Tagged: plant
Swinging By Sydney Row
01 Apr 2021
Another workday, another quick coffee excursion. This time I decided to swing past Sydney Row on the way back from the marina car park where Imagine That have their horsebox. I didn't know until recently that the terrace was built for workers at the adjacent dockyard.
I've also gradually come to the conclusion that I don't really think very two-dimensionally when it comes to finding my way around or associating one place with another. I only realised in the last few days that the odd industrial building that takes up the other half of Syndey Row, the one that's always covered with graffiti, is the back of the dockyard works. In my defence, as it's tucked away in a corner of the little industrial estate that I've never ventured into (I rarely find I have a need for the products of safety valve manufacturers), I don't think I've ever seen the front of the building...
That website doesn't seem to be there, which seems a bit odd for a sign that's only just gone up.
Somebody told me that the four anchors at the corners of Cumberland Basin point to points of the compass. I'm not sure there's that much consistency. The other seem to point NW, NE, and SE; this one seems to be about ten degrees off due east. Maybe I should go down with my compass and check :D
I noticed I'd missed a bit of Circular Road and Ladies Mile, and it was a nice evening for a sunset wander up to Clifton. There was something I recorded along the way, not photographically but in video.
Bristol Zoo, the world's oldest provincial zoo, has recently decided to close its Clifton site after 185 years of occupation, which means that the sounds of wild animals will no longer drift incongruously through this leafy Georgian area. They're moving everything up to their existing second site, The Wild Place Project near Cribbs Causeway. As I was wandering the Downs, I heard some fierce roaring noises, so I decided to see if I could get a little closer while they were still going on and record a sound that's soon to disappear.
I don't have a way yet to put video directly on this site, so here's a link to the video of my attempt to catch a bit of the zoo noises that I just popped on YouTube. It's sad that this might be the last time I hear such noises in Clifton.
I was trying to take a photo of the Portcullis and what I thought was also a disused pub next door, assuming it was big building on the right, but according to this discussion on Flickr, the Gaping Goose was actually next-door-but-one. I'll have to see if I can reproduce that photo of the sign...
I thought this was a fairly short shortcut to Bridge Valley road that I was tryihg to knock off my list. I was wrong, and I retreated. There's a big network of paths all through this (literal) neck of the woods.
I wonder how many generations of mildly disreputable youth have got up to no good on this rock?
Slightly stymied again by not knowing my way thorugh this little network of overgrown paths, I mostly just followed my ears towards the sound of traffic on Bridge Valley Road.
An Evening Wander to the Gallows
06 Apr 2021
I'd originally intended just to pop up to the area around Alma Road, where I'd missed a few streets on earlier wanders. It was such a nice evening, though, I decided to extend my walk up to the very top of Pembroke Road, just outside my one mile radius, to take a few snaps of something intriguing I'd found in my researches.
I've driven, walked and jogged past the little triangle of land at the top of Pembroke road a great deal in my time in Bristol, but I didn't know that it used to be the site of a gibbet, in fact that the road itself there used to be called Gallows Acre Lane. According to the Durdham Down history trail, by Francis Greenacre (an excellent name for a Downs researcher!) among other sources:
...it was below this quarry near the top of Pembroke Road, once called Gallows Acre Lane, that a gibbet stood. It was sometimes occupied by those who had committed robberies on the Downs and was last used in 1783 to hang Shenkin Protheroe for the murder of a drover. Stories quickly spread that he descended from the gibbet at midnight every night and stalked through Clifton. Such was the alarm that his body was cut down
and buried.
Also very close to this little triangle of land was one of the gates of the extensive turnpike system...
Anyway. Along the way I encountered a wooden tortoise and a real squirrel, among other things. It was a good walk, and more light in the evenings means I can move my wanders out of the ticking countdown clock of work lunch-hours and be a bit more leisurely.
I knew I'd missed a street! This wasn't my destination tonight, though, and there was a children's party going on in the street, by the sound of it, so I decided to come back here another day.
From the satellite view on Google Maps, it looks like it's a little courtyard surrounded by houses on all sides.
I only snapped this so I'd remember that I didn't miss this "street", but that it was a private car park.
According to the listing:
A fine composition with an Ionic tetrastyle-in-antis temple front, with a full entablature and dentil pediment with scroll and wreath in the tympanum.
It's certainly eyecatching, and very much doing its own thing compared to the rest of the road. Built c. 1845.
The actual street isn't much to look at. Unusually for Clifton, the front of one terrace stares directly at the back of another.
The Guardian's obit calls her "a saviour of historic Bristol".
