Tagged: vehicle-registration-plate
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.
Apparently if the Royal Promenade were symmetrical, the windows of 7 and 8 would be the same size. As it is, 8 is clearly very slightly grander.
You can't see the join. Number 4 was obliterated when a bomb hit it in 1941, taking significant chunks of numbers 3 and 5 with it. Clearly they did a good job of the post-war restoration. There's a mention of the bombing on one of the BBC's People's War pages.
Here's the listing. This bit's described thus:
To the rear a late C19 long brick extension raised on open arches
I've been trying to get a decent picture of this for a while.
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.
Continuing with my magical/Hughes related theme: the last time I was in Berkeley Square, I was trying to figure out where the vault of the Hermes Temple might have been destroyed; a passing mention of its destruction in Ithell Colquhoun's Sword of Wisdom says it was stored in Berkeley Square and destroyed in 1964.
The Vault would have been a septagonal wooden room with esoteric symbols painted on every surface. The Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle have a picture of one towards the bottom of this page. That one, in Havelock North, New Zealand, would have looked very similar to the Bristol Hermes vault, I think, as they were contemporary Stella Matutina vaults and they were probably each at least partly designed by Robert Felkin, who emigrated from Bristol to New Zealand to form the Smaragdum Thalasses temple there.
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...
...and then noticed that it was actually a brace of Rollers. I think the rather more downtrodden one behind was probably bought for spares, but who knows? Maybe they just keep that one for country drives.
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.
Docks Heritage Weekend Day One
09 Oct 2021
I could spend a lot of time at the Docks Heritage Weekend, poking my nose into industrial places along the harbourside that are usually closed off, but throw open their doors once a year to show off a bit of the backstage area of Bristol's floating harbour. In fact, I warn you: the next wander is a long one, and will have quite a few photos.
However, for today's wander, on the Saturday, my friend Lisa needed a shorter walk than our usual long rambles, as she's recovering from an operation and still a little under the weather, so we just wandered into town for some food and back, with me making mental notes of the places I wanted to come back to on the Sunday... We walked through Underfall Yard, along to the L Shed (this is the warehouse next to the M Shed museum, where they still have the kind of fun old industrial stuff that used to be crammed into the M Shed's predecessor, the old Industrial Museum), through the street food market in town to Ahh Toots for cake and then back home. So, still quite a walk, but no hills and not so much of Lisa having to hang around waiting for me to fool around taking photos as usual, at least...
Fresh Fields
17 Oct 2021
For the first time in a while, I had the time and energy to go further afield and knock off some new roads from my "to do" list. I headed through the first Hotwells Festival to Ashton and Bedminster to cross off a few of the suburban roads south of North Street.
First, though, I decided to try to reproduce an old photo of the now-demolished Rownham Hotel just around the corner from where I live...
Here's my version. I couldn't get to the exact original viewpoint without the railings on the far left being in the way of the picture, but this is pretty close.
So, presumably the house (or possibly two?) on the end of Freeland Place, which looks to my eye just as Georgian as the rest of the terrace, must've been built after the Rownham Hotel was demolished for the road widening in 1969...
I've taken a few photos of the similar place around the corner, but I hadn't noticed there's another one of these odd mansion-mansard-bungalow-what-the-hell places here, too.
The rest of the road is just your normal-for-round-here brick boxes, really. At the end is the back of the little Winterstoke Road retail park, including PC World and Halfords, which I think are the only two shops I've ever been in there.
ODE says a "bower" is "a pleasant shady place under trees or climbing plants in a garden or wood." This road (in the Ashton district) is actually pointing in the direction of the UWE campus at Bower Ashton—I wonder if it was named because it led towards that bower?
Here we're clearly starting to head uphill towards North Street. I've taken some nice photos looking down streets like this from the far end; the sun sets pointing this way down them so you can get some nice backlit shots.
One of those signs that makes you wonder how many deliveries you have to miss before you put a sign up.
A Wide Angle View
30 Oct 2021
I had an unsuccessful wander last week, on Tuesday afternoon: my GPS died within about five minutes of leaving the house, and I didn't notice, plus I found hardly anything I'd been looking for. On the plus side, as I was wandering around Park Street I decided to nip into London Camera Exchange on the offchance they had a secondhand Canon 17-40mm lens. I've been thinking of buying one for around a year, I think.
Long story short: not only did they have one, but due to a mistake with their price labelling which they kindly honoured, I now have a shiny new (to me) wide-angle lens and it cost me less than £300, which is a very good price for one of these in good condition (and including a lens hood.)
So, rather than try to salvage Tuesday's walk, here's a walk where I basically just bimbled up to Clifton Village for a coffee and wandered around taking photos of as many wide views as I could find. I took a lot more photos than these seventeen, but as you might expect, a new lens takes some practice getting used to, so most of them ended up in the "outtakes" pile.
I've mentioned the spire before, I'm sure: colloquially known as the "three pin plug", it's apparently meant to represent the Holy Trinity.
Of course, one disadvantage of a wide-angle lens in Clifton is that you get even more cars in the shot. This is a problem with filming, too, from what I've seen of the various historically-set TV shows shot in Bristol: the exterior shots are always very tight angles, presumably because it'll give the game away if one zooms out on Sherlock Holmes to reveal nine identical giant black SUVs parked on the zig zags outside a private school.
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...
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...
I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I walked down Cornwallis Avenue wondering what the overgrown garden was along the top without ever bothering to work out that it's the back garden of Cornwallis Crescent (east).
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...
That historical photo seems to have been taken from a higher vantage point. The most likely place seems to be the B Bond, perhaps from that fire escape, or maybe the roof? Something tells me it's unlikely they'd let me up there, but you never know, maybe one day I'll ask an archivist; I think that area's part of the Bristol Archives stores...
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.