Tagged: grassland
A Door, a Square, a Few Night Shots
04 Dec 2021
I didn't take many pictures on this quite long wander, partly because Lisa and I wandered across to Bedminster via Bower Ashton, which I've snapped quite a lot of on the last couple of walks, and also because we lost the light fairly quickly, though spending a half-hour drinking mulled wine in the Ashton might have had a little to do with that...
Before we left Hotwells I wanted to visit a door I'd heard about on Cornwallis Crescent and also take a little look at a couple of houses in Dowry Square to consider the 1960s regeneration of Hotwells.
Site of a manor house since the 11th Century. Last time I was in there it was also with Lisa, my companion for this walk, as a team of storytellers from Red Rope Theatre read us ghost stories just before Halloween. It was excellent.
They should form a pub. This is just over the road from The Ashton, so there's perhaps a little too much local competition. Lisa and I popped in for a mulled wine.
This is arguably better than the last time I tried to snap a cow in this field, but it's still terrible. Maybe next time I'll have a longer lens, or the cow will be closer...
This field is called St John's Chapel. On the oldest map I can find, from somewhere between 1844 and 1888 it's marked as the "Site of St John's Chapel" but with no sign of the chapel, so it must be very long-gone. "The Chapel was dedicated as St. John or St. James depending on the source consulted, and it presumably fell into decay after the village was deserted, in the 13th or 14th century. No trace remains above ground level today, and the site is just a field" says The Churches of Britain and Ireland.
I can see on the same map that there's clearly been a pub where The Ashton is for a very long time. It was called The Smyth Arms back then.
Bower Ashton is an interesting little area just south of the river from me—in fact, the Rownham Ferry used to take people over from Hotwells to Bower Ashton, operating from at least the twelfth century to around the 1930s.
It's a strangely contradictory little area, with a cluster of old and new houses sandwiched in between the busy A-roads and significantly more industrial area of Ashton and the bucolic country estate of Ashton court roughly east to west, and also between Somerset and Bristol, north to south.
I've been around here before, mostly poking around Bower Ashton's arguably most well-known bit, the Arts faculty campus of the University of the West of England, but I'd missed at least Parklands Road and Blackmoors Lane, so I initially planned just to nip across briefly and wander down each in turn. On a whim, though, I texted my friends Sarah and Vik in case they were out and about, and ended up diverting to the Tobacco Factory Sunday market first, to grab a quick flat white with them, extending my journey a fair bit.
To start with, though, I nipped to a much more local destination, to see something that you can't actually see at all, the Gridiron...
(I also used this wander as a test of the cameras in my new phone. I finally upgraded after a few years, and the new one has extra, separate wide and telephoto lenses compared to the paltry single lens on my old phone. Gawd. I remember when speed-dial was the latest innovation in phones...)
Not bad, and it's certainly better than not having a wide-angle lens in your pocket everywhere you go. I won't complain too much. "My iPhone oversaturates my photos. Also my wallet is too small for my fifties and my diamond shoes are pinching..."
All of a sudden, everything's a bit quieter and there's open fields in front of me. And livestock, if you can spot the cow in the far distance, just to the right of the tree.
See? Livestock. Although the zoom on my phone camera really does show why people are still dragging big lenses and cameras with large sensors around with them.
I'm not sure if this is my nearest cow—there are some in Leigh Woods, too—but it's still quite reassuring to know that it only takes about a mile for me to be next to some livestock. This is far further than it would have been even a hundred years ago, when there were still cowsheds and a slaughterhouse behind the Pump House (as opposed to the Rownham Mead housing estate) and when the Cumberland Basin still had sheep pens along the side...
I was really just busking my route at this point, and finding a handy entrance to Ashton Court I figured that wandering back through the estate was a good plan.
No idea what's through here. Let's go take a look. Is there a way to get back to Parklands Road? I don't even know if you can get into Parklands Road from this end...
Presumably these are school playing fields, though there was no great barrier to entry. They seem to be school-adjacent, but maybe they're more public... I followed some people who looked like they knew where they were going, which I find is often an expedient way of getting lost.
