Tagged: fixture
I didn't even think I'd manage to get out today, such was the weather forecast. As it turned out, it's been quite a nice day, and I managed to nip up to Clifton Village to pop to the Post Office. As with my last outing, I decided after snapping one shop-front on Regent Street that I might as well snap the whole row, and muse on a few of them, the only service I really offer over and above Google Street View for a lot of my pictures ๐
And the pedestrian and vehicle entrances to Regent House, the offices above. Looks like someone's managed to smash Knight Frank's window; maybe it's a protest against the house prices in the area.
At the time I was a little annoyed to lose the cashpoint at this former HSBC branch (it used to be at the bottom of the middle window; they were stone-faced up to about the height of where the railings reach now.
Then it turned into a Waterstones, and now I have to be careful not to go in too often as I will inevitably buy something to add to my vast tsundoku pile.
Just a quick trip up to Clifton Village to enjoy a bit of sunshine and grab a coffee. No new roads, and only two pictures, but I did at least snap a plaque I'd missed related to some recent reading, and enjoy a quirky Clifton Village house.
I recently finished Bristol Diamonds, by Emma Marshall, and Hannah More is one of the minor characters. I didn't know anything about her until I read her Wikipedia article, but she sounds fascinating. She was in the same generation of Bluestockings as Frances Burney, who coincidentally wrote the other historical novel featuring the Hot Well that I've read: Evelina.
Anyway. As I was looking her up, I discovered that I'd missed a plaque when I wandered down Windsor Terrace: she used to live at number 4. Lovely window treatment, too, perhaps to stop nosey people like me staring in while we're taking snaps of the plaque.
Another dash to Greville Smyth Park for a coffee from Rich at Hopper, but at least this time I managed to divert a bit and knock off a small section of Cumberland Road I'd managed to miss on previous excursions. Along the way I muse on a strange residence in between a warehouse and a tannery, and wonder if the Mayor might be deliberately letting the Cumberland Road Flyover area go to seed...
I composed a few photos to get the full length of wall in here. The whole of the Cumberland Road Flyover System is covered in tagging and graff at the moment; either it's really burst into life as pastime for bored youth since Covid or the council have given up on cleaning it up.
I suspect the latterโthe more clapped-out and unattractive this bit of Hotwells is made to look, the more the Mayor can point at his pet Western Harbour project as an improvement.
I managed to knock off a reasonable chunk of the roads I had left to walk around the University at the north-eastern extremity of my mile on this nice sunny walk. As well as being impressed by the number of big townhouses now occupied by various departments, I took some time on my way there to check out a war memorial, and some time on the way back to do a little extra wandering of Berkeley Square.
An economist, and one of the first people to take the Tripos at Cambridge. She and Alfred Marshall, her former tutor, founded the teaching of economics at University College, Bristol.
I made a joke on Twitter about the Great Georgian Basketball Craze of 1783 and it's the most engagement I've had in months.
I actually came to Berkeley Square because of some other historical research I'm doing. The vault of the Bristol lodge of the Stella Matutina (an offshoot of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) is meant to have been destroyed in Berkeley Square, and I've been idly wondering which building might have housed it.
Not that there would be any clue left lying around now, of course, but it was fun to ponder on which door might have admitted you to the lodge, assuming they were ever actually based here. That's the problem with secret societies: it's quite hard to find things out about them.
The 23 attracted me as much as the colour of the golden door, given that it's a significant number for the Illuminati...
A nice warm Bank Holiday Monday saw me walk back over to Bedminster to do justice to something we glimpsed on my last wander. Along the way I spotted a couple of new pieces of street art tucked away on the south side of the Cumberland Basin Flyover system, so this turned into a micro-graffiti walk.
It used to be an Auction Rooms, for both Dreweatts and BCVA, from what I recall. I went to my very first auction there, in fact, back when I had a year of "Artist Dates" in 2013.
I should start doing those again, now we're (hopefully) going to be able to go places more freely again.
Set back behind the shops on the main road is this little pair of houses. All well-kept and tidy, and not quite as odd a place to be as the one that's isolated in the car park behind them, but still quite a strange location.
The track on the map doesn't tell the whole story of this walk with Lisa around and about Clifton, Berkeley Square, Brandon Hill and the harbourside, because the batteries on my GPS ran out while we were on the roof of Trenchard Street car park, it seems. Oh well. I think I did most of the area I was interested in finishing off around the University; there were only a few new bits around Brandon Hill that won't be on the track, and I can easily do them again.
Still, technology woes aside it was a nice walk, albeit a bit warm for climbing all those hills, and sat on the harbourside watching the world go by for a while, too. It was good to see the Bristol Ferry Boats carrying people around again, especially.
