Tagged: window
I noticed I had a few things on my "potential wanders" list that could all be done relatively close to home, and in a fairly straight line, so I set off at lunchtime to recreate a photo of a now-defunct pub, wander behind a Spar (which turned out to be more interesting than I'd expected, but I admit it's a low bar) and spend some time browsing in Dreadnought Books before coming home via a coffee from Spoke & Stringer, a little diversion up Gasworks Lane and a tiny bit of the Rownham Mead estate I'd somehow previously skipped.
Uncredited apart from "from our archives" and undated, this photo appeared in this article on Hotwells in the Evening Post and made me want to re-create the same view today.
The pub had a few changes of name over time—in the Bristol Then and Now Facebook group people recall this being the Spring Gardens in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Someone remembers it turning into Durty Nelly's in 1995, but I swear it was back to being the Spring Gardens again by the time I moved to the area in 1999. Then it spent some time as La Demi Lune, which you can see on Street View in 2008, and then by 2009 it's back to The Spring Garden (without the "s").
So, from what I can work out, this snap was probably taken in the 1990s, most likely between 1995 and 1999.
This pub—which did good food, and had an extensive garden at the back, from what I remember, when it was the Spring Gardens in the early 2000s—is rather more bland in looks today, as we'll see in the next picture.
Here's the Spring Garden(s)/Durty Nelly's/La Demi Lune as it looks today. Rather dull modern accommodation, sadly. I understand they may have extended the building back into the garden to make it roomy enough to be flats.
Here we are at the end of Pembroke Place, wandering a little alleyway I'd not previously filled in on the map. I didn't have high hopes for much of interest in this parking area behind Spar and Marcruss Stores. However, I did find something interesting, as we'll see in a couple of photos' time.
I can only guess that the Raj Bari restaurant has been trying to grow their own herbs and spices. Doesn't look that successful at the moment, to be honest, but maybe I'm looking at things that aren't in season...
Remnants of the docks railway. These ran around the harbour to Ashton Avenue Bridge to the west, and along to the main Goods Depot at Anchor Lane to the east.
I think this may be the last visible remnant of the harbour railway on this entire stretch of the Hotwell Road. There may still be some tracks around Canons March—that whole area south of Anchor Road had a lot of rail lines—but I've not seen any others west of Jacobs Wells Road.
Interesting to think that this street art will presumably be sitting as a layer in between Marcruss Stores and the new-build flats for ever...
Here's a snap from before the cover-up.
Having checked the planning application it seems these may be going to be called the Black Horse Apartments, echoing the former name of Pembroke Place, which is a nice little touch.
On St George's Road. This is where I ended up spending most of my stopping time on the walk. I managed to resist most temptations and came away having only spent £2 on a paperback of The Mill on the Floss. I read Silas Marner a while back and really liked it, so I've been wanting to try some more Eliot.
I shall add it to my tsundoku collection.
While we're on a theme of things to find down alleyways...
We've had a wander around the old gas works site before but I wanted briefly to focus on one tiny detail, which is to be found in this alleyway called Gasworks Lane.
See what I mean? Without the trees and shrubs this would be a very dull little red-brick estate, but everywhere you look there are lovely little touches like these trees.
Easter Monday Gardens and Flowers
18 Apr 2022
I didn't really set out with a theme of flowers and gardens in mind for this walk. I just fancied heading up to Clifton Village to get lunch. As it turned out, though, Spring was springing, so a minor theme emerged as I started off with the graveyard flowers of Hope Chapel and wandered up to see the beginnings of the new wildflower garden at Clifton Hill Meadow.
There will be a minor theme of flowers and gardens for this little trip. We'll start at Hope Chapel, though this is more a graveyard than a garden.
I first heard of Clerihews in the Times crossword: The Clerihew is:
a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley.
The reason it's relevant to this plaque on a house just around the corner from mine is that the very first Clerihew was written about Sir Humphry Davy:
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
(Sir Humphry is indeed credited with having been the first to isolate sodium, six years after moving out of this house...)