There's not much to see here. However, trying to find out what was here has been quite fascinating.
By the looks of it, this was part of the site of the Bristol International Exhibition, and I also found a photo of "Bristol's Own B Company" geotagged here—apparently the Glosters were stationed on the site of the exhibition after its early closure, so that might tie up, especially as the photo is dated 1914-1919 and the Glosters were here until 1919.
Aha! Yes, as you can see from this other postcard, that building was indeed part of the exhibition. Gosh. I hadn't really realised just how grand the exhibition ground was—you can certainly see why they called it the White City.
So, this would definitely have been part of the exhibition ground—around where the grandstand was—as would almost all of the surrounding area. Wow. Must've been quite something. They had everything from a rifle range to a replica of Bristol Castle.
As for this particular derelict bit of fenced-off ground, I give it five years before we see some architectural drawings of luxury flats with the bare minimum of affordable housing hidden around the back. Will it be as well-built as the plasterboard and gypsum White City? Who knows...
Later edit: Ah! On a later wander I found the key piece of information about this strip of land that let me search for it properly: its name. This strip of land, from the Stone Yard we just saw to here is the Ashton Gate Depot, a former railway sidings, and apparently I may have been overly cynical about the luxury flats, though there are definitely plans to turn it into flats, according to the Evening Post:
The proposed redevelopment of the site would include 99 one-bed apartments, 138 two-bed apartments, two three-bed apartments and 14 four-bed townhouses.
According to plans submitted to the council, all the new housing will be affordable because it will either be shared ownership or socially rented.
The development will span across five buildings between four and nine stories high.
There's more info and a detailed map on this planning document.
From all the old maps I can see, the actual railway sidings were in between this strip of land and the new development at Paxton Drive, around where the dedicated Metrobus line now runs. Perhaps this strip to the west of them was used for general railway storage, or maintenance buildings, or what-have-you. Now I've found out a bit more it should be easier to dig into the history; knowing railway enthusiasts there's probably a quaint little three-volume hardback set on The History of the Ashton Railway Depot...
I recently indulged myself by buying a little piece of history. I've mentioned Samuel Loxton and featured and linked to his drawings before, often in the eminently browsable Loxton Collection albums that Bristol Libraries has on Flickr. So when I saw a Loxton drawing of Hotwells pop up on eBay, I decided to get myself a little treat.
I don't think there's any Loxton drawing that features the road I actually live in—it's not very visible from anywhere else, not being one of these Clifton terraces that's perched at the top of a hill, or anything like that, and it's invisible in most views of the area. However, this Loxton drawing, Hotwells, Looking across the river from near the Clifton Bridge station, is probably the closest near-miss I've seen.
I decided to wander out one morning and see if I could reproduce the picture, and also take a photo or two of what's now become of the Clifton Bridge Station, which is still just about discernible in places.
(Then on an even stranger whim I decided to check out a possible little cut-through from Cumberland Road to the harbourside I'd been eyeing up on my commute to work, so walked to Wapping Wharf for a croissant via this potential new route, but that bit's not quite as interesting...)
Okay, so here's the reason that the earlier rabbit had a big red cross through him, and that this one has been painted out. Bristol's graffiti community is currently trying to erase these rabbits after a terrible revelation about the man who had been painting them.
Here's the Bristol Post, on Damian Lasota, aka "Eldey" or "FollowMyRabbits":
A pervert with a penchant for grannies tried to rape one elderly woman in her home and sexually targeted another.
Damian Lasota was described by a judge as the "stuff of nightmares" after preying on the two lone females in Twerton, Bath.
His campaign of terror was halted after police installed CCTV at the women's homes and he was caught in action and arrested.
Lasota, 27, of Parry Close in Southdown, Bath, pleaded guilty to attempted rape, two charges of trespass with intent to commit a sex offence and two charges of exposure.
He appeared in the dock at Bristol Crown Court with a grey jumper draped over his head.
Judge Julian Lambert handed him a 20-year sentence, comprising of a 13-and-a-half year jail term and six-and-a-half years extended licence.
