Tagged: st-augustine-s-quay
A Cliftonwood Revisit with Lisa
10 Jul 2021
Lisa had a couple of hours to spare before going up in a hot air balloon (exciting!) so we went for a quick local walk, revisiting a bit of Cliftonwood we've seen before, exploring the secret garden I'd visited before that I thought she'd enjoy (I didn't take any new photos there) and then pushing on to another garden, Cherry Garden. Last time we passed this way, I'd noticed the gate, but we hadn't gone in as I'd assumed it was private. I'd since found it on CHIS's list of communal gardens in Clifton, so I wanted to have a look inside this time, and try to figure out whether it was private-communal or public, and possibly Council-owned, like several of the other gardens in Clifton.
...with the end of "Jacobethan" Transit Shed "E". The end facing and baroque tower were apparently created to make looking this way from the centre a bit more pleasant; it's fairly plain further down. This is a smidge outside my one mile, but I was interested in the gates, having spotted them in a historic photo in one of my research books—see next pic.
There are some other pics from earlier times on the Watershed's web site, including one from 1981, not long before the E and W sheds were transformed into the complex that houses the excellent Watershed Cinema, their Cafe Bar, the Pervasive Media Studio and other modern features.
Photo taken from the book Bygone Bristol: Hotwells and the City Docks, by Janet and Derek Fisher.
You can see the gate from the previous photo at the start of Narrow Quay. Plenty of other changes in the area, too: the statue of Neptune stands at the head of the water; there are no Cascade Steps yet; cranes still stand on Broad Quay, and you can just about tell that there's still a main road running right across the middle of Queen Square in the distance.
The gate stands half-closed; presumably before the E and W sheds were converted into the cinemas, bars and restaurants of the Watershed and other publically-accessible attractions there was still some need to keep the (working) dockside a little more secure, and I'm guessing it might have been locked at night.
The gates are listed and have apparently been there since 1894.