A lovely garden. Sadly a little lacking in facilities at the moment, after some scrote (or presumably a team thereof) had it away with their cast iron table and chair set at the end of March. This is why we can't have nice things, etc. etc.
Where fly tipping happens, more like. This scrap of land (with a public bench hidden on the far end, against the back fence behind the red bins) has been a bit of an eyesore for years. I've never been a fan of public billboards.
Recently, though, a property developer has applied for planning permission for a block of flats here, and apparently fenced off the bit where the main entrance will be, even though it's fenced in this little corner of land that everyone assumed was public, council bench and all. And now it's attracted fly tippers, it seems.
I've tweeted at the councillor for the area, Alex Hartley, and he's said he's alerted the council and will try to investigate it/get it cleaned up, so here's hoping...
In the long run, maybe there will be some new flats instead of an ugly billboard and some dull fencing, and I'm all for that.
On a previous wander I posted a historical photo of the church including this tree, and one from the modern day.
It's grown up quite a lot in the last hundred years...
Well, I think it's a California Lilac, Ceanothus. I could be wrong. Whatever it is, it's pretty.
I thought I'd come and see how the wildflower garden was getting along. It's its first year, after a crowdfunder last year raised nearly £2000 to buy seeds, plug plants and signage.
This is one of the three experimental areas. Nothing too apparent so far, but it's early dyas.
...doesn't sound like the kind of man who would appreciate the somewhat lax attitude his gravestone is taking to uprightness.
A Swing of the Plimsoll Bridge
24 Apr 2022
I was originally going to head over to the Ashton area to see if I'd missed any bits around the football stadium—and also to grab some lunch from the Tobacco Factory Market—but in the end I got a little distracted by having accidentally chosen exactly the right time to see the Plimsoll Bridge swing on one of the first busy days of Spring, where a lot of pleasure trips tend to head out down the Avon (and possibly the New Cut) from Hotwells.
In the end I mostly snapped that, and just a couple of photos from the Ashton area where I grabbed some lunch but didn't do any new exploring.
The brutalist bridge abutment is the old bit, of course, as it's mid-1960s. The boat that looks like John Cabot's 15th century caravel is the new bit. This replica was made in the 1990s, and replicated the original's 1497 trip to Newfoundland in 1997, arriving in June at Bonavista, to be greeted by Queen Elizabeth.
She's just had her annual inspection in the Albion dry dock, so I suppose this is one of her first gorge trips of the summer season.
You can see the man whose job it is to work the rather complicated-looking controls in the control tower has come out onto his balcony now the opening procedure is done.
Pikto's piece on the side of the Coopers Arms was looking particularly eye-catching in the sunshine...
Ticking Off a Pocket of Paths in Leigh Woods
03 Jun 2022
I managed to go for a wander a while ago that was meant to finish off a little tangle of paths in Leigh Woods, or at the very least finish off my wandering of the Purple Path there. And I managed to miss doing either of those things through some kind of navigational incompetence.
Today I woke up with a bit of a headache, feeling a bit knackered as soon as I dragged myself out of bed, but at least with the energy to realise that I'd be better off (a) going for a walk in what looked likely to be the last of the Jubilee weekend sunshine than (b) moping around the flat until it started raining, at which point I could mope more thoroughly.
I had a look at my map, considered going to Ashton Court, but remembered that there was a music festival there today, and instead found these little leftovers of Leigh Woods and decided to have one more try at walking them.
While my main target is Leigh Woods, I do also want to nip into Ashton Court and walk a little path I missed last time I was in the field with the little steam railway in it, so to the gatehouse we cross...
There was actually a gatekeeper today, as it's the weekend of the Love Saves the Day festival, being held at Ashton Court for the first time this year, I think. Happily, as long as you just want to walk a stretch of the grounds away from the festival site, they just wave you in. I wanted to walk a footpath behind the railway track I walked past back in...gosh! November 2020. I've been doing this a while, haven't I?
