Tagged: facade
Doors and walls, closed paths and chalk
11 Nov 2020
I'd love to walk the Chocolate Path again at some point, but it's been closed since it started falling into the river. Still, on this wander to get a coffee I walked down a road I'd not normally use and found a door dressed up as a wall and another door that had been bricked up for real. Odd.
I also found a lovely bit of art on one of the Cumberland Piazza pillars on my way home.
This place always seemed like an eccentric enterprise, but I never met the owner, so I don't know if he was an actual eccectric himself.
So, there's a side door that looks like bricks, and a main entrance that clearly was a door and is now very solidly bricked up.
Clifton Village: Jesus and the Tympanum
12 Nov 2020
My goal is walk down every public road within a mile of me; sometimes it's not easy to tell what's public. I've passed the turning for Cornwallis Grove a thousand times, but never had a reason to venture down it, and although the street signs at the end seem to be council-deployed and I didn't spot any "private" signs, it's a gated road and definitely feels private.
Gathering all the white middle-class privilege I could muster, I wandered down and was rewarded with the sight of a Victorian pump, a statue of Jesus, and from the end of the road, a view of a private garden that once belonged to a private girls' school.
The Cornwallis House history page says:
In the early 20th century the house, together with Grove House, became a Catholic school, St Joseph’s High School for Girls.
The Congregation of La Retraite took over the school in 1924, with the nuns living in Grove House while the schoolrooms were
in Cornwallis House. The headmistress was Mother St Paul de la Croix (Sister Paula Yerby). By the 1970s La Retraite High
School had around 700 pupils.It closed in 1982 and the building was bought by Pearce Homes Ltd (now part of Crest Nicholson) who developed it into 21
flats. Grove House next door was bought by the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, and was later converted into flats in 2007.
According to the history page on its website, it's been everything from the private residence of the wealthy nephew of a shipping agent who had a hand in the slave trade, to a Protestant nunnery and a Catholic school, St Joseph’s High School for Girls. It's now residential.
This is opposite Grove House, but I'm wondering if it might be a remnant of the adjacent Cornwallis House having been a Catholic girls' school or a Protestant nunnery. All I know is that I've walked past the end of this road a thousand times without knowing how close to Jesus I was.
Inspired by this plaque, I'm now (a couple of months later) about a third of the way through EH Young's Chatterton Square, set in a fictionalised Clifton called Upper Radstowe, whose eponymous square is based on Canynge Square.
A formidably beardy cricketer of yore, widely considered one of the greatest players in history.
These swimming ladies look quite Beryl Cook, which is appropriate, given that I took a picture of a plaque to her up in more northern Clifton recently.
Rabbits, bad pedestrian signage and good coffee
13 Nov 2020
A quick trip with the aim of finding a better way to Greville Smyth park and a good coffee. Sadly I was stymied yet again with the former—it turns out that you do apparently have to take a strange loop around the houses (or at least around the roads) to get to Greville Smyth any way other than my normal route, unless you're prepared to vault some railings. It may be that the disused steps from where the skater kids hang out to the flyover above might once have led to a shorter route, but it's hard to tell. The geography in the area has always confused me.
On the plus side, Rich, who runs Hopper Coffee from a Piaggio Ape does a great flat white and often has a good sign. (I collect cafe signs...)
Misty Walk
30 Oct 2020
Something of a misty start took me around the viewpoint at the end of Spike Island and then on to try to find a new way into Greville Smyth Park. I got lost.
I think of the four spiral staircases (two at either side of the span of the Plimsoll Bridge) this is the least-used.
Hotwells and Clifton/Clifton Village
14 Nov 2020
A local walk with my friend Lisa in tow, including a coffee from the cafe in the Clifton Observatory, where I have fond memories of experiencing my first camera obscura, and cake from Twelve in Clifton Village, one of my favourite recent finds for both food and flat whites.
The Tribe Building at Clifton College. I can't find much out about the place, other than it curently houses the Art, Classics, Religious Studies and Politics departments.
I'm fairly convinced that there's not a single working public water fountain anywhere in Bristol.
Awarded the prize, apparently, "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and for the resulting discovery of the pion." So a fellow photographer, I suppose. I tend to favour larger targets, though.
Outside the Zone
01 Nov 2020
This started as a little local walk with my friend Lisa, but when we randomly met my friends Sarah and Vik at Ashton Court, turned into joining them for a very long wander out to Abbots Leigh Pool. Most of this was well outside my one-mile radius but it was a lovely walk.
Sunday Morning
15 Nov 2020
My friend Sarah mentioned the high tide and I managed to drag myself out early, though still a little late. We nearly drowned in torrential rain, but the weather changed quickly and we ended up walking over to Bedminster in sunshine.
I have since worked out how to use the milk vending machine, and very nice milk it is, too.
Does it say "Tremlethoe"? If it does, I have no idea what it means, and neither does Google. Sounds like a Cornish fishing village. It was the odd balustrade that caught my attention.
