Tagged: neighbourhood
Lisa and I went for a longish walk, but I didn't take many photos. Mostly we just wandered and nattered. Unusually, my target was outside my 1-mile radius on Burlington Road in Redland, where I snapped quite a few photos of the collection of artistic animals by Julian Warren. This was mostly to provide a fairly arbitrary destination for a roundabout walk in Clifton...
The controversy about the pedestrianisation of this section of Princess Victoria Street continues to rage on NextDoor (seriously; I just had a look and the most recent thread about it had more than three hundred comments!)
Anything to do with parking/people driving into Clifton Village is always an insanely hot topic. I've never been able to get that worked up about it, myself, but then I live within walking distance (and I'm not trying to run a business that relies on people driving to me...)
A quick lunchtime jaunt to Clifton Village. Along the way I admired the new sign on Hope Chapel and added to my tsundoku collection.
Among the many arguments about this pedestrianisation experiment, there has been quite the sub-debate over the delightfully modern COR-TEN steel steel/hideously ugly rusty* planters.
- Delete as applicable
I needed to pop to the library, as they'd kindly dug a book out of the reserve store at the B Bond warehouse for me and emailed me to let me know it was ready. So, I took a little trip to town, straight down the Hotwell Road, and spent a few hours reading before stretching my legs with a walk to a new cafe in the actual castle (or remnants thereof, anyway) of Castle Park, before heading back home down the other side of the harbour. As well as books and coffee, I bumped into a remote-controlled pirate ship, which isn't something you see every day, even in Bristol.
It's nice to see a new business open up on this stretch of the Hotwell Road. Since Asia Channel disappeared (and took with it my favourite local source of crispy beef) and the Hotwells Pine folks retired, it's all been looking a bit tatty.
Have I ever looked up and noticed the view above Western Car Radio, which looks like perhaps the terraced back garden of St George's Primary? If I have, I don't seem to have snapped it before.
There are some unexpected links between Triodos Bank and some of the magical stuff I've been researching. I first found out when I checked the upcoming events at the Bristol Theosophical Lodge and saw a director of the bank would be giving a talk there. Apparently the bank is rooted in the ideas of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy. The Guardian says:
Its roots (like the UK bank Mercury Provident, which it took over in 1995), are in the anthroposophy movement. This refers to the ideas of the Austrian spiritualist thinker Rudolf Steiner, who died in 1925 and whose interests included education, 'biodynamic' agriculture, eurythmy (movement as art) and therapeutic medicine.
Triodos Bank's statutes committed it to anthroposophical principles until 1999, when this formal link was dropped, and in recent years the bank, under its current head Peter Blom, has embarked on a policy of reaching out beyond Steiner adherents and of broadening its appeal. Nevertheless, Triodos's origins are reflected in the fact that most of the Dutch directors come from within anthroposophy, and it is banker for many Steiner-inspired projects.
The chambers were apparently once the entrance to the castle's great hall. Historic England has this section of the castle at 13-14th century
I was interested to see it, but a little underwhelmed, if I'm honest. A fairly bland interior and a perfectly adequate flat white—not much "wow" factor.
Rear of King Street. I would say "interesting frontage", but presumably this is interesting backage.
There's a deeply disturbing reason that this rabbit has been crossed out, but I've written that up in a later Wander, so you'll have to wait for an upcoming photo in October.
It's bad enough that the terrace opposite was demolished, without some hurriedly-qualified HGV reversing into the new1 buildings on this side...
1 I suppose "new" is relative. But on most of the maps I've been looking at recently these flats don't exist yet. I think the earlier buildings included a smithy and at one stage what looks like a tap-room, the Stork Tap, for the larger Stork pub that used to occupy what's now Stork House on the main road below. You basically couldn't move in Hotwells without falling into a pub throughout most of its history. The modern-day suburb seems positively teetotal in comparison...
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...)
I'd broadly planned to figure out the vantage point Loxton had used for his drawing by lining up Windsor Terrace with The Paragon, so I started taking bearings fairly early.
This, on the higher level, is the garages around the back of the houses on Cumberland Road.
And that, on the far side, is my regular commuting route in the mornings (and often the evenings—I only walk along the north side of the harbour if I'm late for work or if I fancy a change, as the Hotwell Road is a bit too trafficky to be that pleasant.)
So, this must be where everyone from the harbourside flats parks their cars. I never really thought to wonder where the parking was before.
This is my more usual view of the modern flats in question. I have to say, I do rather like these flats. If I had a spare million quid, I might even buy one...
I could spend a lot of time at the Docks Heritage Weekend, poking my nose into industrial places along the harbourside that are usually closed off, but throw open their doors once a year to show off a bit of the backstage area of Bristol's floating harbour. In fact, I warn you: the next wander is a long one, and will have quite a few photos.
However, for today's wander, on the Saturday, my friend Lisa needed a shorter walk than our usual long rambles, as she's recovering from an operation and still a little under the weather, so we just wandered into town for some food and back, with me making mental notes of the places I wanted to come back to on the Sunday... We walked through Underfall Yard, along to the L Shed (this is the warehouse next to the M Shed museum, where they still have the kind of fun old industrial stuff that used to be crammed into the M Shed's predecessor, the old Industrial Museum), through the street food market in town to Ahh Toots for cake and then back home. So, still quite a walk, but no hills and not so much of Lisa having to hang around waiting for me to fool around taking photos as usual, at least...
The Patent Slip is actually a grade II listed building. Personally I live in a II*-graded building myself; not sure I'd want to slum it down here.
I figured I'd try a bit of street photography, seeing as there were actually people around. This isn't bad for a from-the-hip shot, but I'm a bit out of practice, as you'd expect.
