Tagged: plant-community
Mostly the Metal Animals of a Clifton Garden
30 Aug 2021
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...
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...)
Site of the Rownham Ferry. Follow the link for a charming Loxton ink drawing on Know Your Place, also viewable at the Bristol Libraries Flickr collection.
This was a later site for the ferry, which earlier was a tad further out along the river. It would have been a key crossing point at this end of Bristol before the arrival of any bridges near here. Before the Ashton Swing Bridge and the Vauxhall footbridge arrived, the next-nearest crossing point would have been the Vauxhall ferry, which was where Vauxhaull Bridge stands now, I think.
After carefully skirting the edges of the homeless people's camp that I accidentally found skirting the edges of the tall grass between the allotments and here, I came across my first destination: the footbridge from Clifton Bridge railway station. This is apparently the actual station footbridge, still in service for crossing the lines.
Many people in Bristol will know this as one of the chief ways people from this end of town used to get to Ashton Court, especially for the music festival or the balloon fiesta, before the shiny new Festival Way footpath was installed a decade or two back.
I've been across it before on my wanders, but I didn't know then that it was a remnant of a railway station, rather than just a standalone bridge.
You can just about make out the platform still, there on the left. There used to be a second line and an eastern platform, too.
Clifton Bridge Railway Station was also known as Rownham Station from 1891 to 1910.
It was part of the Port and Pier railyway (as was Hotwells/Clifton station on the north side, nearer my house), opened in 1867, and closed, inevitably, by Beeching, with passenger services stopping in 1964 and freight a year later.
Wikipedia says "Freight trains continued to pass through the station, but their number decreased over time, with the line falling out of regular use from 30 March 1981. The route however was kept intact by British Rail, with occasional freight trains, and in 2002 a single track was relaid to allow rail access to Royal Portbury Dock", so I suppose even the single line we see here is newish.
Adjacent to the station was the New Inn, Rownham, which you can see a bit of in this photo from the Tarring Collection on KYP (or in this Tweet.
People will know the station site as the place where the local police's mounted and dog sections had their headquarters/stables/kennels, though they moved out a couple of years ago, I think.
Although the line is scheduled to return to passenger service as part of MetroWest, the nearest station will still be Temple Meads, so even though there may be passenger trains heading out to Pill and Portishead through here, ten minutes' walk from my house, I'd have to get all the way into town to come back out again, so it would probably be quicker for me to drive. Shame.
Ticking Off a Few Streets in Bedminster
31 Oct 2021
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...
It's a much sought-after caravan park. In fact I passed a caravan trying to get to it on the way home down Avon Crescent, where—because of the temporary road closure on Cumberland Road—you often at the moment see arguing couples trying to reverse a caravan out of the no-through-way street to try to find the diversion they should have been using in the first place. It must be quite entertaining for the whole terrace.
Recreating a Loxton Drawing on a Lunchtime Jaunt
05 Nov 2021
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...
Autumn's a busy season in Royal York Crescent Gardens.
(This is also the reason the photos of Royal York Crescent that come along in a minute look slightly hazy! It's not my lens, honest...)
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...
Or possibly a caravan-park-to-be. This is the old Police stables and kennels, and dog-training ground, I think. There are plans afoot for the Baltic Wharf caravan park, forced out of its home by the plan to redevelop the area as flats (which I imagine will be touted as "affordable" and then turn out to be luxury apartments with at most 5% barely-"affordable" apartments around the back), to this site.
Former site of the Rownham Ferry, or one of them, at least. The ferry was there for centuries before being rendered obsolete by the Ashton Avenue Bridge, among others. King Charles allegedly crossed it in 1651, on his way to Leigh Court, but it was there for a long time before and after, closing in the 1930s.
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.
But both unlocked, and standing open. I chanced it, on the basis that I wasn't going to do any harm to the place, and there weren't any signs telling me to keep out.
I don't know for sure if I was even trespassing, but for goodness' sake don't trespass on actual railways, kids. I'd carefully done my research and there haven't even been tracks here since 1921.
It's actually an electric kettle. I doubt it's contemporary with the railway :) Looks a bit more 1970s than 1870s to me.
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
If I hadn't seen the photos and maps I'd have had no clue that there was once a busy railway station here, with three tracks, a platform, a ticket office, a turntable, a station master's house and so on. The last train would have been, I think, on 19 September 1921.
Hotwells Halt, the extension platform put in just north, on the other side of the first tunnel, survived until 1922, but after that everything would have changed for the Portway.
Not everything was lost, though. The rest of the line was effectively saved by the fact that it joined up to the main rail network (and didn't need to be completely obliterated to make room for the road.)
The joining to the mainline was achieved by the Clifton Extension Railway, which included a tunnel from Clifton Down to Sea Mills, the next station along from Hotwells Halt, and the closest surviving Bristol Port Railway station to Bristol.
The CER line is still in use, and we'll be taking a route that checks in on the tunnel in a few pics from here...
This is known for being something of a fragile area. Here's a picture of the earlier dangerous face being blasted away in the summer of '76, to stop it falling on the Portway. Every year the Portway is closed for a day or two to allow for a close inspection that can lead to the planning of remedial works. I'll often get a bit of notice of this, as they have to put the warning signs up quite early down in Hotwells so people can plan their alternative routes.
I knew the tunnel from the Clifton Extension Railway emerged somewhere around here. Checking maps later, it turned out my hunch that it was hidden in these trees was about right. The giveaway is the little gate there. Let's take a closer look.
