Tagged: fixture
I was just about starting to feel better—the antibiotics seemed to have kicked in for my dental issues, and it had been some days since I'd left the house, and I was at last starting to get itchy feet. So, a wander. But where? Well, there were a few industrial bits near Winterstoke Road in the Ashton/Ashton Vale areas of Bristol that needed walking. I knew they were likely to be quite, well, unattractive, frankly. So why not do them while I wasn't feeling exactly 100% myself? Maybe it would fit my mood. Hopefully you're also in the mood for a bit of post-industrial wasteland, for that's what some of this feels like...
Then, at the last minute, I thought again about the Bristol International Exhibition—I've got a book about it on the way now—and that gave me another goal, which could just about be said to be in the same direction, and I decided to walk significantly further than my normal 1-mile limit and try recreating another historical photo...
Sadly I don't know much about the Ashton area; it's just on the edges of my mile and I rarely have cause to go there. It's brimming with history, I'm sure: the whole South Bristol area rapidly developed from farmland to coal mines to factories to its current interesting mixture of suburbs and industrial work over the last few hundred years. As a more working class area less attention was paid to it by historians, at least historically-speaking, than the Georgian heights of Clifton, and much of it has been knocked down and reinvented rather than listed and preserved. I see here and there some of this lack is being addressed, but I'm afraid I'll be very light on the history myself on this wander, as most of my usual sources aren't throwing up their normal reams of information as when I point them at Clifton, Hotwells or the old city.
I think the whole of (admittedly-short) Albemarle Terrace had wreathes on the doors. Nice.
I do at least appreciate the fact that Bristol City Timber has a traditional wooden front door.
A Random New Year's Day Wander
01 Jan 2022
I picked a fairly arbitrary reason for a wander today. Really, I just wanted to do a New Year's Day wander just to get out of the house and to set a precedent for the year to come.
My ostensible reason was to investigate what looked like a road on my map that quartered the lawn in front of the Ashton Court mansion. As it turned out, this is just a muddy footpath/desire line similar to a half-dozen other tracks nearby, and must be some kind of bug or misclassification with the mapping system I'm using, but that's not important. What's important is that I went for a little walk on the first day of the year. As a bonus, I did happen to wander down a couple of sections of new footpath, so technically I broke some new ground too, which is nice.
It didn't take long for someone to scrawl the sentiments of the season on a bus shelter.
Lunchtime Reproduction (of an old photo...)
17 Jan 2022
This was basically the quick lunchtime jaunt I tried to do at the beginning of January, only this time I actually managed to get to roughly the viewpoint I'd been hoping for to recreate a historical photo of the Bristol International Exhibition.
I did this walk about a month ago, but I've been a bit poorly and not really up to doing much in my spare time, and it's taken me this long to even face processing even these few photos. Hopefully normal service will be resumed at some point and I can carry on trying to walk any roads and paths that I need to do to make this project feel complete...
Gargoyles? Caryatids? Gargyatids? Caryoyles? There's probably a proper name for them, knowing architecture...
This is St Vincent's Priory, a very odd building on Clifton Hill. According to Maurice Fells' excellent Clifton: History You Can See:
Its name conjures up visions to the sounds of monastic of an ancient religious foundation with its hallowed walls echoing chanting. But St Vincent's Priory is a private house and the likelihood is that it was built as such and probably conceived as an architectural folly...
Lunchtime Cliftonwood Wander
18 Jan 2022
Another workday, another quick lunchtime trip to get me out of the house. This time my flimsy pretext is a tiny bit of Clifton Vale Close that I'd apparently not walked, and the fact that although I'd walked down Church Lane at least once before I still hadn't taken a single photo of it. Really I just fancied a mosey through Cliftonwood in the sunshine, with the promise of a coffee from Clifton Village at the top of the hill.
The spire of St Mary Redcliffe, just left of centre on the horizon, is about the same location as the office I work in, at least a few days a week. I took the job half on the basis of the location meaning a lovely commute down one side or other of the harbour. And then a week after I started the first Covid-19 lockdown kicked in and I didn't get to do the commute again for many months.
This is apparently "Amhurst", "House and stables, now pair of attached houses."
In a few pics' time we'll take a closer look at the door, and its description in the listing...
As promised, a bit more detail of the Amhurst door from the listing:
Left-of-centre doorway has Gibbs surround and thin consoles to a pediment, architrave with a split key, overlight with 4 pointed-arched panes and a 6-panel door, the upper ones raised.
Hopefully someone plans to give it a lick of paint at some point soon...
Bedminster Trip for New Walking Shoes
26 Feb 2022
I needed to buy new walking shoes—my old ones were squeaking and it was driving me up the wall—so I ordered some for collection from Taunton Leisure on East Street in Bedminster, and decided to make picking them up an official wander.