Having started in the woods, this is the first hint of the Jubilee celebrations I've seen, on the alpine chalet-style house near the Suspension Bridge.
The Mall was pleasantly decked out with bunting and there was live music, but sadly I got there just as the skiffle band were finishing the last song of their set. Plus I was knackered by this stage—in the end my walk lasted three hours, and I'd walked 10k by the time I got here—so I decided just to get a quick take-away from Coffee #1 (awful Coronation Chicken sandwich, sadly, will probably never try food there again) and head home, so this is my last snap of the wander.
(I timed it well, as the rain started not long after, and right now at half past five in the afternoon while I'm editing these photos it's coming down a storm. A very typical Bank Holiday in England!)
A Quick Swing Past Ashton Court
05 Jun 2022
Another day not dissimilar to my last wander: I'm feeling a bit tired and rather than just moping around the house I thought I'd find some tiny bit of somewhere that I'd not yet walked and get outdoors. This time I headed for the Tobacco Factory Market in Bedminster, as I often do, but went the long way around via Ashton Court Mansion as I knew there were some footpaths and a small section of road I'd not ticked off up there. Finishing all the Ashton Court footpaths will be quite a long job, but you've got to start somewhere...
I did feel rather better by the time I got home, and, pretty much astoundingly given the weather forecast, managed to avoid the rain completely.
First hint of Jubilee-related decorations on this rather odd balcony at the bottom of Granby Hill. The other decoration on this building is a peeing "KEEP YOU JOB KEEP THE POUND" sticker in the next window along that looks like it dates from the 1990s.
For looks, I prefer the side with the mullioned windows, but neither of them seems that satisfactory to me, architecturally-speaking. It's all a bit mis-matched and asymmetrical, with very odd spacing here and there.
Pre-Upfest, as recently as April, Pikto's boy with the catapult still adorned the side of the Coopers Arms.
Not quite sure what to make of the replacement. It's much lower-contrast and less eye-catching, for me. Also, I'm so out of touch I have no idea if that's an original character or some famous pop-cuture reference.
Ahh, according to Natural Adventures it's "what looks like a Vaughn Bode Lizard, an Iconic character in the world of street art", and it's by an artist called Derm. I'd never heard of Vaughn Bodē or his Cheech Wizard and lizard apprentice, so it's not surprising this piece is going over my head. Probably more one for the real aficionados to appreciate.
The technique that Ant Carver used for this piece, called "Love Me/Love Not", is intriguing. I recommend reading the write-up on the always-informative Natural Adventures.
I've been pretty awful at reading so far this year, apparently averaging about one book per month. That's a far cry from 2019, say, where I got through 41 books in the year. Today's wander was prompted by my rubbish reading, as I needed to go hand back some books to the library, because I'd managed to renew them so many times that I hit the limit on renewals. Oops. Several of them were still unread.
So, off to the Central Library for me, tail between my legs. On the way there I did my best to recreate a historical photo of Dowry Square; while I was in the area I walked under the adjacent Norman arch and poked around behind the Cathedral, and I also had a little diversion to the city centre and came back along the south side of the river, hitting some trouble with the lock gates as I finally crossed the harbour back towards home.
I don't know anything about this photo, really; I saw it pop up on eBay in one of my automated searches for "Hotwells" and this nice, open view of Dowry Square, which is a lot more overgrown these days, made me click that "buy" button. This is a print from a negative in a private collection but more that that I can't really tell you. The "Hepworth" could be Watler Hepworth, as it seems there was a Bristol photographer of that name in about the right period, which I"m guessing to be sometime between the First and Second World Wars. The tram rails and electrical lines are still in place, as you can see.
One nice detail is the Bass signs in the windows of what was clearly still back then the York Hotel on the corner of the square. There's some pictures of what I've been assuming is the main bar entrance that faces onto the main road and remains quite well-preserved in a moment...
The same view these days is a lot less romantic, especially with the temporary crate from some roadworks sitting at the corner of the square.
