Bristol -3: About Buildings and Food

I’m staying at the Clifton Hotel on St Pauls Road and Sunderland Place. The latter is a short cul de sac at the back of the Victoria Rooms accessible by gate during daylight hours. The Victoria Rooms were built in 1838 and named for Queen Vic on whose nineteenth birthday the foudation stone was laid. She had been coronated the previous year. The building, designed by Charles Dyer, is in the Greek Revival style. Its Corinthian portico frames a forecourt which features an impressive array of art deco fountains, with crouching beasts and statuary about a curved pool with steps and balustrades. It functioned as assembly rooms, hosting concerts, lectures and exhibtions. Still does today, although the building became part of Bristol University in 1920 and houses the Department of Music.

Below the Victoria Rooms is Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. This is part of a set of imposing buildings at the top of Park Street, a main city artery set on an impressively steep incline. The building was designed by Frederick Wills in the Edwardian Baroque style, in 1905. Permanent exhibitions include local art, oriental art, geology, archaeology, natural history and local history. 

The current exhibition features Grayson Perry whose lockdown era show I have been following on television. To be close to Grayson is to be close to the coalface of art and so it happens here, with all the delirium of variety brought by open access art. Perry’s imprimature is populist; if everybody else is doing it, why can’t you. But dont be deceived into thinking that such immediacy lacks merit, there’s fine stuff here. 

Adjoining the Museum, the Wills Memorial Tower is a significant landmark crowning the top of Park Street. A stunning neo Gothic tower rising over two hundred feet, it was designed by George Oatley as an exclamation mark of perpendicular gothic, mimicking the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It was built between 1915 and 1925.

The University College itself was established in 1876. University of Bristol, chartered in 1909, received generous funding from Henry Overton Wills III, who became the first Chancellor. The Wills Tobacco business was founded in Bristol in the late eighteenth century. Family members became prominent in building Victorian and late Edwardian Bristol. The Museum was funded by Sir William Wills, another tobacco baron and cousin of Henry. Architect, Frederick, was Henry’s younger brother. It is Henry who is commemorated by the tower.

While the Museum has also hosted Banksy, the city’s home grown art hero, or anti-hero, Banksy’s natural milieu is outside the confines of a gallery’s walls. Banksy was born in Bristol in 1974. He took to the shadowy world of the Graffitti artist in his teens. There are trails to follow or you can be prepared for ambush. Well Hung Lover is a startling example on a gable at Frogmore Street where it passes beneath Park Street. It’s a sleazy film noir tableau of the suited cuckold glaring out the window as his wife, deshabille, pouts wounded innocence behind him. The well hung lover himself clings to the window sill by his fingertips. Another, Girl with the Pierced Eardrum is in the Harbourside. Painted in 2014, it tips a wink to Vermeer, the pearl being replaced with an alarm box.

At the bottom of Park Street is College Green, a traditional civic park flanked by its ancient Cathedral and the Town Hall. City Hall is an impressive redbrick behind a crescent pond. It was designed in the 1930s though had to wait till after the end of WWII for its completion, eventually opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1956.

Bristol Cathedral, the Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, was founded in 1140 and was for four centuries St Augustine’s Abbey. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries it became a cathedral for the city. It is always growing. The most recent addition is the west front with its twin towers added in the nineteenth century. In the Gothic revival style then popular, it makes a good fit with the older parts from the fourteenth century with their ornamental pinnacles, and the decorated gothic of the central tower from the fifteenth century. The coffee shop, through the cloisters, has a lovely garden, a good place to reflect over a hot brew

Ultimately I must do the thing to do in Bristol, which is float. And, of course, visit the top of all recommendations which I received on my first day in St Mary Radcliffe, top of my list to begin with. I take a ride in a small ferry boat that plies the Avon. The water is just an arms length away. We skate into this bustling thoroughfare out to the SS Great Britain. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s ship launched in 1843 as the largest vessel in the world, and the most innovative. Both iron hulled and powered by screw propellor, she crossed the Atlantic as the first steamship in 1845. The transatlantic route wasn’t longlasting and the ship instead ferried thousands of emigrants to Australia until 1881 when she became a coal ship. Five years later her last voyage saw her marooned in the Falklands as a coal storage bunker. Scuttled in the Falklands in 1937, it seemed she was to be no more than a rusting hulk, but thirty three years later she was raised and returned home to Bristol and fitted out to recreate her historical existence in lucid detail.

