Tagged: real-estate
Lunchtime Zig Zag Climb
13 Jul 2021
A snappy little trip up the Zig Zag to the shops. It's a steep old route, the Zig Zag, going from just over river level to about the height of the suspension bridge (101 metres) in a compact switchback of a footpath.
I was too busy struggling to breathe to take many snaps of the actual Zig Zag (I've been trying to make it up all the way without stopping the last few times, but I've not quite managed it yet). I did at least take a few snaps either side on this quick lunchtime jaunt to fetch coffee (Coffee #1) and a sarnie (Parsons) from Clifton Village...
Pastures New!
17 Jul 2021
Okay, not much in the way of actual pasture to be had in Bedminster these days, like most of Bristol, but I did take advantage of the current rather toasty weather in Bristol to go and sit under a tree in Greville Smyth Park to read a book for a while before firing up the GPS and taking a little detour around some back streets of Ashton and Bedminster rather than going straight to Coffee #1 for an espresso frappé. This is the first walk in a while where I've actually crossed off an entire new street (the frankly unexciting Carrington Road) as well as exploring a couple of back alleys, just because they were there, really. Along the way I spotted a few examples of graffiti of various qualities, including a live work-in-progress by SNUB23 on Ashton Road and the finished Six Sisters project on North Street.
According to Google Street View, a few years ago this was just a modest corner house. I imagine someone's made a tidy profit.
This was a work in progress last time I passed. Now all Six Sisters of this female-led graffiti project are finished and fair glowing in the sunshine.
The little balcony there seems to have had increasing numbers of home comforts added over the last year or two. It's astroturfed, too... I suppose lockdowns make you try to use as much available space as possible, even if you are right next to the A4, and all the noise and traffic fumes that entails.
A Journey to the Far East
25 Jul 2021
The far east of the intersection of my one-mile radius and Bedminster, anyway. I was feeling a bit tired this morning, so I motivated myself to get out of the door by imagining one of Mokoko's almond croissants. That got me on my way, and I wandered across to Bedminster, through Greville Smyth Park, along most of the length of North Street (looking out for new Upfest 75-pieces-in-75-days artwork as I went) and then onto some new roads at the far end.
I only wanted to knock a few streets off my "to do" list, but by the time I'd diverted here and there to check out various bits of graffiti and other attractions and come back via the aforementioned purveyors of Bristol's finest croissants, I'd walked 7.4km. Not bad for someone who woke up tired, and at least I've done something with my day. I'm very glad the weather broke (we had tremendous thunderstorms yesterday), even if some of the pictures might've looked better with a blue sky. I was getting fed up with walking around in 29°C heat...
Best coffee on North Street, for my money. I made the practical choice and abstained, though, as it's hard to take photos with a coffee in one hand.
It looked interesting, but then I realised I'd actually walked through it at night, some time back...
One of those streets with Bedminster's tradition of named houses in evidence. I do enjoy them.
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.
I think at the far left edge of this photo, near the bottom, you can see about as far as I got down the old Prince's Lane on a previous wander. This pic was, I believe, taken looking up at the garden in the foreground. I think the greenhouse there is still being constructed, and wasn't there during my earlier wander, but you can see some of the building materials, I think.
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.
And on to another garden! This is the upper part of one half of Cornwallis Crescent, which for my money has to have the best combination of size and privacy of all the Clifton communal gardens. It's big and rambling and runs the entire length of Cornwallis Crescent, and is mostly bordered by high walls, with the entrance gates in the alley above the Polygon not giving much away.
A Long Wander Of Miscellany and Magick
08 Aug 2021
This was a wide-ranging wander. I started off crossing the river to Bedminster, to walk a single little cul-de-sac, Hardy Avenue, that I'd managed to miss on at least one previous walk. Then, pausing only to explore a few back alleyways, I headed for a few destinations related mostly by the Hughes family, who I've been researching a little as part of background for a possible novel, as several of them were involved in the Stella Matutina.
