later added. The boys also assisted with the kitchen, laundry, and house work. In 1870, some additional rooms were rented in the locality for use as an infirmary if required. A School band was established.
I can't find so much on the National School (though apparently the Bristol Archives have some of their records) but the Clifton & Hotwells
Character Appraisal suggest it was built in 1835 and, along with the Industrial School buildings, destroyed during WWII:
A bomb also largely destroyed the Clifton National School and Mardyke House School. The lack of bomb- proof shelters in Clifton led to the Clifton Rocks Railway to be used as shelter, which was prepared for occupation in 1940.
The colourful modern flats stand on School Road, presumably the last hint that the Clifton National Schools building was there before. It's nice to see both the Mardyke Pub and some of the ordinary houses from the terrace dead centre still there and looking much the same.
I wasn't going to take a very long walk on this nice spring evening; it just happened. I was going to knock off a path or two on Brandon Hill, home over centuries to hermits and windmills, cannons and Chartists, and then just wander home, stopping only to fill up my milk bottle at the vending machine in the Pump House car park.
However, when I heard a distant gas burner I stayed on the hill long enough to see if I could get a decent photo of both the hot air balloon drifting over with Cabot Tower in the same frame (spoiler: I couldn't. And only having the fixed-focal-length Fuji with me didn't help) and then, on the way home, bumped into my "support bubble", Sarah and Vik, and extended my walk even further do creep carefully down the slipway next to the old paddle steamer landing stage and get some photos from its furthest extreme during a very low tide...
I've bought many things from Marcuss over the years. A pair of secondhand German para boots got me started, I think, and I've bought snowboarding gear, camping gear, winter coats and sundry other things like the Opinel No. 06 knife I use for hunting and skinning the geek's natural prey: Amazon parcels.
Looking this way you get to see the rear of the rooves of Rosebery Terrace first, which we saw the front of on an earlier wander.
I guess one thing Bellevue (the terrace in the distance) has a belle vue of is Brandon Hill.
Towpath Evening
25 Mar 2021
I was honestly just about to do the homework from my oh-so-thrilling ITIL course when my friends Sarah and Vik asked me if I'd like to come out for a wander down the towpath with them. I enjoyed the company, the evening light and the delicate clouds.
I got interested in Bristol's medieval water supplies after poking around near Jacobs Wells Road and Brandon Hill. It was during that research I found out about a pipe that's still there today, and, as far as I know, still actually functioning, that was originally commissioned by Carmelite monks in the 13th century. They wanted a supply of spring water from Brandon Hill to their priory on the site of what's now the Bristol Beacon—Colston Hall, as-was. It was created around 1267, and later, in 1376, extended generously with an extra "feather" pipe to St John's On The Wall, giving the pipework its modern name of "St John's Conduit".
St John's on the Wall is still there, guarding the remaining city gate at the end of Broad Street, and the outlet tap area was recently refurbished. It doesn't run continuously now, like it did when I first moved to Bristol and worked at the end of Broad Street, in the Everard Building, but I believe the pipe still functions. One day I'd like to see that tap running...
There are a few links on the web about the pipe, but by far the best thing to do is to watch this short and fascinating 1970s TV documentary called The Hidden Source, which has some footage of the actual pipe and also lots of fantastic general footage of Bristol in the seventies.
On my walk today I was actually just going to the building society in town, but I decided to trace some of the route of the Carmelite pipe, including visiting streets it runs under, like Park Street, Christmas Street, and, of course, Pipe Lane. I also went a bit out of my way to check out St James' Priory, the oldest building in Bristol, seeing as it was just around the corner from the building society.
There are far too many pictures from this walk, and my feet are now quite sore, because it was a long one. But I enjoyed it.
I didn't know it at the time I took this photo, but this is the former site of the Bethesda Chapel, destroyed during World War II. There's a picture of it on the Community Layer of the Know Your Place site.
I found out when I was doing some research on this later photo—Alma Church in Clifton was originally a daughter church of Bethesda Chapel, and has "Clifton Bethesda" engraved in the pediment.
Bethesda Chapel was founded by George Müller, one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren, and director of Ashley Down orphanage, looking after more than ten thousand orphans in his lifetime.
This is the place that still has some of the reused fixtures and fittings of the RMS Mauretania installed inside.
"Built in #Bristol in 1851, the Demerara was the 2nd largest ship ever successfully launched (after the SS Great Britain.) However, her maiden voyage was a catastrophe when the tugboat guiding her misjudged the tides and she was broken in the Avon. She was later salvaged for parts... For many years the Demerara's figurehead, salvaged from the wreck, stood above a shop in Steep Street (now Colston Street) and a replica of it can still be seen above the Drawbridge pub on St. Augustine's Parade." — via @WeirdBristol. Well worth clicking through to: tweet 1; tweet 2 to see some pictures.