Within the exhibition, the ship is suspended in time. The underwater entry is both airy and eerie and I felt strangely elated walking beneath the ship’s enormous hull. The deck is vast with only funnel and masts protruding and all accommodation below. I was happy to be alone on dack, allowing that dreamtime of immagination which is so rare in a public exhibit. The accommodation varied according to social status. Amongst the great and the good there was the illusion of the grand hotel, which is impressive in the flesh, though being a time capsule gave some weird prompts of the Shining. Farther down the scale things became more cramped. Cabins gave way to bunks, with models glimpsed in boozy punch ups while smoke and unhealthy coughing spiced the atmosphere. I even began to feel sympathetically seasick. 

Leaving the vessel, there’s a large exhibition on Brunel, presided over by a larger than life Brunel. Being Brunel, opened in 2018, provides a detailed account of his achievements and idiosyncracies, including Brunel’s drawing office and his dining room. Finally leaving by the shop, I wondered would I enquire after a souvenir box of cigars (my imagination) but instead made for the fridge magnets. It’s a fine shop for souvenirs, don’t mind me. 

The return along the quayside takes you past the MShed, another outpost of the Bristol Museum. Moored outside is another significant ship. The model of the Matthew remembers Bristol’s early entry in the golden years of European maritime exploration. It was on such a small ship, the original Matthew, that John Cabot sailed to the shores of North America in 1497.

I have a pint outside the Arnolfini Gallery in a beergarden by the river. I have ticked a fair number of boxes, but there’s only so much you can do of a city over three days. Evening will be a time to feed the appetites. Returning to Clifton, it’s time to contemplate my last night on the town. Clifton floats serenely above the teeming city, not far from the city centre. For eating out it’s a handy roll down the hill. I’ve decided on Indian tonight, without doing any recce, but hey, it’s England, can’t be too far. 

It’s raining and I shelter in Browne’s, a large and long established bistro at the top of Park Street. Brown’s Brasserie is adjacent to the University tower and was originally part of the University. I’d eaten at Browne’s another evening, plumping for the Beef Pie which seemed appropriately English fare to begin with. An extravagant puff pastry top is pierced to explore the dark joys beneath. Tonight, I take a drink on the patio and wait for the shower to sweep on by. English rain is more occasional than Irish, but no less wet. After my drink the shower has passed and I continue my exploration along Park Row. This goes past the Synagogue and King David’s Hotel, where at last I reach the promised land. The Christmas Steps are shining with new rain. They make for an old world antique descent from the heights to depths of the city.

I stumble across the Haveli Bar, The Yard, on Maudlin Street, at the top of the Christmas Steps. I am looking for Indian quisine and this is it. I am alone but for the gentleman serving me; the manager I think. So he has time to hover and we both surf the waves of ethnic music that is part of the ambience. Outside it’s raining again. Inside we talk Bollywood over an evil Vindaloo. Most excellent.

I roll downhill to the Centre, and sit along the boardwalk of the Floating Harbour. Cities at night are particularly good by the waterside, you get two for the price of one with reflections plunging into the harbour water, while above the lights of soaring buildings merge with starlight. The solace of a swirling world. I’m well fortified for my second assault on the slopes of Park Street on my return to base camp. The Will’s Memorial Tower is now an illuminated sentinel over the City, a stone flame within a million rods of late evening rain. 

Bristol – 2: A Day in Clifton

My first day’s excursion has to be around Clifton. The Clifton Suspension Bridge is top of my list of things to see. The stroll through Clifton in the morning sunshine is very pleasant. Clifton developed into an affluent suburb in the late eighteenth century. It occupies the high ground above the city between Whiteladies Road at the top of Park Street and the Avon Gorge to the west. It’s a pleasant, Georgian and Victorian environment consisting mostly of tall, elegant terraces. It is reminiscent of Dublin 4, though quieter and more intimate. Even many of the street names match with Lansdowne and Pembroke Roads. 

