Tagged: font
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.
Also looking nice and fresh since my last wander is the pair of community noticeboards, with a plethora of local news.
I found out recently that I was a winnner of one of the Hotwells & Cliftonwood Community Association 500 club prizes, which, alongside my membership, is a fun way to give money to the local organisation that puts up these noticeboards and does so much else for the community.
More notices, including a couple of newcomers to the local businesses: Hopewell, an estate agency, has opened up just down Hopechapel Hill in the place of The Landmark Practice (an environmental consultancy firm that seem to have moved out to Long Ashton) and HappyBack, who I'd noticed appearing down on the Hotwell Road a month or two ago.
A random reminder of a TV show of my youth: Londo Mollari, the Centauri Ambassador to Babylon 5. Spotted in the window of the Oxfam shop on Victoria Street after I grabbed a coffee from Foliage Cafe.
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...
Showing both the Clifton Industrial School on the Hotwell Road, and the Clifton National Schools building on the hill above.
(via the Loxton Collection from Bristol Libraries on Flickr.)
Quick Around-the-Harbour Wander with Lisa
20 Mar 2021
My friend Lisa was meeting another friend for a walk near the suspension bridge, so we fitted in a quick harbourside loop from my place first. We discussed gardening (we're both envious of the gardening skills of the Pooles Wharf residents; we can just about keep herbs alive, whereas they're growing heartily-fruiting lemon trees outdoors in England along with everything from bonsai to magnolias), cafes, work and architecture, among other things.
In what used to be the mediocre tea room for the Framing Factory/gallery. The new occupants are Jack Hudspith and Kate Evans, of Small Street Espresso fame. Small Street Espresso was one of my favourite cafes in town in the Beforetimes. Small Street Espresso is also the "sister" cafe to long-time Wapping Wharf resident Little Victories, just around the corner from here, but I'm not sure what's owned by who and/or still open right now.
I lived near here when I first moved to Bristol in the mid-1990s. I never had to say the name of the street out loud, but it always reminded me of "GELF" back then—the Genetically Engineered Life Form that was a monster-of-the-week in a couple of Red Dwarf Episodes.
Having just done the tiniest bit of research after noticing while looking at maps that a section of harbourside here used to be Gefle Close, I found out a couple of things that make me feel a bit dim now: It's pronounced, as near as I can work out, "Yev-leh", not "geffel", and it's a port in Sweden, more properly spelled "Gävle", apparently.
Which makes a lot of sense, given that this street is on the Baltic Wharf housing estate, on the site of the wharves where apparently a lot of things from that area were imported and unloaded, especially timber, though Gävle seems to be more well known copper and iron.
It seems Gävle is pleasantly green and widely-spaced these days, having had major fires rip through it three times in the last three hundred years, and finally rebuilit itself with big espanades and a larger grid system with firebreaks. Sounds nice.
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...
According to the Whitley Pump (twinned with St John's Conduit!) website:
Carmelite monks constructed St John’s Conduit, to carry water from the nearby spring to a friary that occupied the site now occupied by Bristol Beacon (Colston Hall as-was.)
It still carries water to a fountain outside St John the Baptist Church on Quay Street, which I'll have to go and have a look at—it's the church at the end of Broad Street, where National Westminster Insurance Services, my first employer in Bristol, used to be.
Presumably some of it also used to pop out here, but that's just a guess. The map of medieval cellars and conduits seems only to show a pipe passing near here from the Jacobs Well spring, not from the St John's source, which looks to be in Berkeley Square.
There's a bit more info here.
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 liked the way the light hit this Cumberland Basin flyover pillar, but I'm not illuminated by the message.
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.
Looks like something's getting spruced up ready for opening. Good. This bit of the Hotwell Road needs some nice new shops, of any and all varieties.
This place was joined up with the shop to the left as a hot tub sales showroom, and before that it was the View art gallery. Before that it was a brothel for a while, oddly, but I think the general community reaction was a bit too hostile for it to survive. Looks like it's now been separated from the next door shop.
It's the home of the Avon Wildlife Trust now, but back in the day it was Brandon Hill Police Station. It's marked on maps as recent as the 1950s Bristol Town Plans. An interesting tidbit from Bristol Then and Now on Facebook:
One of the first police stations in Bristol, it was opened in 1836 - policemen from the station used the building housing the Jacob's Well as a bicycle store and many old bicycle lamp batteries were found in excavating the small entrance to the mikveh. The Police Station closed in 1967 and it is now the base of Avon Wildlife Trust.
I feel like I can make out some kind of figure in the random blotches on this wall, but it might just be my imagination.
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.
I've mentioned before how this apparently continuous road contains York Place, Tottenham Place, Dover Place, Meridian Place, Bruton Place and Park Place—unsurprisingly it's confusing the delivery drivers. Some of the terraces re-start the numbering, so it can't be easy to figure out where you're meant to drop the pizzas off.
The best-known artist of the Bristol School, apparently. We have something in common: we've both seen Bristol harbour frozen over, though I never saw anyone brave enough to ice skate on it.
As well as ethnology, James Cowles Prichard was a psychiatric pioneer, serving as the—believe it or not—Commissioner for Lunacy, and was also the first person to define "senile dimentia" in the English language.
The Red Lodge is the sister historic house museum to The Georgian House, this one being Tudor/Elizabethan. These plaques really are rather handsome.
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...
"...struggle with dehydration, especially when it's hot or very dry. Leaving out a shallow bowl of water can make all the difference. Can park uses keep this bowl topped up to help wildlife?"
Swinging By Sydney Row
01 Apr 2021
Another workday, another quick coffee excursion. This time I decided to swing past Sydney Row on the way back from the marina car park where Imagine That have their horsebox. I didn't know until recently that the terrace was built for workers at the adjacent dockyard.
I've also gradually come to the conclusion that I don't really think very two-dimensionally when it comes to finding my way around or associating one place with another. I only realised in the last few days that the odd industrial building that takes up the other half of Syndey Row, the one that's always covered with graffiti, is the back of the dockyard works. In my defence, as it's tucked away in a corner of the little industrial estate that I've never ventured into (I rarely find I have a need for the products of safety valve manufacturers), I don't think I've ever seen the front of the building...
That website doesn't seem to be there, which seems a bit odd for a sign that's only just gone up.
The pivot point of the Plimsoll Bridge is getting a lot of paint-based attention at the moment. Graffiti seems to be rife all round, in fact. I suppose there's not much else going on right now...
