Tagged: mixed-use
Royal York Crescent
02 Nov 2020
I've taken a lot of photos of Royal York Crescent over the years. This time I walked right to the dead-end bit at the far west corner and found a plaque to the Empress of the French. Call me hard to impress, but among the scientists, novelists, architects and artists whose plaques litter the rest of the area, that seems quite minor claim to fame.
I enjoy walking along Royal York Crescent enough that it's a frequent diversion from my quickest way home
Local
03 Nov 2020
A very local exploration today, but there are still bits of the near field that I never need to walk down, so it didn't take me long to find somewhere I haven't been in a decade or more, the little enclave of smaller Victorian houses around Oldfield Road and Sandford Road. I'd really like to live in one of those houses, but I doubt I could afford it.
I'm pretty sure there's no angle to get a good snap of Grenville Chapel from without using a drone.
Little Clifton Village Details
09 Nov 2020
I like The Paragon as a terrace, especially the bowed porches. On the other side of the road, a house attic has a stone lion surrounded by rocaille leaves, according to its listing.
I also love the detail of the arrows in the wrought iron of The Mall's balconies. Today I discovered Westfield place, a road I'd never encountered that runs up to the rear of the Coronation Tap. (It's a famous local cider pub, but I've only been in a couple of times. I'm more of a beer man.)
Plimsoll Bridge Swing
10 Nov 2020
I went to grab a coffee from Imagine That's little horsebox by the marina, completely forgetting that they don't open on Monday or Tuesday. On the plus side, on the way back I was in time to watch the Plimsoll Bridge swinging for a tidy little yacht.
I realised I was five minutes late back from my lunch I was and scurried back to work at this point.
Clifton Village: Jesus and the Tympanum
12 Nov 2020
My goal is walk down every public road within a mile of me; sometimes it's not easy to tell what's public. I've passed the turning for Cornwallis Grove a thousand times, but never had a reason to venture down it, and although the street signs at the end seem to be council-deployed and I didn't spot any "private" signs, it's a gated road and definitely feels private.
Gathering all the white middle-class privilege I could muster, I wandered down and was rewarded with the sight of a Victorian pump, a statue of Jesus, and from the end of the road, a view of a private garden that once belonged to a private girls' school.
The Cornwallis House history page says:
In the early 20th century the house, together with Grove House, became a Catholic school, St Joseph’s High School for Girls.
The Congregation of La Retraite took over the school in 1924, with the nuns living in Grove House while the schoolrooms were
in Cornwallis House. The headmistress was Mother St Paul de la Croix (Sister Paula Yerby). By the 1970s La Retraite High
School had around 700 pupils.It closed in 1982 and the building was bought by Pearce Homes Ltd (now part of Crest Nicholson) who developed it into 21
flats. Grove House next door was bought by the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, and was later converted into flats in 2007.
According to the history page on its website, it's been everything from the private residence of the wealthy nephew of a shipping agent who had a hand in the slave trade, to a Protestant nunnery and a Catholic school, St Joseph’s High School for Girls. It's now residential.
Sunday Morning
15 Nov 2020
My friend Sarah mentioned the high tide and I managed to drag myself out early, though still a little late. We nearly drowned in torrential rain, but the weather changed quickly and we ended up walking over to Bedminster in sunshine.
Sunday Afternoon
15 Nov 2020
A walk back from Bedminster to my place, mostly down Duckmoor Road, which I found a little dull—probably because it reminded me a little of the suburbs I grew up in on the outskirts of London—then held up slightly by some filming on Ashton Avenue Bridge. They were trying not to let the crowds build up too much in between takes, it seems, so it wasn't a long delay.
Dowry Square Jaunt
16 Nov 2020
A quick lunchtime jaunt to Dowry Square, which is very close to me but, being effectively a cul-de-sac as well as a square, I've probably only circumnavigated a couple of times in the last couple of decades.
I hope the Bear survives. It's a bit too sport-oriented for my taste, but they've been welcoming the couple of times I've been in.
In between the fish & chip shop (if you look really closely at the door on the right-hand-shop you might see the centre pane has a stained-glass fish in it) and the defuct newsgent/grocer is an architect. I can't imagine they get a lot of passing trade, but they've been there for a while so presumably it suits them...
Jaunt to a Closed Coffee Shop
17 Nov 2020
A fruitless wander, as Spoke and Stringer (who I thought might do a decent flat white) were closed, and the only other harbourside inlet offering were a bit too busy to wait at, especially as I'd spent some time wandering some of the convolutions of Rownham Mead. This last congeries of dull alleyways and brown-painted garages was at least somewhere I've never been before, in parts.
There are yet more plans to turn this pub into yet more flats. I heard from a few different people that the owner has a habit of renting it to people but making them responsible for repairs, which normally turns out to be a bad deal for them as the place is falling apart. Of course, I've only heard that side of the story from the renters. I've experienced it in a few different forms, and in some of them it was a truly excellent local pub.
I don't spend a lot of time in pubs, but if I had to choose a "local", this is the one I would choose. Welcoming, interesting, and often to be found with a nice fire burning in the winter. After the last time some fool drove their car through the front wall (this bend on the Hotwell Road appears to be a magnet for bad drivers), the boarding up was decorated with the bonnet badge of the offending vehicle, a Toyota, if I remember correctly.
It doesn't enjoy the best of reputations among the nearby residents, especially on Nextdoor, but the couple of times I've been in it seemed like a perfectly servicable cheap boozer with a loyal clientele.
Underpass
25 Nov 2020
A quick lunchtime jaunt for coffee. I've often wondered about the dots on the wall of the underpass. Apparently they're not intelligible Braille. Maybe it's Marain :D
Office? Control room? Whatever it is, I've always been a bit fascinated by the little suite of rooms under the north side of the Plimsoll Bridge. The little gantry is directly below the place where the swing bridge meets the road proper, so presumably it's there for inspections when the bridge is swung?