I skirt Clifton Village with its lovely arcade and plenty of sunshine sidewalk cafes, before zigzagging vaguely uphill. There’s parkland along the summit, and prominent here is the Clifton Observatory. There’s a wee coffee shop where I can catch my breath. So good I use it twice. At first to relax over a strong coffee and again to recover with something harder after my visit.

The tower has panoramic views over the gorge with bits of Bristol peeking through the trees beyond Clifton Downs. Built in 1776 as a windmill, it was bought by  William West who converted it into his art studio. Indulging his passion for photography, he installed the Camera Obscura, meaning dark room, in 1828. The camera took advantage of the spectacular views of the Clifton Downs and the Avon Gorge, further enhanced by Brunel’s suspension bridge of 1864.

I take the full ticket, with entry to the Camera Obscura above and the Giant’s Cave somewhere below. A lady is ahead of me in the queue for the Camera and kindly offers to share the dark room with me. I’m glad of this as it soothes the experience of being in the dark, atop a tower, with the ghostlike apparition of the giddy panorama somehow all around. She also knows how to operate the thing which would probably have mystified me. It is very addictive. There’s a hint of the confessional in the darkness and the hush, without the padre but the presence of God, and the serene lady. By myself I would probably have left scratch marks on the walls, but spent several magic moments within the ancient and modern contraption before finding the door after only a few attempts. 

West cut the steep descending passage to the Giant’s Cave. It’s a long way down and my incipient claustrophobia, triggered by the dark room, waxes some more as the passageway gets ever narrower. And then there’s the thought of having to retrace my steps, all of them, all of those steps. I break out into the cave at something of a gallop but don’t tarry long as I rush onto the viewing platform. This juts out of the cliff face with well nigh 360 degree views of the bridge and gorge. Great, claustrophobia and vertigo. It really is stunning. Soaking all in, as much as I can, I quickly clamber up to the open air, regretting I’m not young anymore but very glad to be alive. And my second visit to the 360 degree Glass Cafe offers wonderful views and refreshments, including a welcome bottle of beer. All that and Amy Winehouse singing Valerie on the sound system. Life can be perfect, sometimes.

Well, sometimes I go out by myself

And I look across the water

And I think of all the things of what you’re doing

In my head I paint a picture

And then it’s time for another cliffhanger. The Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol’s most awesome icon, was conceived by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in response to a competition to choose a bridge to span the gorge. Brunel’s design won, or at least he convinced the judges that it did, and he received the contract to proceed. Construction was beset with problems. The Bristol Riots of 1831 halted construction and investors backed out. Work resumed five years later but was dogged by funding problems. The project was abandoned in 1843 with only the towers completed. Brunel died in 1859 and so never saw his project brought to fruition. Admirers at the Institute of Civil Engineers reckoned that completing the bridge would be a fitting memorial to the great man and a revised design by William Henry Barlow and John Hawkshaw was begun in 1862 and opened in 1864.

Brunel’s design had a sphinx atop each tower, but these never materialised. It’s still mighty impressive. The towers do have a certain Egyptian slant and rise to 100 metres above high tide. The bridge has a clearance of 75 metres, a span of 214 metres and a total length over 400 metres.

I walk across the bridge and back. There are few comparable walking on air experiences. I’ve cycled across the Golden Gate, walked and driven over the Hoover Dam, and taken a few tentative steps along the Firth of Forth Bridge. This is right up there, and I mean up. It’s giddy-making and transcendent. There’s a visitors centre on the Leigh Woods side in Somerset but I’m in a special place and continue back to the Clifton side. I am enjoying a long, and I hope visibly poetic, view across the gorge when I sense someone entering my space. 

Hello there, you alright there, mate? It’s a genial man, in the livery of the Bridge company. I inform him of my happiness, something not always apparent in my countenance, and consider that people are extraordinarily nice in Bristol.  And then I understand where he’s coming from. The bridge is also, balefully, a renowned suicide spot. Plaques advertise the number of the Samaritans and monitors regularly patrol. In 1885 a young barmaid, Sarah Henley, jumped from the bridge. Her voluminous skirts acted as a parachute and she landed safely, if embarrassingly, in the soft mud of the Avon at low tide. She lived into her eighties.