I don't blame anyone who lives this close to the Hotwell Road (and can't get double glazing fitted because it wouldn't be in keeping with the character) for wanting a lot of trees and bushes in between them and the roar of the traffic, but I think it's objectively a lot less appealing to the eye with so much shrubbery in the way. Probably good for the local wildlife, though.
It's less obstructive in winter, as you can see from this earlier photo taken from the back of the square looking back toward me.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey both spent time in the garden of the square, apparently—I wonder what they'd make of it today?
Off to the side of the photo we've just seen is the pub frontage on the Hotwell Road, apparently a later addition. The listing says
The right-hand return has a late C19 ashlar public house front with 5 panelled pilasters and foliate capitals to left-hand and central doorways, 2 windows with tripartite frames and semicircular-arched panes below, panelled aprons and dentil cornice.
Nowadays known as York House, and apparently offices, this was originally built by George Tully, like a lot of the rest of the square.
According to this Heritage Statement about No. 10 by Mark Hines Architects he started building in 1723, imagining accommodation houses for Hotwells visitors, but later built this large hotel and other buildings like the Clifton Dispensary at No 12 as the spa became more popular and the square evolved into a centre of medicine. I'm a little confused by that claim as the York Hotel went up c. 1780, according to the listing, when Tully had been dead for ten years, but perhaps it means he planned it before he died.
And now we've teleported down the Hotwell Road to College Green, where I found that the library wasn't open yet (I'd forgotten they didn't open until 1pm on a Sunday) so carried on past it and turned through an old Norman archway.
This was a section I wanted to walk, as although I have actually wandered through the arch and pottered around this bit of Bristol before, I think that was one of the days my GPS battery died halfway through a walk, so I never posted any records of it. Here I can redress the issue. We've seen the other side of this grand bit of architecture before, and the next photo has the information plaque which will tell you more about it more concisely than I could.
One fact that isn't on the plaque is that Catherine Hughes, the local artist who made the pomegranates for the front of the Cabot Cafe, had her studio in one of the upper rooms for a time. I presume this was wangled by her father, a local estate agent who was heavily involved in the whole College Green area. From the Clifton and Redland Free Press, 18 April 1900:
Comparatively few people are aware that the interesting structure known as the Abbey Gate House, College Green, the fifteenth century building above the fine old Norman archway, is now given over to the fine arts. It is the studio of Miss Catherine Hughes, and a private view of a charming exhibition of water colour drawings, by that young lady and Miss Ludlow, both local limners, was held last week, when a large number of ladies and gentlemen accepted the invitation to inspect the works, among the company being some local artists. Miss Hughes and Miss Ludlow studied under Ludovici in London, and are now following their profession in Bristol
The Bristol Cathedral School has seen some controversy over the years, especially after it was given permission in 2013 for the Primary School to take over some of the Central Library. They turfed out some of the archives, which is presumably why I need to wait a week when I order an old book from the library, as someone now has to hoof it down to the B Bond warehouse to fetch it for me, rather than just downstairs.
Founded in 1140, dissolved and then re-founded by Henry VIII in 1542 after he dissolved the monastery, it's only very recently become a City Academy. It is allegedly non-selective these days, but my guess would be that its pupils' parents are significantly posher and richer than others in the local catchment area.
I'm in the habit of going over to the Tobacco Factory Market on a Sunday. I think I've walked all the routes around that way, but as a Plimsoll Bridge swing let me cross the road to the far side of Brunel Way on my return journey and I took a couple of photos of the brownfield development at the old Ashton Gate Depot site I thought I'd call it a Wander and pop some photos up.
The Clean Air Zone is being introduced later this year (currently they say 28 November 2022, but I think it's already been delayed twice.)
The scheme will see charges instituted for certain vehicles entering parts of the city, especially older diesel cars. This is to encourage people to change these older cars or find alternative routes or modes of transport. Apparently there are grants and loans available for upgrades on offer to private citizens and businesses.