Not sure why it's Gathorne. Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 1st Earl of Cranbrook, was Home Secretary for a while under Queen Victoria, so may well have been contemporary with the street.
Passionfruit, I think. Easier to tell at the time, but the memory has faded. I'm writing these up on 3 Feb 2021, and November seems like a very long time ago.
Sunday Afternoon
15 Nov 2020
A walk back from Bedminster to my place, mostly down Duckmoor Road, which I found a little dull—probably because it reminded me a little of the suburbs I grew up in on the outskirts of London—then held up slightly by some filming on Ashton Avenue Bridge. They were trying not to let the crowds build up too much in between takes, it seems, so it wasn't a long delay.
Dowry Square Jaunt
16 Nov 2020
A quick lunchtime jaunt to Dowry Square, which is very close to me but, being effectively a cul-de-sac as well as a square, I've probably only circumnavigated a couple of times in the last couple of decades.
I never need to walk down Polygon Road or Dowry Road. I couldn't say I've not been down these streets at all before the One Mile Matt project, but if I have it's been vanishingly rare and so long ago I don't remember it.
I believe the Hotwells Pine owners decided to retire, like the owner of the fish & chip shop a little further along. Asia Channel did excellent food, but had some kind of family crisis and closed down quite abruptly, sadly. The dentist on the end seems to do a good trade, and Hotwells Fabrics is still going. The one in between them and Asia Channel has been threatening to turn into a deli for a few years now, I think, but perhaps that's fallen by the wayside. Seems a terrible shame when we could do with a few more good local shops. Hotwells has definitely thrived more than this, in the past.
I hope the Bear survives. It's a bit too sport-oriented for my taste, but they've been welcoming the couple of times I've been in.
It looks like the fish & chip shop might be getting a refurb, and the restaurant at the end, which used to be a great Persian place is apparently now a great Indian place. The bow-fronted place in the middle was a small "corner" shop for years, but there's barely any more space in there than there is in my living room so it must've been hard to keep it going. That closed down four or five years ago, I think.
In between the fish & chip shop (if you look really closely at the door on the right-hand-shop you might see the centre pane has a stained-glass fish in it) and the defuct newsgent/grocer is an architect. I can't imagine they get a lot of passing trade, but they've been there for a while so presumably it suits them...
As I said in another photo, I've not been in here since it changed from being a Persian restaurant called Shiraz. I hear it's very good, but I didn't even spend much time in restaurants in the Beforetimes. You can see me in the reflection there, so I suppose this is technically a selfie :)
I daresay if you look around the pavements nearby you'll find some evidence of people still enjoying the effects of nitrous oxide. #whippets
I wonder what else he did? Dowry Square was very popular with the medical profession, which sprung up around the hot well, mostly because of all the poor buggers dying of varous ailments who came along to be cured by drinking mildly contaminated hot water.
Jaunt to a Closed Coffee Shop
17 Nov 2020
A fruitless wander, as Spoke and Stringer (who I thought might do a decent flat white) were closed, and the only other harbourside inlet offering were a bit too busy to wait at, especially as I'd spent some time wandering some of the convolutions of Rownham Mead. This last congeries of dull alleyways and brown-painted garages was at least somewhere I've never been before, in parts.
There are yet more plans to turn this pub into yet more flats. I heard from a few different people that the owner has a habit of renting it to people but making them responsible for repairs, which normally turns out to be a bad deal for them as the place is falling apart. Of course, I've only heard that side of the story from the renters. I've experienced it in a few different forms, and in some of them it was a truly excellent local pub.
Up until the owner retired a few years ago, this was one of those great combination Chinese/fish & chip takeaway places, and I used to enjoy everything from the crispy chilli beef to the cod & chips.
From what I can see in the National Archives, the Trinity Rooms was owned by Holy Trinity Church, which makes sense. I don't know what it's curently used for, though my guess would be that it was sold off and has been turned into flats.
I don't spend a lot of time in pubs, but if I had to choose a "local", this is the one I would choose. Welcoming, interesting, and often to be found with a nice fire burning in the winter. After the last time some fool drove their car through the front wall (this bend on the Hotwell Road appears to be a magnet for bad drivers), the boarding up was decorated with the bonnet badge of the offending vehicle, a Toyota, if I remember correctly.
I've walked along the Hotwell Road on the other side of this wall a thousand times—possibly ten thousand. Never seen this side of it before.
When the commuter ferry was still a thing—the council subsidy was cut in the wake of the last global recession—I used to wander through this little alleyway all the time to wait at the ferry stop at this little inlet for the boat to work. Happier times.
A lot of folks aren't fans of the architecture at Poole's Wharf, but I'd love to live in one of these houses.
According to Wikipedia, this sculpture was commissioned by the house builders who developed the site, designed by a student at the University of the West of England Art School with engineering by David Abel's Boatyard.