However, mostly it's the artistic side of the family I wanted to explore today, as that's where most of their public history lies (as you might expect, there's often not much in the public record about the workings of an occult organisation.) First I visited College Green, where the façade of the Catch 22 Fish & Chip shop still bears the work of Catherine Edith Hughes. Then I wandered up to the top of Park Street to pop into the Clifton Arts Club's annual exhibition, as Catherine, her half-brother Donald, his wife Hope and at least two other Hugheses were members. Donald was chairman for 40 solid years; Hope was Secretary for eight, and Ellard and Margaret Hughes, two more Hughes siblings, were members along with Catherine.
Finally I walked home with a small diversion to Berkeley Square, to confirm the location of Donald Hughes's house by checking for a particular plaque by the front door.
I must admit I'm not entirely sure where all this research is really leading me, but I'm finding it quite interesting to bump across the faint lines of history that link the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, to modern, quotidian Bristol.
The rather derelict looking building on the corner of Prince Street and Royal Oak Avenue was at one point a Seaman's Mission & Instutue, and more recently an evangelilcal church of some kind. It was damaged during the war and seems to now be some kind of Frankenstein's monster of architecture with an odd modern frontage. The rather more together-looking (but still, frankly, unattractive!) building to the left is Prince House.
Edit to add: (19 June 2022): Know Your Place has just tweeted some amazing photos of the chapel interior (here's some more) that have just been added to the Community Layer on their incredibly useful website.
As I mentioned, these pomegranates were made by Catherine Hughes, daughter of the estate agent who commissioned the cafe.
The Hughes name is one to conjure with. I'm specifically interested in the Hughes family as I've been researching the Golden Dawn1 for a novel, and at least three Hugheses were members of its later offshoot, the Stella Matutina. Catherine Hughes (Lux Orta Est), who made these tiled pomegranates was, I believe, the first Imperatrix of the No. 28 Bristol Hermes Temple of the Stella Matutina, running it to begin with from her home at St Vincent's Studio, Redland, just off the top of Whiteladies Road.
We'll be hearing a bit more about some other members of the Hughes family in a little bit, as I decided to turn this wander into a bit of a magical excursion, for fun and research and because of handy timing and geographical coincidence.
I don't know if these pomegranates from 1904 predate Catherine Hughes's interest in magic per se, but they were made years before she joined the Stella Matutina, in early 1908, so I can't say that they were created by a practising magician!
1 No, not the Greek nutters. The British Victorian, er, eccentrics.
Museum of the Moon, and a Bit of Redland
21 Aug 2021
Lisa and I mostly went out to have a look at Luke Jerram's Museum of the Moon as its tour hit Bristol Cathedral—I missed it when it was previously in town, at Wills Hall, I think—but we also took a trek up to Redland. Lisa's kind enough to indulge my strange current fascination with the Edwardian eccentrics that made up the Stella Matutina, so we swung by a couple of places with a vague connection to the Bristol branch of the organisation. Well, it was good walking, anyway...
As a stunning bonus, one of the picture's descriptions has more information than you'd probably want on the Bristol Port Railway and Pier's Clifton Extension Railway line, but I did happen to coincidentally write up this wander after reading about the extension line during my lunch hour at work today. It's a thrilling life, I tell you...
Cotham House seems to make more architectural sense from the back. Maybe this was originally the front?
Shiny New Hope
24 Sep 2021
A quick lunchtime jaunt to Clifton Village. Along the way I admired the new sign on Hope Chapel and added to my tsundoku collection.
The scaffolding is down and there's a nice new sign (reminiscent of a historical one, I think,but I can't find the photo at the moment because Know Your Place Bristol is down) and you can just see the newly-installed solar panels on the roof behind it.
A Morning of Research and a Cafe in a Castle
25 Sep 2021
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.
And towering over one of Bristol's oldest buildings, here's one of Bristol's newest, Castle Park View. Its 26 storeys towering up at 98 metres, it's now Bristol's tallest building, having beaten the 80m Castlemead and St Mary Redcliffe to joint second earlier this year. I'm not sure I'd fancy living in one of the 375 flats, but the view must be nice.
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...)
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.)
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'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...
I can rarely resist snapping this house on the end of Freeland Place at this time of year, especially when the sun's catching both of the ivy-covered sides (well, Boston ivy, anyway; parthenocissus tricuspidata, I think.)