I assure the man that I’ve read the plaques, although that may only confirm his suspicions. I tell him it’s great to be alive. I had hoped to click my heels jauntily while departing, but the old legs aren’t quite up to it, so I stroll, with as much mirth as I can muster, back to Clifton Village. 

Clifton Village itself is wearing a happy face in the sunshine. I potter about the shops and the cafes. There’s an upmarket but bohemian vibe abroad, a palpable sense of Santa Monica in the straight streets, the faded fin de siecle facades. I stop for refreshment on the pavement along Princess Victoria Street. While reviewing my photography, my phones battery dies and I must head back to the hotel to recharge. 

It’s time for a late lunch anyhow. Racks Bar is empty, it was packed yesterday. The bargirl asks me how my day has been going and I tell her. Ultimately it’s all about being glad to be alive. I must apologise to the queue that’s formed behind, hopefully enjoying my tale. Outside the sun is blazing and I relax over a falafel and a foaming beer. Amy Winehouse is playing, same as at Clifton Observatory. Two perfect moments in one day.

Oh, won’t you come on over?

Stop making a fool out of me

Why don’t you come on over, Valerie?

Valerie was originally a song by the Zutons, a Liverpool band of the Noughties. It was written by their frontman, Dave McCabe, though credited to the full band. McCabe wrote it in a cab, a kiss blown westwards to his ex, an American girl called Valerie Star. It features on the album, Tired of Hanging Around from 2006. Winehouse’s cover is found on her producer Mark Ronson’s album Version, released the following year.

Wicklow’s Wonderful Coast – 8

After the joy of the summit, we magic ourselves back to where we began, beside the Scenic Car Park at the junction of the Cliff Walk and the steep path up Bray Head. A good walker can combine both paths in a loop, or take either route between Bray and Greystones. But with time on our side, we have taken both separately.

The cliff walk curves away to the left and from now on is a relatively level, well beaten path all the way to Greystones. It’s just over 6K and takes about an hour and a quarter to walk. It’s a path well travelled and particularly busy on a summer’s weekend. In the morning you’ll have the sun on your side and a glimmering coastal panorama. Shade falls after noon but the views remain captivating. There’s a surprising remoteness for such proximity to town and city, and a welcome seasoning of wild fauna. There are goats on the high headland, seals and sometimes dolphins in the sea, and the air alive with birdlife. Gannets, kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, shags and cormorants ply their trade along the cliffs. Herring gulls and great black-backed gulls circle ominously, and you might spot such elegant predators as peregrine falcons and kestrels. 

The Cliff Walk originated with the extension of the railway southbound in 1856. The Earl of Meath, whose Kilruddery estate stretched from Giltspur to the sea, did not want the railway line to bisect his demesne, but was willing to donate the land along the foreshore free of charge. The problem was this consisted of sheer cliffs and was going to require major engineering skill to construct a railway along it.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was given the task. Brunel was the star engineer of the time, born in 1806 in Portsmouth, England to a French father and English mother. Having completed his education in France, he returned to England in the late twenties to work with his father Marc on the construction of the Thames Tunnel. His subsequent career showed extraordinary invention and versatility over a wide range of projects. The famous Clifton Suspension Bridge near Bristol was an early triumph of design and aesthetics. Various difficulties prevented it being built during his lifetime, but, though altered in its final details, it is considered a fitting tribute to his genius. He became a central figure in the development of railways in these islands and pioneered modern oceanic travel with the design of large scale, propeller driven, all metal steamships. 

The Great Western, a paddle steamship, made the Atlantic crossing in 1838 in just fifteen days with fuel in reserve. Great Britain, the first truly modern ship, was made of metal rather than wood and driven by propellers instead of paddle. In 1852 he began work on the Great Eastern, the largest ship of its time. 700 foot long and holding four thousand passengers, it carried enough fuel to make the round trip to Australia. Finally launched in 1860, Brunel wouldn’t live to see the day; he died, aged fifty three, in 1859. As often happened with Brunel’s projects, it was not quite the success intended. Brunel was ahead of his time but world trade had not attained the economies of scale required to see his plans blossom. But, while it failed as a passenger liner, the Great Eastern found success as a cable lying ship, laying down the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866

Brunel first appeared in Ireland and encountered Dargan at the opening of the Dalkey Atmospheric Railway in 1844. Dargan enlisted Brunel as engineer for the development of Bray seafront, with the building of the sea wall and Promenade. He was the obvious candidate for the job of extending the railway line to Greystones, and he surveyed and engineered the route in1855/6. 