At that time, there were 400 buildings in the city earmarked for demolition but Dorothy, who was instrumental in their listing, managed to save most of them, including the 18th-century Brunswick Square in St Paul's, via many public inquiries. Among her later successes, Dorothy helped to save the Clifton lido – dating from 1849, it is one of the oldest surviving lidos in Britain – which nearly succumbed to a developer's bulldozer in the late 1990s.
Well, I suppose that's actually the back of Pembroke Road, but it's on Buckingham Vale.
There are apparently some fine houses on Buckingham Vale apart from the posh neoclassical on the far end, but you don't get much of a view of them.
Clifton Village Lunchtime Coffee
07 Apr 2021
Unusually for my recent lunchtime coffee trips, I managed to find a new road to walk down: Caledonia Mews, which has a little entrance off Princess Victoria Street and runs between it and Caledonia Place. I've noticed it before a couple of times—if you look up from Princess Victoria Street you can see some of it, standing tall above the low buildings on the street itself—but until last night I'd not set foot in it, I think.
As well as focusing on this charming little mews, I looked in on the demolished site of the old WH Smith, and spotted what I think is part of the now-private-houses St Vincent Rocks Hotel that I'd not really noticed before, tucked away between Sion Lane and Sion Hill.
The entrance is on Princess Victoria Street, but I imagine based on the name that it was built as a mews for Caledonia Place, which lies on the other side, forming, with West Mall, the surrounding streets of the Mall garden.
The end of the road. Looks like there's some garden access by a little footpath, but that's obviously rather more private
For some reason I always think of Princess Victoria Street as running north-to-south, but that's because of my terrible sense of direction, I suppose, as it's really more east-north-east.
It's a lovely little mews, and looks very well-kept. I like the way that despite being fairly uniform in size and height that things are a bit more mismatched and higgledy-piggledy once you look a little closer.
I think the corridor you can see running from the back of the building on Sion Hill to the building on the right, on Sion Lane, is part of the old Saint Vincent Rocks Hotel. It was converted into houses, and the front bit, just the main building on Sion Hill, called Trafalgar House now, was on the market for £1,550,000 back in 2019.
The listing mentions:
To the rear a late C19 long brick extension raised on open arches
...anyway. I think it's likely the Sion Lane building was a hotel annex, though I think it's separate flats now. I wonder which of the two sides owns the corridor between them, assuming it really is a corridor? Or maybe even that's flats now...
Next time maybe I'll wander across the green bit and see what I can see over the wall. I think the area just used to be the hotel car park, but there might be more interesting things to see.
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.
I was taken by the colour and texture of these three houses. I have three towels with a very similar colour and finish, at least visually...
The door across this is normally closed. You can just about see Wallace and Gromit smiling on the side of the building, presumably not coincidentally, given that Aardman Animations' office is down there and up the driveway to the left.
I think this may be a remnant of St Raphael's Church, whose adjacent almshouses for aged seamen are now the site of the flats at Perret's Court, just to the left there.
Ah! Yes, according to ChurchCrawler:
1853-9 by Henry Woodyer, closed 1878 following disapproval of the bishop and not reopened until 1893. Some war damage, the church was again closed and became part of a factory in 1953 and demolished 1954. Part of the W front still stands in the garden between two blocks of flats.
Leading diagonally down the bank opposite you can see a ramp which I believe would have led down to the actual ferry that the bridge replaced.
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.
There are some sturdy and pleasantly-proprotioned houses along the Coronation Road. I don't imagine they're enjoying the extra levels of traffic since Cumberland Road has been so impacted by bits of it falling into the river; it wasn't exactly quiet before. Maybe the reduction in general traffic since the pandemic has at least mitigated things.
I think it's a guesthouse. There are several on this stretch of Coronation Road. Nice big place, and that stonework would probably clean up a treat. I imagine we'll see less of this once electric vehichles become more of a thing.
24 photos in and I've finally reached my ostensible target for this trip, starting with Camden Road.
Long Bemmie Wander with Lisa
11 Apr 2021
My friend Lisa joined me again, this time for a long wander through "Bemmie". In fact, I tweeted recently using "Bedmo" as my abbreviation for Bedminster, and apparently there's something of a culture war going on. From what I can glean, the longer-term residents call it "Bemmie" and consider "Bedmo" a name made up by hipster gentrifiers.
I had no idea, but then I didn't grow up around here, and I don't live in Bedminster, and I'm not a hipster. I'm not sure I've ever gentrified anywhere, either; Hotwells was already quite gentrified by the time I arrived. I probably just lowered the tone a bit.
Anyway. Lisa and I entered Bemmie by the traditional toll gate (though actually you'd only have paid if you were coming from the Long Ashton direction, not merely nipping across from Hotwells) and then almost literally combed the streets to knock several new roads off my list of targets. Along the way we saw lots of street art, as you'd expect, and admired the area's panoply of gorgeous knockers.
