Victorian Bristol

Walking around Bristol today has left me dismayed at my past self: I can't quite work out whether I had my unalert eyes clamped shut in the 1980s, or what.  Did I really not notice all the diverse Victorian architecture around me?  Why wasn't I out there drawing and taking photographs at every turn, or taking students on walks, or or or?  To be sure, I went to the Art Gallery a lot - see below - and revisiting it was like seeing old friends - but otherwise, I felt that I was dragging my heels in retrospective shame ...

But to be honest, I was greatly helped today by a very well-spent £7.99: Julia Killingback and Michael Pascoe's Explore Bristol: 2. Victorian Clifton.  So I looked up at this gateway going into Victoria Square, and saw Queen V herself.  This Cedar of Lebanon, in the middle of the square, dates from the 1840s.

Then this is one of the many Lansdown Place houses with iron pillars supporting railings.

The Bristol School of Dancing - built in 1893 as a Swedish Gymnasium - the keep-fit craze of the time - with bas-relief plaques supposedly by Bertel Thorvaldsen - so says the guidebook - they seem rather beat-up.

Then Cobblestone Mews, with hand-crafted cobblestones: one of the last Bristol streets to be lit by gas.

A fime house at the end of Worcester Terrace (1848-53), with Ionic columns.

A house on College Road, and -

Clifton College - amazing neo-Gothic architecture and, as is commemorated on this sign, the site about/for which Newbolt wrote "There's a breathless hush in the close tonight ... 'Play up! play up! and play the game." (A cricket game was about to happen, and parents were arriving ...).

... later, we went down to the Art Gallery: some Burne-Jones feet from The Briar Rose.  No.3 The Garden Court.

From Alma-Tadema's Unconscious Rivals;

Tissot's Les Adieux;

and then Samuel Colman's St James's Bristol (1824), which is a wonderful piece of social commentary, all across its crowded canvas (and how did I never take on board Rolinda Sharples' work - I need to go back to her!).

And then, finally - I had to go back to the English Department, at 3-5 Woodland Road.

We later walked to dinner at Pasta Loco in Cotham - very much recommended - and back ... 25,409 steps today.  We may sleep ...