From To Keep Open and Unenclosed, the Management of the Durdham Down Since 1861, Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 2005:
On the Avonmouth side of the Pembroke Road shaft two further shafts were made (one vertical to a ventilation turret in the Gulley and the other horizontal to an opening in the face of the Black Rock Quarry.
So, bearing in mind that this is Black Rock Quarry, I'd say there's a good chance this is the third, and least photogenic, ventilation shaft for the Clifton Extension Railway Tunnel. Later on in this wander we'll see the other two, which are rather prettier.
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.
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.
A Constitutional to Burwalls and Back
21 Dec 2021
The recent lack of posts here is mostly due to my feeling very run down following having a couple of wisdom teeth extracted. Having had an emergency appointment yesterday1, hopefully I'll be on the mend now, though it does mean I'm on the kind of antibiotics where you can't touch alcohol for the whole of the Christmas period. I have tried to keep myself a little distracted from the pain by working on the nuts and bolts of this website—you should notice that the front page loads rather faster now than it used to, and that there's a shiny new statistics page that I'll probably be continuing to work on. Oh, and you should find that the tags below the photos are now clickable and will take you to a page of all other wanders that have photos with the same tag.
Today I felt like I needed to drag myself out of the house, but I didn't want to go too far, and I needed to get to the Post Office up in Clifton Village to post a Christmas card (spoiler for my parents: it's going to be late. Sorry.) As luck would have it, idly looking at the map I spotted that I'd missed off a section of Burwalls Road in the past, and that's basically one of the long-ways-round to Clifton Village, crossing the river to Rownham and walking up the hill on the Somerset side before coming back across the Suspension Bridge.
As I was heading for Burwalls Road I decided to make Burwalls itself the focal point of the walk, but unfortunately the mansion grounds are private and the place is hard to snap. Still, at least it gave me a destination. Burwalls was the mansion built by Bristol press magnate Joseph Leech, who I've mentioned before after buying a vintage book he wrote on a previous wander. There's a good article about the house on House and Heritage which has some photos from angles I couldn't ever get to. (Well, maybe with a drone, but it seems like the kind of area where they may be kitted out for clay pigeon shooting, so I probably wouldn't risk it.)
1 My dentist admitted that she probably needed to keep her internal monologue a bit more internal after we started the appointment with her staring into my mouth and immediately saying, "oh, that's weird." These are words one doesn't want to hear from a medical professional.
A delightful little return to the road, which peters out in a disconcerting rough slope in between two blind bends on a busy road with no pavement. It's not spectacularly pedestrian-friendly over here. This might explain why I never walked down the bit of Burwalls Road opposite. The forest path up Dead Badger's Bottom1 on the far side of the road skips the first section.
1 No, I will never get tired of saying that.
I was just about starting to feel better—the antibiotics seemed to have kicked in for my dental issues, and it had been some days since I'd left the house, and I was at last starting to get itchy feet. So, a wander. But where? Well, there were a few industrial bits near Winterstoke Road in the Ashton/Ashton Vale areas of Bristol that needed walking. I knew they were likely to be quite, well, unattractive, frankly. So why not do them while I wasn't feeling exactly 100% myself? Maybe it would fit my mood. Hopefully you're also in the mood for a bit of post-industrial wasteland, for that's what some of this feels like...
Then, at the last minute, I thought again about the Bristol International Exhibition—I've got a book about it on the way now—and that gave me another goal, which could just about be said to be in the same direction, and I decided to walk significantly further than my normal 1-mile limit and try recreating another historical photo...
Sadly I don't know much about the Ashton area; it's just on the edges of my mile and I rarely have cause to go there. It's brimming with history, I'm sure: the whole South Bristol area rapidly developed from farmland to coal mines to factories to its current interesting mixture of suburbs and industrial work over the last few hundred years. As a more working class area less attention was paid to it by historians, at least historically-speaking, than the Georgian heights of Clifton, and much of it has been knocked down and reinvented rather than listed and preserved. I see here and there some of this lack is being addressed, but I'm afraid I'll be very light on the history myself on this wander, as most of my usual sources aren't throwing up their normal reams of information as when I point them at Clifton, Hotwells or the old city.
I did take a lot of slightly different angles, clambering around on the slippery slopes of Bedminster Down and having the occasional entanglement with trees. I think this shows pretty much the same view as the historical photo, or at least as close as you can get by wandering around on the ground in about the right place today.
It was nice to be able to find it, and I've never walked to Bedminster Down before. And it's a nice palate cleanser after all that rather dreary industrial stuff, anyway...
And that's the note I'll leave things on, as it was already getting a bit dark for photography, so I mostly plodded my weary way home without any further snapping. At more than 9km it's not my longest wander ever, but it's about twice as long as the average, so I may have overdone it...
A Random New Year's Day Wander
01 Jan 2022
I picked a fairly arbitrary reason for a wander today. Really, I just wanted to do a New Year's Day wander just to get out of the house and to set a precedent for the year to come.
My ostensible reason was to investigate what looked like a road on my map that quartered the lawn in front of the Ashton Court mansion. As it turned out, this is just a muddy footpath/desire line similar to a half-dozen other tracks nearby, and must be some kind of bug or misclassification with the mapping system I'm using, but that's not important. What's important is that I went for a little walk on the first day of the year. As a bonus, I did happen to wander down a couple of sections of new footpath, so technically I broke some new ground too, which is nice.