I didn't cover any new ground within my mile, but I did take advantage of the trip to take in a few interesting things just outside my normal radius, mostly New Gaol-related. Along the way there are a couple of sanitation-related diversions, including a visit to a rare manhole cover. You can hardly wait, I can tell!
I didn't know this was here, in the dark corner of the covered bit of Bedminster Parade. I had to pop in, and procured a small selection of excellent beers.
My colleague Helen says she's a regular at the place, often stopping in for a beer.
It's a strange mix of shops. This rather high-end sounding deli is sandwiched between two mobile phone repair places.
I'm glad that you can tell from the other signs that this should say "Regal Amusements" and not "Illegal Amusements", as I'd originally assumed.
I mostly went out to hang out with my friends Sarah and Vik in Bedminster, but along the way I thought I'd take a closer look at something a little nearer home: the last crossing point of the Rownham Ferry.
A Coffee and a Curve
27 Mar 2022
I wanted to have a wander along to the Tobacco Factory Market for some shopping, and checking the map for any leftover nearby streets I noticed a tiny curve of road on the way into the modern flats at Paxton Drive that it didn't look like I'd walked down before. I wouldn't take me too far out of my way, so I decided to head there first and then across to North Street to get my groceries and a coffee...
It looks on the map like there are little side streets off Paxton Drive. There really aren't, just these little car parking areas. Hence I didn't walk down any of them.
I noticed I had a few things on my "potential wanders" list that could all be done relatively close to home, and in a fairly straight line, so I set off at lunchtime to recreate a photo of a now-defunct pub, wander behind a Spar (which turned out to be more interesting than I'd expected, but I admit it's a low bar) and spend some time browsing in Dreadnought Books before coming home via a coffee from Spoke & Stringer, a little diversion up Gasworks Lane and a tiny bit of the Rownham Mead estate I'd somehow previously skipped.
Uncredited apart from "from our archives" and undated, this photo appeared in this article on Hotwells in the Evening Post and made me want to re-create the same view today.
The pub had a few changes of name over time—in the Bristol Then and Now Facebook group people recall this being the Spring Gardens in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Someone remembers it turning into Durty Nelly's in 1995, but I swear it was back to being the Spring Gardens again by the time I moved to the area in 1999. Then it spent some time as La Demi Lune, which you can see on Street View in 2008, and then by 2009 it's back to The Spring Garden (without the "s").
So, from what I can work out, this snap was probably taken in the 1990s, most likely between 1995 and 1999.
This pub—which did good food, and had an extensive garden at the back, from what I remember, when it was the Spring Gardens in the early 2000s—is rather more bland in looks today, as we'll see in the next picture.
A Quick Swing Past Ashton Court
05 Jun 2022
Another day not dissimilar to my last wander: I'm feeling a bit tired and rather than just moping around the house I thought I'd find some tiny bit of somewhere that I'd not yet walked and get outdoors. This time I headed for the Tobacco Factory Market in Bedminster, as I often do, but went the long way around via Ashton Court Mansion as I knew there were some footpaths and a small section of road I'd not ticked off up there. Finishing all the Ashton Court footpaths will be quite a long job, but you've got to start somewhere...
I did feel rather better by the time I got home, and, pretty much astoundingly given the weather forecast, managed to avoid the rain completely.
First hint of Jubilee-related decorations on this rather odd balcony at the bottom of Granby Hill. The other decoration on this building is a peeing "KEEP YOU JOB KEEP THE POUND" sticker in the next window along that looks like it dates from the 1990s.
I've been pretty awful at reading so far this year, apparently averaging about one book per month. That's a far cry from 2019, say, where I got through 41 books in the year. Today's wander was prompted by my rubbish reading, as I needed to go hand back some books to the library, because I'd managed to renew them so many times that I hit the limit on renewals. Oops. Several of them were still unread.
So, off to the Central Library for me, tail between my legs. On the way there I did my best to recreate a historical photo of Dowry Square; while I was in the area I walked under the adjacent Norman arch and poked around behind the Cathedral, and I also had a little diversion to the city centre and came back along the south side of the river, hitting some trouble with the lock gates as I finally crossed the harbour back towards home.
Nowadays known as York House, and apparently offices, this was originally built by George Tully, like a lot of the rest of the square.
According to this Heritage Statement about No. 10 by Mark Hines Architects he started building in 1723, imagining accommodation houses for Hotwells visitors, but later built this large hotel and other buildings like the Clifton Dispensary at No 12 as the spa became more popular and the square evolved into a centre of medicine. I'm a little confused by that claim as the York Hotel went up c. 1780, according to the listing, when Tully had been dead for ten years, but perhaps it means he planned it before he died.
It's a cocktail bar inspired by the occult in general and the Tarot in particular, apparently. It's by the same people behind Hyde's, which I remember enjoying very much on the couple of occasions I've made it there.