This should only have positive effects for me, as I live just inside the zone, and I drive a recentish petrol car with an efficient and not-so-pollutey engine. In a perfect world, therefore, this scheme means my area might eventually start meeting the government's standards for air quality. This Bristol 24/7 article has some good info, including an estimate that there are currently 300 premature deaths per year from traffic-related air pollution in the proposed Bristol zone.
The street art is still looking good, but one of these properties has been turned into such low-end multiple-occupancy accommodation that it got into the Bristol Post this week with pictures of one tiny room with a shower alongside the bed serving as the sole room per person, with a toilet shared between four "studio rooms". I suppose this is actually better than the student accommodation I had in my first year at Warwick, but at least that was actually on campus...
One of the things I like about Bristol is the strange contrasts. Here we have two crow's nests. The first is the Cumberland Basin Flyover System's Plimsoll Bridge control room, used to give the swing bridge operator a good view of the whole area surrounding the bridge. The second is the reason for the swing, the crow's nest on the tall mast of the replica of John Cabot's Matthew, as it passes through into Entrance Lock.
Well, technically that's Freeland Place, I suppose, but I was standing on Granby Hill to take the photo. I wonder how many photos of this fab house with its wrapping of Boston ivy I've taken over the years? I find it hard to resist on a nice clear day, especially if there aren't any cars parked on the hill and the ivy is in full effect.
Nipping Up the Zig Zag to the Shops
19 Aug 2023
It's been a long while since I did one of these walks.
I'm thinking of finishing up the project by walking one or two last bits of road, thus being able to declare with all honesty that I've done my best to walk every public road within my mile (and quite a few alleyways besides.) As a prelude, and just because I felt like it, I decided to drag out the camera and GPS on this little wander to the local shops.
I may not personally be a fan of evangelical Christianity, but at least they keep the place looking nice. It's still very tidy since the recent renovation, installaltion of solar panels on the roof and repainting of the HOPE CHAPEL sign.
I was concerned about the state of Rock House, or at least its southern half, the last time I took a closer look at it while passing. Happily it seems to have been bought by someone prepared to fix up that drooping balcony. Here's hoping these repairs continue and my next photo of the place shows both sides of this old house (dated back to at least 1731 by a William Halfpenny engraving, no matter what the Listing says.)
Just behind Rock House you can see a bit of the Colonnade, sawn off at the end to make room for the widened Hotwell Road, I believe. Back in the day, according to 1925's The Bristol guide; being a complete ancient and modern history of the city of Bristol, the Hotwells and Clifton:
For those who prefer exercise to silting, there is the Colonade with shops, built beneath the rocks, and a parade about
800 feet long, shaded with trees, by the side of the river, so that the company may enjoy a dry and pleasant walk when it rains, or an airy, cool, and shady walk in the warmest season: also during the influx and efflux of the river, they may be entertained with the sight of the Merchant's ships, Steam packets, and Coasting vessels that generally pass up or down.
A random reminder of a TV show of my youth: Londo Mollari, the Centauri Ambassador to Babylon 5. Spotted in the window of the Oxfam shop on Victoria Street after I grabbed a coffee from Foliage Cafe.
Mardyke then and Now
18 Mar 2021
Reproducing historical photos seems to be a developing interest for me. On today's wander I just went for my normal coffee at Imagine That, but along the way I stopped at Baltic Wharf (the modern housing estate; historically-speaking, I was probably in between Canada Wharf and Gefle Wharf—about here, in fact) to reproduce a 1930s photo of the Mardyke area from the Tarring collection.
Mardyke, from what I can work out, means "a ditch along the margins". Before my researches, I only really knew the name from the Mardyke pub, a big place on the Hotwell Road. Everyone knows the Mardyke, partly because of its size and signage, but I've only been in once or twice, too long ago to remember much of what it was like. However, the wharf there used to be known as Mardyke Wharf, and the area in general as Mardyke. (I just found an 1826 painting by Thomas Leeson Rowbotham of "Mardyke seen from near Hilhouse's Dock, showing the 'Clifton Ark' floating chapel" that shows the area before much development had happened, incidentally, and now I feel like I need to find out a bit more about the floating chapel...)