The coastal route may seem the most logical route south from Bray, but it brought practical difficulties. Brunel was faced with the prospect of forcing the railway through high coastal cliffs. He opted for timber trestle built viaducts where possible. The original line had only two tunnels but since completion there have been four realignments. Erosion and rockfalls saw the route moved closer to the cliffs and the modern line passes through four tunnels, the longest and most recent built in 1917, almost a kilometre long. Such changes and high maintenance costs lead some to call the development Brunel’s Folly. But given the lucrative passenger trade, especially since electrification, this seems a misnomer. Whatever the cost, the benefit of this glorious route in terms of both engineering and aesthetics is well worth it.

The ten minute spin is the most spectacular of Ireland’s railway journeys. The hour long trip from central Dublin is a joy: exiting via the starred coast of the teeming city, past Dun Laoghaire, Ireland’s first train route, and then bursting upon the glorious scenery of Killiney Bay. Bray follows, and then to cap it all there’s this thrilling ten minute leg to Greystones. The route features on series three of Michael Portillo’s tv series of great railway journeys. These days the rail is electrified and trains travel every half hour. 

Bray Station has a mural of Brunel. He cuts a distinctive dash with his high beaver hat and bristling sideburns. He is said to have always carried a leather pocket case lined with fifty cigars. Now there’s a man who liked to plan ahead. Nothing more frustrating than finding yourself halfway along a railway line in exotic terrain and running out of your preferred cheroot. I reckon fifty should do between Bray and Greystones, maybe both ways if you fancy cutting down.

After construction, the walk was opened to the public, but with conditions. Lord Meath built a lodge to levy a toll of one penny, every day except Friday, when the Lord had it to himself. Lord Meath’s Lodge today lies in ruins, almost a scenic embellishment in itself. There’s a set of steps leading up the cliff just past the southern standing gable. This was for Lord Meath’s own guests, leading up to a scenic headland route, today overgrown. The view from the top of the steps is magnificent. I seem to remember that the lodge was converted for use as a tea rooms in the fifties and sixties, at the time of a major tourism upsurge. Such enterprise died off in the depressed seventies and eighties. It might fly again though. I’ve seen it work on many continental cliff paths. 

After a short uphill section, we come to a deep slice in the headland: the Brandy Hole . There’s a spectacular view into the ravine, illustrating the wonders of building a railway in such a hostile environment. You can still see where the old route lay seaward of the modern tunnels. This was the scene of a serious accident a decade after the line was opened. A northbound train derailed at Brabazon Corner on an August morning in 1867 and plunged off the trestle viaduct to fall ten metres into the landward side of the ravine. Two were killed and dozens injured. An investigation found no fault with the structure itself, though the railway was realigned. Ten years later the viaduct was removed and the route pushed further inland. 

The Brandy Hole was a smugglers’s cove up to the mid nineteenth century. It was used to smuggle brandy, wine and silk from France. The cut of the ravine kept activities out of sight of the coastguard in Bray and Greystones. There was entry to a vast cave at sea level and, it is said, a tunnel connecting to the landward side of Bray Head. Such traces were obliterated with the construction of the railway.

This aspect of the cliffs, to be hidden in plain view, lends an aura of mystique. The shimmering shifts of the atmosphere, birds and clouds and sparkling sea, can make the wayfarer feel unmoored in time. You expect to turn and see the promenaders of Bray in Victorian attire, twirling parasols or moustachios, politely perplexed at your modernity. Or rounding a sudden bend, a ruffian might lounge with dubious beard and earring. Tipping their tricorn hat for a lucifer, in that pleasant sulphurous flare you’ll catch a glimpse in their one green eye of the hidden cave and its glittering treasure.

I fled to the island where the animals roam

found a darkened cave and called it my home

at night I could hear the birds and insects

and lay my body down on a bed of regrets

Holy Moses, the devil’s after me

between the sea and the sky chasing me down

Holy Moses by the  Cujo Family, from their eponymous debut album of 2010.