Tagged: font
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.
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.
A Journey to the Far East
25 Jul 2021
The far east of the intersection of my one-mile radius and Bedminster, anyway. I was feeling a bit tired this morning, so I motivated myself to get out of the door by imagining one of Mokoko's almond croissants. That got me on my way, and I wandered across to Bedminster, through Greville Smyth Park, along most of the length of North Street (looking out for new Upfest 75-pieces-in-75-days artwork as I went) and then onto some new roads at the far end.
I only wanted to knock a few streets off my "to do" list, but by the time I'd diverted here and there to check out various bits of graffiti and other attractions and come back via the aforementioned purveyors of Bristol's finest croissants, I'd walked 7.4km. Not bad for someone who woke up tired, and at least I've done something with my day. I'm very glad the weather broke (we had tremendous thunderstorms yesterday), even if some of the pictures might've looked better with a blue sky. I was getting fed up with walking around in 29°C heat...
I had no idea this was part of the Monarch's Way, a modern route that tries to trace, as best it can, the path of King Charles II's escape following his defeat by Cromwell in 1651.
Library, Bookshop, Coffee
03 Jul 2021
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.
Hurrah! Dreadnought are back after their refurb. I purchased the excellent pamphlet The Bristol Hotwell by Vincent Waite.
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.
I had no idea that both branches of London Camera Exchange (I always favoured the tiny shop at the end of Baldwin Street, but they also had one on the Horsefair) had been consolidated into a single shop on Park Street. It looks nice and shiny and modern, but I shall miss the quirk of the Baldwin Street shop.
This used to be the Park Street Convenience Store (formerly a Spar), which I don't think I ever set foot in, so it certainly has a lot more appeal to me now.
A Longer-than-it-looks Walk With Lisa
06 Jun 2021
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.
At some point Twitter might tell me who this is, at which point I may update this description...
...and on the same lamppost, some Kill The Bill literature. That's me: bringing you the social history that Google Street View can't.
convoke /kən-vōkˈ/
transitive verb
To call together
To assemble (also convocate /konˈvō-kāt/)
ORIGIN: L convocāre, from con- together, and vocāre, -ātum to call
We've actually seen the house he lived in in Clifton on a previous wander. Didn't know he had a gert big building named after him, though. His photography techniques for studying nuclear processes led to the discovery of the pion, and a Nobel Prize.
Bank Holiday Street Art
31 May 2021
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.
(my title)
By EMAN...LRS (as is the preceeding piece); I know very little about the Bristol graff scene, but apparently that's the Last Radical Souls krew.
Insane51 is a Greek artist who painted this magnificent piece at Upfest 2018.
As well as being great per se, it's also carefully designed so that if you put on a pair of 3D glasses, you'll see the skeleton in one eye, and the woman "in the flesh" in the other. Allow me to demonstrate...
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.
Looks like Hope Chapel is going solar. Seems a good idea, and you can barely see the roof from anywhere.
Assuming the home appreciates terrifying 1990s furniture, anyway. I assume TV tables will go the way of telephone tables. Maybe someone will be restoring these as retro side-chairs in the year 2055?
What's Egypt got to do with South Africa, you ask? It's the badge of the Gloucester Regiment.
The Glosters were the only regiment in the British Army to wear a cap badge on both the front and the back of their caps, and it's unsurprising that it references Egypt. At the Battle of Alexandria in 1801:
The front and rear ranks of the 28th were simultaneously engaged, whereby the soldiers received the order "Front rank stay as you are, rear rank about turn" and in commemoration the regiment later adopted a second cap badge, the 'Back Number,' worn at the back of their head-dress.
The Glosters were later merged with a couple of other regiments, but their successors, the Rifles, still wear the back badge.
The Theosophical Society also lets its lodge be used by a variety of other organisations, including the Bristol Dowsers; a branch of Carlos Castaneda's Tensegrity folk (some of the videos of Tensegrity are quite something); a meditation group; and the local branch of the White Eagle Lodge, founded by a medium who received various teachings from the eponymous founder.
Given that those are the groups who openly practise there, I can only imagine the list of occult factions who use the rooms on other days...
Coffee, Coronation and Clift House Road
28 May 2021
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 latter—the 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.
Though originally it was a revAlution, it seems. I think they missed a chance to turn the "A" into the anarchy symbol, which would have styled it out nicely...
The End of One Terrace and the Middle of Another
26 May 2021
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.
A London Wander in Southville
10 Apr 2021
There's a bit of Southville that I've been meaning to get to for some time, where the streets seem to take some strong inspiration from London. There's a Camden Road that crosses with an Islington Road, and a Dalston Road, even an Edgeware Road. For me these names are more evocative than the rather more exotic names I passed by to get there—Sydney Row or Hanover Place, say, because I've actually been to the places in London. The last time I was in Islington I saw Monkey Swallows the Universe play at The Angel, and I can't think of Camden without remembering a gondola trip with my friend Tara where a cheery youth played Beatles music for us on a saz...
I really liked this little area, with its mostly well-kept pretty houses and hints here and there of the creative side of the residents. It's arty and down-to-earth at the same time, and I wouldn't mind living there, I think.
On the way there I got the chance to walk through Underfall Yard for the first time in a while, and on the way back I had my first take-away hot food for many months, grabbing some crispy fried squid from the excellent Woky Ko at Wapping Wharf.
It was actually the decorative stone carvings of animals that caught my eye, but the birds in the window stand out a lot more in the photo.
A famous contralto, apparently. Contralto Corner quotes Sir Thomas Beecham:
"On a clear day, you could have heard her across the English Channel"
...and notes that:
She gained her DBE as a result of the WWI concerts that she organized.
I've actually looked this place up with a view to getting a bumper repaired. Apparently he's very good.
It's the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, often shortened to Mar Thoma Church:
Reformed Oriental church based in Kerala, India. While continuing many of the Syriac high church practices, the church is reformed in its theology and doctrines. It employs a reformed variant of the West Syriac Rite Divine Liturgy of Saint James, translated to Malayalam.[
It surprised me to find it on a random street in Bedminster, but I don't know much about religion, or Bristol's Syrian community, assuming that that might be the flock, in general?