This is apparently a "smaller, adaptable studio space" connected with the University's adjacent Wickham Theatre.
"Identified as an Unlisted building of Merit in the St Michael's Hill and Christmas Steps Conservation Area Character Appraisal, January 2009.". It's certainly attractive, clearly old, and feels quite out of place dwarfed by the Uni's modern architecture. Interesting little house.
I was completely wrong in my guess about the little silver piple in the mid-distance; it's not the Airstream trailers on the roof of the boutique hotel in St Nick's; Lisa was right that it's too far to the left in this view. It is, in fact, the roof of Cabot Circus, much further away.
In my defence, it was harder to see with the naked eye, especially as my naked eyes don't work very well anyway...
I had to return a book to the libraryโEllic Howe's Magicians of the Golden Dawn, very interesting, thanks for askingโso I decided to pick the Central Library as my drop-off point and walk down a segment of Deanery Road that I've surprisingly overlooked so far. In any normal time I'd have been walking to work that way quite often, or heading through at the weekend on the way to do some shopping in the city centre, or for a coffee at St Nick's, but those excursions have been quite thin on the ground for the last year or so, for obvious reasons.
I've never been inside a single building on Deanery Road itself; the Library is technically on College Green and the rest is mostly student accommodation or Bristol College buildings, by the looks of things. It's a fairly mediocre street, used merely to get to other places. (St George's Road, which merges into it, at least has the distinction of several good shops verging from the practical and long-lived car radio fitters to the excellent little Dreadnought Books, sadly currently closed for refurbishment...)
After dropping off my book I came home via the harbourside, the better to enjoy the nice sunny blue skies of the day.
I hadn't really planned to go out for a wander yesterday; I just got the urge and thought "why not?" (Well, the weather forecast was one possible reason, but I managed to avoid the rain, luckily.)
I wanted to finish off the A369โas it turns out I may still have a small section to go, but I've now walked the bulk of it out to my one-mile radiusโand also a few random tracks in Leigh Woods. I'm still not really sure that I'm going to walk them all, especially after discovering today that "the map is not the territory" applies even more in the woods, where one of the marked tracks on the map wasn't really that recognisable as a track in real life... I'm glad I'd programmed the route into the GPS in advance!
Anyway. A pleasant enough walk, oddly bookended, photographically at least, by unusual vehicles. Leigh Woods was fairly busy, especially the section I'd chosen, which was positively dripping with teenage schoolkids with rah accents muttering opprobrium about the Duke of Edinburgh. I'm presuming the harsh remarks were more about taking part in his award scheme than the late Consort himself, but I didn't eavesdrop enough to be certain...
A little housing estate I've snapped before. I think it's an alternative spelling of "Fowey". Which frankly, being actually phonetic, should probably be the actual spelling.
I was headed into town to return RA Gilbert's biography of AE Waite to the library and along the way I noticed that Dreadnought had finished their refurbishment, but wouldn't be open until midday. That left me some time to kill, so I bimbled around the old St Augustine's/Gaunt's area for a while, then headed up Park Street for a coffee and a snack to eat on Brandon Hill before heading home the way I'd came so I could pop in and buy a pamphlet on the Hot Well I'd been interested in for a while.
I imagine this is the house whose owners also own the plot with planning permission; it seems to be the end of their back garden.
Something tells me that this side passage that leads through to the side door of the chapel has been here quite some time.
Speaking of Toni and Guy, I guess the salon used to be a Halifax. Given the glue remnants, it seems a newer plate has fallen off at some point, revealing a bit of history.
According to the little blue plaque (there's a close-up in a couple of photos' time) this building won a Bristol Civic Society award in 1991. Not sure what for. Terrifying mock-Tudorness?
We're looking out onto the junction of Colston Street and Pipe Lane, between Amelia Court and an eaterie called Moroccan Corner.
We're a little bit beyond the extremes of my one-mile perimeter here, but that's okay. I was interested in having a poke around the whole little complex.
Lisa had a couple of hours to spare before going up in a hot air balloon (exciting!) so we went for a quick local walk, revisiting a bit of Cliftonwood we've seen before, exploring the secret garden I'd visited before that I thought she'd enjoy (I didn't take any new photos there) and then pushing on to another garden, Cherry Garden. Last time we passed this way, I'd noticed the gate, but we hadn't gone in as I'd assumed it was private. I'd since found it on CHIS's list of communal gardens in Clifton, so I wanted to have a look inside this time, and try to figure out whether it was private-communal or public, and possibly Council-owned, like several of the other gardens in Clifton.
I'm assuming it doesn't get opened much, or there'd be a little more pruning going on. Still, very pretty for a garage...