So, that's pretty damn terrifying, and also the reason why there won't be any more rabbits in Bristol. There's a little more info in this Somerset Live article.
Green Squares and Secret Gardens
31 Jul 2021
At the end of July I went to have a look around some of the private gardens opened up by the annual Green Squares and Secret Gardens event. Sadly it was compressed into a single day this year, for various Covid-related reasons, it seems, so I didn't get to poke around too many places. I went to:
- A talk by the oldest resident of Victoria Square
- The St Vincent's Rocks Hotel garden
- The Paragon garden
- Cornwallis Crescent gardens, both east and west
- The Polygon garden
And snapped a few things in between, too. It was a lovely day—a bit too hot, if anything—and it was interesting to get into a few places I'd only ever seen from the outside, especially The Paragon and Cornwallis gardens, which are the least visible to passing strangers of all of them.
The Paragon feels quite odd to me, because this is the side where all the front doors are, but it definitely feels like the back of the terrace. Not sure why.
Man on a Mission
17 Apr 2021
I went rather outside my area today, as I went to pick something up from the Warhammer shop on Wine Street (Games Workshop as-was, and before that I think perhaps a rare retail outlet for Her Majesty's Stationery Office? I may be mis-remembering...) Anyway, a friend of mine wanted something picking up and posting to him, so I figured I'd knock some streets off my list along the way.
I first headed for the St George's Road area, walking down the narrow Brandon Steps and finding some strange wall art on Brandon Steep, then headed to the Old City via Zed Alley. The Warhammer shop visit was friendly and efficient, and, mission accomplished, I treated myself to a sausage roll and a flat white from Spicer + Cole, to take away and eat in Queen Square with its current decoration of hearts. I finished off with a detour up Park Street, looking out for St John's Conduit markers, before finally crossing Brandon Hill on the way home.
Quite a long wander, all told, and I'm a bit knackered today...
Recently decorated with hearts to kick off the #LoveBristol campaign. It looks amazing from above in this drone footage.
I may have trod some new paths on Brandon Hill. I wasn't sure, as the network of routes is quite complicated and I was too eager to get home to muck around checking my map.
Leftovers with Lisa
01 May 2021
I didn't get to all the little leftover streets around the northeastern part of my area in today's wander, but I definitely knocked a few off the list, plus Lisa and I enjoyed the walk, and didn't get rained on too badly. We spotted the hotting-up of Wisteria season, checked out Birdcage Walk (both old and new), ventured onto the wrong side of the tracks1 and generally enjoyed the architecture.
1 Well, technically we probably shouldn't have been on the grounds of those retirement flats, but nobody started chasing us around the garden with a Zimmer frame
These feel like retirement flats, so I guess the swing might be for younger visitors...
Victoria Square Underpass
06 May 2021
I'm meant to be taking a little break from this project, but in my Victoria Square researches after my last walk I noticed a curiosity I wanted to investigate. The community layer on Know Your Place has a single photograph captioned, "The remains of an 'underpass' in Victoria Square".
Looking back through the maps, I could see that there really did used to be an underpass across what used to be Birdcage Walk. I can only guess that it was there to join the two halves of the square's private garden that used to be separated by tall railings that were taken away during WWII. Maybe it was a landscaping curiosity, maybe it was just to save them having to un-lock and re-lock two gates and risk mixing with the hoi polloi on the public path in the middle...
Anyway. Intrigued, I popped up to Clifton Village this lunchtime for a post-voting coffee, and on the way examined the remains of the underpass—still there, but only if you know what you're looking for, I'd say—and also visited a tiny little road with a cottage and a townhouse I'd never seen before, just off Clifton Hill, and got distracted by wandering the little garden with the war memorial in St Andrew's churchyard just because the gate happened to be open.
EDIT: Aha! Found this snippet when I was researching something completely different, of course. From the ever-helpful CHIS website:
When there were railings all round the garden and down the central path, in order that the children could play together in either garden there was a tunnel for them to go through. This was filled in during the 1970s but almost at the south east end of the path if one looks over the low wall the top of the arches can still be seen.