The reason Ashton Gate is called Ashon Gate is because it's the site of the former turnpike gate between Bristol and Ashton (now known as Long Ashton.) This is the actual toll house, still standing. "The Toll House closed in 1866 and was incorporated c1980 with Toll House Court", says the listing.
Toll House Court is now used by Second Step, a mental health charity, as part of their High Support Accommodation programme to combat homelessness.
Work continues on the Six Sisters project, the "UK's largest female-led street art project".
Though actually this very end of it appears to be Fairfield Place, a tiny continuation of the road around the next corner. That's Gaywood House in the distance; we'll be visiting its very odd doctor's surgery in a bit...
We'll see a Cromwell House in a minute. Clearly they're New Model Army fans around here. Nice path.
Better Look at an Extension
14 Apr 2021
Apart from a lovely coffee and a slice of Victoria sponge from Twelve, there weren't any new sights on this little lunchtime jaunt except for a slightly better look at the long raised extension at the back of the St Vincent's Rocks Hotel, where I at least got to see the arches it's raised up on. I also got a fair bit of exercise by walking up the Zig Zag to get there, and saw far more people out than I have in months, what with the lockdown having just been significantly lifted. As I walked past The Mall pub they were turning people away from their already-full garden, and the (outdoor) cafe tables were pretty full up.
I'll know I'm fit—if it ever happens—when I can get up the Zig Zag without having to stop for a breather. In my defence, it is built up the side of a literal cliff.
I only found out that this was a raised extension when I read the listing after snapping the last photo. Today I ventured as close as I could and got to glimpse a bit of the rather nice support arches.
I'm guessing there used to be a grand front door, but then later the hotel annexed the building and didn't need it any more? But it's only surmise.
Maybe I'm starting a knocker fixation after last weekend's walk. Interesting that it's mounted on a Maltese cross. I wonder if it was a holiday souvenir?
Nice to see someone keeping The Rocks Garage well-maintained. And they've safely wrapped Maggie Shapland's plaque in a carrier bag to protect it from paint drips, too. Excellent work.
Coffee, Pirates and a Spitfire
15 Apr 2021
Just a quick trip to Imagine That for a flat white and a date ball (they're really nice), snapping the general sights along the way. No new roads, as has rapidly become the default on my lunchtime wanders, but as I'm in the routine of this project it almost seems strange not to pop my wanders up on the site.
Desultory Coffee Wander
16 Apr 2021
Another day, another quick dash out for a coffee. I did at least try to take a different route from normal, especially on the way back, where I yet again got a bit lost in the strange paths, flyovers and underpasses that make up the odd maze of pedestrian "infrastructure" among the concrete jungle between the west of Greville Smyth and my neck of the woods in Hotwells. I swear one day I'll take a turn I've not tried before and end up being gored by a Bristolian minotaur.
From up here it's easier to see the curving path that the end of Brunel's swing bridge would make along its little steel track, until it hit the wooden buffer on the left-hand side, with the other end pivoting out over Howard's Lock. You can see the turtable it balances on just underneath the temporary roof there.
I decided to make my way across the water to Greville Smyth Park via a more cicuitous route than normal.
Some of the Cumberland Basin Flyover System's pedestrian pathways really do feel like you're making your way through a post-apocalyptic computer game.
I'd heard there was going to be something of a wild party in Greville Smyth to mark the end of lockdown. It seems it may be the start of a regular thing, with a dance festival bringing 8,000 people to the park. I imagine I'll be able to hear it from my place, and therefore safely avoid it.
Even on a quieter day, the roar of the traffic is pretty amazing. I was listening to a podcast about electric cars on noise-cancelling headphones, while wishing there were already a few more on the roads...
I think I should have gone back down into the park to come back up my normal path, that leads to a place where you can walk under the flyover and get back on the bridge to Hotwells. As it is I just tried heading north and ended up having to cross four lanes of busy traffic.
That seems to be the failure of the pedestrian paths around here: if you know where you're going really well, the best you can hope for is not to make a wrong turn, and then you can end up going all the way around the houses, including quite often back the way you came, and might manage to use some of the provided underpasses and crossings and avoid the most dangerous traffic. But if you don't know them like the back of your hand and just try heading for the place you want to get to, that you can actually see, you'll be led entirely astray and end up in a variety of dead-ends.
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...
Rescued from dereliction by a project that added an extension for extra accommodation, turning it into a viable conversion to flats, apparently. The architects involved were Ferguson Mann, co-founded by George Ferguson, first person to serve in the capacity of Bristol's directly-elected mayor.
