Tagged: tower-block
Since setting up a search for Hotwells on eBay I've mostly managed to restrain myself from buying much (or in one case, was outbid, luckily for my finances.) However, I couldn't resist a 1902 flyer for a singalong at the Terrett Memorial Hall, which would have stood five minutes' walk from my flat, overlooking Howard's Lock.
I've found out a fair bit about this non-denominational seaman's mission, including tracking down both a Loxton drawing and an aerial photo of it. The main thing that's eluded me, ironically enough, is finding out who Terrett was, so as a Memorial Hall it didn't do a very good job π.
EDIT: Ah! Did a little more digging and found that the Bristol Archives has a Bristol Dock Company document on file called "William Terrett, Esq.; corresp. etc. re proposed erection of a Mission Hall at Cumberland Basin, 1892", so that might be worth a look once the Archives are properly open again. Given that:
Sarah Terrett died suddenly on 25 November 1889, aged 53, after speaking at a meeting of the White Ribbon Army, the temperance organization she had founded in 1878. Following her death many people sent letters of sympathy to her bereaved husband, William. One of these, from the Rev. W. F. James, a minister of the Bible Christians, makes for especially interesting reading. The Bible Christian denomination, to which Sarah and William belonged, was one of the smaller Methodist connexions, and had its heartland in rural Devon, the area where she had grown up. James recalled the hospitality he enjoyed when visiting the Terrettsβ home, Church House, in Bedminster, south Bristol...
...I wonder if William Terrett built the hall in memory of his late wife. They were clearly just the kind of temperance movement people who would've founded a seaman's mission to get people together to have a nice non-alcoholic singsong rather than a night out on the tiles.
Anyway. This walk to grab a coffee from Hopper Coffee in Greville Smyth Park was mostly an excuse to post the leaflet, a few other things I found related to it, and some pictures of how the site looks now. I would suggest that the present day is not an improvement.
If the Terrett Memorial Hall were still there, its frontage would be roughly where those boulders are between the curve of railing in the middle of the picture and the flyover up to the Plimsoll Bridge a little further back, facing towards the lock gate you can just see on the other side of the road.
John Carr's Terrace
16 Mar 2021
I wanted a nice simple lunch-hour walk that took me past a cafe today, and I managed to find the perfect road to knock off my list of targets to do it. Situated just off Jacobs Wells Road, right next to Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, John Carr's Terrace, and Rosebery terrace above it, which I'd completely forgotten existed, are a little cul-de-sac that many Bristolians will have wandered past a thousand times without ever seeing.
There's a reason it's next to QEH:
Known traditionally as "The City School", Queen Elizabeth's Hospital was founded by the will of affluent merchant John Carr in 1586, gaining its first royal charter in 1590.
John Carr's terrace itself isn't much to write home about, architecturally, but I like the secluded feel of it, and I really liked Rosebery Terrace with its little houses, commanding position and friendly, slightly tumbledown feel.
On the way home I popped into Foliage Cafe for a coffee and a very pleasant nutella and banana pastry, then walked home past the refurbishment of the old Thali Cafe into a new and interesting clinic...
Harbourside Milestone
17 Mar 2021
The other day I realised (hello, Maggie!) that my next walk would be my hundredth, and that I'd done 393.4km so far. I figured it would be nice to get to 100 walks and 400km on the same walk, so I went for a nice long harbourside wander after work, rather than dashing out at lunchtime. As it turned out, we're just coming up to the time of year where I can leave the house at 5:30 in the evening and there's still just enough light to take photos by the time I've made it around the harbourside. Though only just, and mostly because I've got a full-frame camera that's not bad in low light...
Still, the evening light made a lovely change, and some of the photos turned out to be pretty good photos per se, rather than just record shots of my walk. I'm looking forward to more evening walks like this as summer approaches.
On the way around this evening I wandered through one of the oldest bits of the city to extend my walk and snapped some interesting bits of architecture, including an NCP car park(!) and a nighttime shot of one of my favourite subjects, the clock tower at the Albion dockyard.
The idea here is that the development still leaves a clear line of sight from the harbour to the cathedral, along Cathedral Walk.
This corner of the ground floor is now a Chinese supermarket. Bought a mooncake last time I was in there and it was lovely.
There's something about this look that reminds me of Oldbury on Severn Nuclear Power Station.
This is, believe it or not, far less crowded than it would normally be on one of the first evenings of Spring that's vaguely warm enough to hang around outdoors.
I'd love to live in one of those flats. I don't care if the balcony is strangely impractical because of the sharp point; I just really like the architecture.
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 frappΓ©. 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.
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.
Short and Sweet
06 Sep 2021
As if to prove that I don't have to go on giant rambles, here's a quick four-photo trip up to Clifton Village for a bit of cake. No new streets, just a tiny slice of life.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
Why yes, I'm still trying out the new wide-angle lens. Never mind the quality, feel the width.
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 websiteβyou 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.
Technically that's still actually the Hotwell Road down there, and it doesn't become the Portway until the Bridge Valley Road junction, but I needed the alliteration, okay?
This is the kind of photograph that I really like, but is harder to find appreciation for these daysβthe Panavision aspect ratio I've chosen, 2.35:1, doesn't play nicely with today's standard media consumption device of a mobile phone held in portrait orientation. Maybe one day we'll all be using the internet through VR headsets and landscape orentation will make a comeback.
Near and Far
05 Jan 2022
I took advantage of a rare recent day where it wasn't tipping down with rain to get away from my desk on a lunchtime workday and head up to Clifton Village. I'd hoped to snap a reproduction of historical photo which I'd worked out had been taken from the Suspension Bridge, but the gods were not smiling on me. Still, taking only a nice long lens with me worked out very well as the lovely haze of the day made more distant views quite dramatic...
The Nova Scotia pub bottom right, then behind it the chimney of the previously coal-fired pump house at Underfall Yard. In the background behind that and to the right is the Tobacco Factory, with what looks like a little red shed on its roof that I presume is actually a stairwell exit to the roof. On the left-hand side at about the same distance away is the large council block of Little Cross House. It always seems quite calm and tidy when I pass it, which is very regularly, but the Bristol Post painted a different picture in 2019 in their story headlined "Residents of 'forgotten' tower block demand council action over 'nightmare' living conditions":
People living in Little Cross House, a 13-storey council tower block in Southville, said their lives are plagued by poor living conditions, damp and mould, and neighbours from hell, drug dealers, discarded needles, vandalism and anti-social behaviour.
In the far distance, across the Southville rooftops, are the green hills of the Knowle West Health Park, I think.