I bumped into my friend Lisa in town during yesterday's wander, and we decided to have a wander today, too. We managed quite a long ramble, starting up through Clifton and nipping down Park Row to investigate the two tower blocks I'd noticed popping up behind Park Street yesterday, then took in a few roads I'd not managed to get to before, including cutting through the grounds of Bristol Grammar School.
It's the little details that stand out for me on Woodland Road. I imagine it's prettier when it's not bin day, mind.
Hotwells Evening
29 Mar 2021
Just a little potter around Hotwells with Sarah and Vik. I didn't visit any new streets, but I liked a couple of the photos a lot.
Coffee Run
31 Mar 2021
Not a literal run, but I didn't hang about, as I had a job interview to get to (I was an interviewer, not the interviewee, but you still have to be there on time...) Along the way to pick up a lunchtime coffee I mostly seemed to take photos of the high tide, though I also came across a bit of outreach work for small spiny mammals...
I noticed I'd missed a bit of Circular Road and Ladies Mile, and it was a nice evening for a sunset wander up to Clifton. There was something I recorded along the way, not photographically but in video.
Bristol Zoo, the world's oldest provincial zoo, has recently decided to close its Clifton site after 185 years of occupation, which means that the sounds of wild animals will no longer drift incongruously through this leafy Georgian area. They're moving everything up to their existing second site, The Wild Place Project near Cribbs Causeway. As I was wandering the Downs, I heard some fierce roaring noises, so I decided to see if I could get a little closer while they were still going on and record a sound that's soon to disappear.
I don't have a way yet to put video directly on this site, so here's a link to the video of my attempt to catch a bit of the zoo noises that I just popped on YouTube. It's sad that this might be the last time I hear such noises in Clifton.
I still think of them as the "new" lights, but I think they were replaced in the early 2000s, so they're not that new.
An Evening Wander to the Gallows
06 Apr 2021
I'd originally intended just to pop up to the area around Alma Road, where I'd missed a few streets on earlier wanders. It was such a nice evening, though, I decided to extend my walk up to the very top of Pembroke Road, just outside my one mile radius, to take a few snaps of something intriguing I'd found in my researches.
I've driven, walked and jogged past the little triangle of land at the top of Pembroke road a great deal in my time in Bristol, but I didn't know that it used to be the site of a gibbet, in fact that the road itself there used to be called Gallows Acre Lane. According to the Durdham Down history trail, by Francis Greenacre (an excellent name for a Downs researcher!) among other sources:
...it was below this quarry near the top of Pembroke Road, once called Gallows Acre Lane, that a gibbet stood. It was sometimes occupied by those who had committed robberies on the Downs and was last used in 1783 to hang Shenkin Protheroe for the murder of a drover. Stories quickly spread that he descended from the gibbet at midnight every night and stalked through Clifton. Such was the alarm that his body was cut down
and buried.
Also very close to this little triangle of land was one of the gates of the extensive turnpike system...
Anyway. Along the way I encountered a wooden tortoise and a real squirrel, among other things. It was a good walk, and more light in the evenings means I can move my wanders out of the ticking countdown clock of work lunch-hours and be a bit more leisurely.
A great fish restaurant, clearly gearing up for some al fresco dining once the lockdown eases up a bit.
I only snapped this so I'd remember that I didn't miss this "street", but that it was a private car park.
According to the listing:
A fine composition with an Ionic tetrastyle-in-antis temple front, with a full entablature and dentil pediment with scroll and wreath in the tympanum.
It's certainly eyecatching, and very much doing its own thing compared to the rest of the road. Built c. 1845.
The actual street isn't much to look at. Unusually for Clifton, the front of one terrace stares directly at the back of another.
Well, I suppose that's actually the back of Pembroke Road, but it's on Buckingham Vale.
There are apparently some fine houses on Buckingham Vale apart from the posh neoclassical on the far end, but you don't get much of a view of them.
Okay, so it's not much of a secret, but it's hard to work out who it belongs to. There's a lot of big properties on Alma Road. I think this garden might belong to Laurel Bank, number 21, formerly Clark's Grammar School, apparently.
Interestingly, it seems that Clark's was a network of schools, including one not far from where I grew up in Ilford, on Cranbook Road. There's a website with some memories of the former Bristol school here, and one of the photos, titled "The Staffroom Window" is pretty much identical to my photo here.
I remember nothing of Clark's from my childhood, though they seem to be exactly the kind of place that my lot—Ilford County High—would have played cricket against, or something, so perhaps they got a mention in the occasional assembly.