I'm afraid that this is a bit of a badly-curated wander, where I mostly just popped out to find out a little of the history of Underfall Yard and poke around the various open workshops, and, in hindsight, really didn't take pictures in any kind of coherent order. So there's a lot of pictures, but they don't really tell the story that, in hindsight, I seem to have been trying to tell, of the unusual electrical substation in Avon Crescent, the Bristol Electricity that predates the National Grid but is still in use, the history of the hydraulic power house... It's a bit of a mess.
But I suppose sometimes these wanders—always chronologically presented in the order I walked and took photos—simply will sometimes be a bit of a mess. Let's hope you still get something out of it, anyway...
You can see this once apparently bright and airy building has had every window bricked up.
I understand that something in or around this building still supplies the odd electrical requirements (specifically, 360V "Bristol voltage") for some bits of Underfall Yard, which is our next stop, so more about that when we get there.
While it's not a listed building, is is notable: it's one of the earliest reinforced concrete buildings in the UK, apparently, construction starting in 1905. I assume it was up by 1907, as that's when Undefall Yard installed their electric pumps.
This oddity of history predates the National Grid and was originally fed from Feeder Road power station (well, Avonbank, on Feeder Road, to be precise. We've seen a bit of that history before, as a line marker for the line from Portishead to Feeder Road.) It was connected to Feeder Road by 1906, with a 6,600V line.
I've added a couple of historic views of the building as the next two photos in the wander, but I'll also pop this link to a Loxton drawing of the Avonbank electricity works, 1908 here.
The patent slip itself. Even empty, it would be quite a weight to haul in and out of the water, let alone with the size of ship it sometimes deals with—if the Matthew were winched up in this photo, you wouldn't be able to see much sky.
For the first time in a while, I had the time and energy to go further afield and knock off some new roads from my "to do" list. I headed through the first Hotwells Festival to Ashton and Bedminster to cross off a few of the suburban roads south of North Street.
First, though, I decided to try to reproduce an old photo of the now-demolished Rownham Hotel just around the corner from where I live...
It's not technically a public road, I'm sure, but it looked like a handy way of routing myself so I didn't have to go down the same street twice.
I presume a foxcote is like a dovecote, only for foxes. Nice to imagine them all there in their array of little foxholes.
Thanks to Bristol24/7 I know this is a sculpture called Right to Climb by Walid Siti.
I had an unsuccessful wander last week, on Tuesday afternoon: my GPS died within about five minutes of leaving the house, and I didn't notice, plus I found hardly anything I'd been looking for. On the plus side, as I was wandering around Park Street I decided to nip into London Camera Exchange on the offchance they had a secondhand Canon 17-40mm lens. I've been thinking of buying one for around a year, I think.
Long story short: not only did they have one, but due to a mistake with their price labelling which they kindly honoured, I now have a shiny new (to me) wide-angle lens and it cost me less than £300, which is a very good price for one of these in good condition (and including a lens hood.)
So, rather than try to salvage Tuesday's walk, here's a walk where I basically just bimbled up to Clifton Village for a coffee and wandered around taking photos of as many wide views as I could find. I took a lot more photos than these seventeen, but as you might expect, a new lens takes some practice getting used to, so most of them ended up in the "outtakes" pile.
I'm not a fan of the asymmetry of the front door and, erm, garden path? Drawbridge? Skywalk?
There were only a few streets left to wander in the more residential bit of Bedminster, so I thought I should target those today. The streets themselves weren't that notable, though Balfour Road has a contrasting mix of old and new housing. I tried to snap a few more interesting things along the way there and back, snapping all three of the familiar bond warehouses, nipping onto North Street to find some new street art, and finding a few pumpkins for good measure. It is hallowe'en, after all...
One of the three roads I needed to knock off my list. Just a fairly average slice of suburbia, really.
There were quite a few signs that Frobisher Road is a sanctuary for hedgehogs. We've actually seen a similar sign at the far end, on an earlier wander that went past the end of the road.
Again, pretty sure this isn't a public road, and frankly it didn't look like I'd see anything interesting even if I did risk venturing to the end...
I like a lot of things about the streets of Bedminster. The view across to the rolling hills is one of them.
Trying a new angle with my new wide lens, but even that can barely fit them in square-on. Plus I could do with a higher sun to avoid the shadows, tricky to come by at this time of year.
Why yes, I'm still trying out the new wide-angle lens. Never mind the quality, feel the width.
I did do a much longer wander earlier in the week, but that'll take me some time to process (and cast a plethora of photos into the "out-takes" pile!) In the meantime, here's my lunchtime jaunt, taken to give myself a break from doing the company bookkeeping to send to my accountant so the taxman doesn't sling me in chokey.
I've recently bought a slightly creased secondhand copy of Redcliffe Press's 1992 collection of Samuel Loxton drawings, Loxton's Bristol: The city's Edwardian years in black and white. It's a nice selection of Bristol Library's collection of the drawings. I'd noticed a drawing of 25 Royal York Crescent, a house I pass quite often, so I thought I'd wander up the crescent on the way to pick up some lunch and try to reproduce it.
On the way back I took a few photos of Clifton Hill Bank as the crowdfunder to make quite a lot of it into a wildflower meadow has just hit its target, so I figured some "before" shots might be a good investment for the future...
There's a plan to cover this with wildflowers, and I just heard that it has achieved funding, so I figured I'd take a chance on taking a few "before" photos, even though I didn't know where the planting will take place!
As it turns out, having read the crowdfunder info, this is roughly the "westernmost third" where the wildflower meadow will be planted.
