The magnificent architecture of Bristol Temple Meads station.
I headed over to the River Avon but what a muddy mess. The usual shopping trolley can be seen...
This part of the city is built around the river with docks, locks and harbours.
A sadly disfigured structure. Any idea what it was? I just did some research and found it was a very grim place indeed. Bristol Gaol. Jutting up like a broken tooth along the Cumberland Road it is all too easy to pass by the ruins of one of Bristol's last remaining execution sites. Commissioned in 1816 by the city council for a budget of £60,000 - in today's money that would cost the city over £2m - the New Gaol opened its doors to inmates in 1820. This is an extensive and commodious building, wrote the editor of the Mathew's Bristol, Clifton and Hotwell Guide in 1825. For health, convenience and excellent arrangement is not to be equaled in England, commanding extensive views of the surrounding countryside, he continued. The boundary wall (20 feet high) is built in hewn variegated marble which has a beautiful appearance. Among its first guests were prisoners transferred from Bristol's infamous Newgate prison that it replaced. Built to hold 197 prisoners of mixed sex the prison was a great improvement over its predecessors: Bridewell jail's prisoners had a cat put into their cells at night to stop rats from gnawing at their feet. The New Gaol's accommodation consisted of single cells that measured 6 ft by 9 ft. Water supplies were drawn from a well using a large treadmill that could hold twenty inmates - not an unusual practice in those days. Despite the forward-thinking design it didn't take too long for conditions to deteriorate. The water from the well proved to be undrinkable, small windows stopped air circulating and created a stale and fetid interior. Prisoners were poorly clothed and suffered in the winter months from the cold. At night the whole prison was enveloped in a shroud of darkness that even hampered the warders carrying out their patrols. All that remains to mark the site now is the grim granite front entrance, resembling a small castle complete with its rusting mock portcullis and a small section of outer wall. Designed not only as a entrance but as a platform for staging crowd-pulling public executions, the gatehouse's flat roof was built with a trap door. It was through this door the condemned dropped with a noose around their necks on the way to the next world. This ruin is the keeper of some gruesome tales of the judicial system in Bristol.In 1895, the prison was sold to The Great Western Railway for a sum of £22,000. It was then used as a coal yard and, with the exception of the granite gatehouse, most of its walls and buildings were demolished.
Another two shopping trollies can be seen. The traffic cone and bike wheel were out of shot. Come on Bristol get this **** tidied up!
I dropped down onto a pathway alongside this Avon New Cut
A single track railway came in from the right....
Several vintage railway trucks were standing in a siding.
From a footbridge i took this view back along the railway track and Commercial Road.
A view the other way from the bridge
Colourful houses overlooking the harbour
Dockside cottages
The tall ship Matthew was running a service up and down the waterway past SS Great Britain
Apartment living ....
Brunels SS Great Britain was saved from the beach on the Falkland Islands and returned across the ocean to its home..
Barely recognisable as the same vessel launched in 1843, she transported Welsh coal to San Francisco around Cape Horn. On her third trip, she ran into trouble around the Cape, and was forced to run for shelter in Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands. The cost of repairs were not economic and she was sold as a coal and wool storage hulk in Port Stanley.
the ship was built in 1843 at the Great Western Dockyard in Bristol, under the supervision of Brunel and his colleagues at the Great Western Steamship Company & Thomas Guppy, Christopher Claxton and William Patterson.
Bristol will be a great place when its finished. Bit like Liverpool really.
Bristol cathedral
A wonderful corner outside the cathedral
The Bristol Town Hall
Inside Bristol cathedral
Art
More art
Pero's Bridge at St Augustine's Reach
A statue marking the fact that John cabot commenced his voyages of discovery from this harbour.
The Minesweeper HMS Quorn
Balmoral was built in Southampton in 1949 and operated under the Southampton Red Funnel Fleet for 20 years. She then moved round to the Bristol Channel where she became the last member of P&A Campbell's famous White Funnel Fleet. When they ceased operation in 1980, Balmoral moved to Dundee to become a floating restaurant, and there she stood, unsuccessful & gradually falling into disrepair, until she was rescued by the friends & supporters of the Waverley.
Three old dockside cranes are the centrepiece for the planned museum of Bristol due to open in 2009. There were a number of restored railway goods wagons underneath. The line i'd walked alongside of earlier in my walk was a continuation of this track.
HMS Quorn and Balmoral
I had to miss out a visit to St mary Redcliffe church as I was time pressured to catch my train... Maybe next time.
The facade of Brunels Terminus station at Bristol that is now a car park.
Inside the old station
A sad use for a wonderful structure.