It was parish church up until the Luftwaffe bombed it in 1940; the remains were demolished in 1956 and after that Christ Church became the Clifton parish church.
Until that point there had been a church on or very near this site since at least 1154, from what I can see on ChurchDB and ChurchCrawler...
Here's a snap of what the last building that stood here used to look like from the Bristol Archives, and here's an earlier one.
ON THIS SITE STOOD THE THIRD PARISH CHURCH OF ST ANDREW CLIFTON DESTROYED BY ENEMY ACTION 24TH NOVEMBER 1940
Near as I could make out, anyway, and I think the date's right.
A Trip to the Library
08 Jun 2021
I had to return a book to the library—Ellic Howe's Magicians of the Golden Dawn, very interesting, thanks for asking—so 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 went out simply wanting to knock off the very last little unwalked section of Clanage Road, over by Bower Ashton, which has been annoying me for a while as it's quite close by and I've walked the other bits of it several times. So, my plan was to nip over to Greville Smyth Park via a slightly unusual route to wander Clanage Road and tick it off.
Along the way, though, I inevitably got a bit distracted. I took a few photos of Stork House, a grand Hotwell Road building that's recently been done up a bit (I imagine it's student lets, though I'm not sure) and which I found a reference to in a book about the Port Railway and Pier the other week, and also tried to match up a historical photo of Hotwells before the Cumberland Basin Flyover System laid it waste, which included some interesting markers I'll have to do a bit more digging into...
It's surprising how much I forget is packed into this little area. There's the old station, the vast allotments, the cricket ground, the former police horse and dog unit, all the other stuff... Looking at Google Maps there may also be a day nursery and an escape room. It's a busy little area.
The more I research it, the more I find that Hotwells had far better transport links back in Victorian and Edwardian times than it has today. Along with buses that went to more useful places than the City Centre, there were trams, the funicular up to Clifton, the landing stage for paddle steamer services and two railway stations all within easy walking distance of me.
Today I took a day off work as preparation for doing the bookkeeping for my tax return1, and took a wander along to the site of what would have been my nearest station, Hotwells (or Clifton, as it started out in life), nestled in the shadow of the suspension bridge, the Bristol terminus of the Bristol Port Railway and Pier.
From there I wandered down the Portway, following the original line, until I got to the area around Sneyd Park Junction, where the tunnel from the slightly later Clifton Extension Railway joined up with this originally-isolated BPR line. Then I headed up to Clifton through the "goat gully" at Walcombe Slade, seeing the few above-ground bits of evidence of the tunnel (which is still in regular use) along the way.
It was a lovely day, and a good walk, and it was interesting to daydream of the times when I could have walked a few minutes from my flat down to Dowry Parade, caught a short tram ride to Hotwells Stations, and then headed from there to Avonmouth, perhaps even to board a transatlantic passenger service. The completion of the Clifton Extension Railway that linked the Avonmouth station with Temple Meads made relatively direct transatlantic travel from London via Bristol possible, with passengers travelling up from Paddington to Temple Meads, on to Avonmouth on the Clifton Extension Railway and Port Railway and Pier line, then perhaps catching a Cambpell's paddle steamer—which sometimes acted as tenders for large steamers—to a larger ship that was headed out for Canada, say.
1 I've learned that the best approach is to take two days off and deliberately do something that's not my bookkeeping on the first day, as otherwise I just inevitably end up procrastinating and feeling guilty on the first day no matter what. I have an odd brain, but at least I'm learning strategies for dealing with its strange ways as I get older...
2 Information mostly gleaned from Colin Maggs' The Bristol Port Railway & Pier and the Clifton Extension Railway, The Oakwood Press, 1975.
I can't achieve the high vantage point of the next photo, and the sun direction wasn't exactly favourable, but I think this at least proves I'm in the right spot :D
I'm fairly sure I'm standing about where the train tracks used to be, facing the entrance to the station at the south platform end. To the left would have been the turntable for rotating the train onto the run-around loop to go back the way it came, and behind that the little stationmaster's house.