I enjoyed snapping the "after" photo; the process involved moving a group of swans out of the place I needed to stand to get the photo; luckily I've started carrying waterfowl food along with my on my harbourside jaunts, so I could use bribery rather than a more confrontational approach. Not sure I'd fancy my chances against a swan, though I did once team up with another passerby to shoo a recalcitrant one off the Redcliffe bascule bridge so a busful of commuters could continue their journey to work...
Via Know Your Place Bristol/the Tarring Collection.
The Mardyke area—apparently Mardyke means a dyke on the margins, which would make sense for the location—in the 1930s. That's got to be a Campbell paddle steamer from their White Funnel fleet, but I don't know which one. Looks to be a similar configuration to the Princess May, though the paddles look a bit different. In the background, the Mardyke Pub still stands today, but the three largest buildings do not. They are:
Top right: the Clifton National School (there's a Loxton sketch uploaded to this Wander where you can see the name on the front.)
Directly in front and below the Clfiton National School, on the main Hotwell Road: The Clifton Industrial School, Mardyke building.
Standing halfway up the hill, more towards the middle of the picture: the Clifton Industrial School, Church Path Steps building.
Lots of info to be found on the Industrial Schools here:
In addition to their classroom lessons, the boys were employed in tailoring, shoemaking and brush-making, with basket making later added. The boys also assisted with the kitchen, laundry, and house work. In 1870, some additional rooms were rented in the locality for use as an infirmary if required. A School band was established.
I can't find so much on the National School (though apparently the Bristol Archives have some of their records) but the Clifton & Hotwells
Character Appraisal suggest it was built in 1835 and, along with the Industrial School buildings, destroyed during WWII:
A bomb also largely destroyed the Clifton National School and Mardyke House School. The lack of bomb- proof shelters in Clifton led to the Clifton Rocks Railway to be used as shelter, which was prepared for occupation in 1940.
The colourful modern flats stand on School Road, presumably the last hint that the Clifton National Schools building was there before. It's nice to see both the Mardyke Pub and some of the ordinary houses from the terrace dead centre still there and looking much the same.
Showing both the Clifton Industrial School on the Hotwell Road, and the Clifton National Schools building on the hill above.
(via the Loxton Collection from Bristol Libraries on Flickr.)
I wasn't going to take a very long walk on this nice spring evening; it just happened. I was going to knock off a path or two on Brandon Hill, home over centuries to hermits and windmills, cannons and Chartists, and then just wander home, stopping only to fill up my milk bottle at the vending machine in the Pump House car park.
However, when I heard a distant gas burner I stayed on the hill long enough to see if I could get a decent photo of both the hot air balloon drifting over with Cabot Tower in the same frame (spoiler: I couldn't. And only having the fixed-focal-length Fuji with me didn't help) and then, on the way home, bumped into my "support bubble", Sarah and Vik, and extended my walk even further do creep carefully down the slipway next to the old paddle steamer landing stage and get some photos from its furthest extreme during a very low tide...
I've bought many things from Marcuss over the years. A pair of secondhand German para boots got me started, I think, and I've bought snowboarding gear, camping gear, winter coats and sundry other things like the Opinel No. 06 knife I use for hunting and skinning the geek's natural prey: Amazon parcels.
Looking this way you get to see the rear of the rooves of Rosebery Terrace first, which we saw the front of on an earlier wander.
More rooves. If a dormer window has patio doors and takes up the entire roof, presumably it's not a dormer window any more...
This is clearly the modern corner of QEH, though the turrets at the far right are from the 1847 Tudor Gothic Revival building. QEH was founded in 1586, but was originally housed in Gaunt's Hospital mansion house, Unity Street. (There's more information on the name Gaunt in an earlier photo of Gaunts Lane)...
