Never re-attainable
A view of the gasworks in Day's Road, Bristol, from the same strip of negatives as the preceding Stanley Street photo and, from the look of the light, probably taken on the same evening, Friday 30th March 1973. The empty land between the camera and the gasworks had been the site of the Midland Railway's Barrow Road shed. A railway-crazed schoolfriend had dragged me around the shed buildings shortly before they were demolished in 1965. Unfortunately, having no interest in such matters at the time, I took little notice and have no memory of the occasion.
Behind the ruinous shunters' cabin were carriage sidings and, just in front of it, the line down to the wharf in Avon Street by which the Midland gained access to the port of Bristol. The line had originated in the 1830s as a horse-drawn tramway to link the collieries of Coalpit Heath to water transport. It was used by the Blue Circle cement company until the 1980s. Just the other side of the low wall in the foreground were the lines into St Philip's Station. Intended as the Midland's Bristol terminus it was literally sidetracked when the railway negotiated an agreement to use the Great Western's Temple Meads Station. It was quietly killed off in the 1950s.
By the early 1970s all this railway land had become a beautiful expanse of waste ground ...exactly the kind of place I loved. I spent countless hours wandering among the Buddleia bushes and Oxford Ragwort, observing Peacock butterflies and Cinnabar moths, dreaming dreams of vanished, never re-attainable steam-age glory. I usually jumped down from a place I had found just in front of the camera position here. It was quite a drop I remember and I don't suppose my old joints would be up to it these days. The wall in the foreground was at the foot of the gardens in Morley Terrace. What a view they must have had when this place was in full swing. Always one's eyes returned to the giant gasholders, built by the Bristol Gas Company in the 1860s and dismantled in 1981.
Never re-attainable
A view of the gasworks in Day's Road, Bristol, from the same strip of negatives as the preceding Stanley Street photo and, from the look of the light, probably taken on the same evening, Friday 30th March 1973. The empty land between the camera and the gasworks had been the site of the Midland Railway's Barrow Road shed. A railway-crazed schoolfriend had dragged me around the shed buildings shortly before they were demolished in 1965. Unfortunately, having no interest in such matters at the time, I took little notice and have no memory of the occasion.
Behind the ruinous shunters' cabin were carriage sidings and, just in front of it, the line down to the wharf in Avon Street by which the Midland gained access to the port of Bristol. The line had originated in the 1830s as a horse-drawn tramway to link the collieries of Coalpit Heath to water transport. It was used by the Blue Circle cement company until the 1980s. Just the other side of the low wall in the foreground were the lines into St Philip's Station. Intended as the Midland's Bristol terminus it was literally sidetracked when the railway negotiated an agreement to use the Great Western's Temple Meads Station. It was quietly killed off in the 1950s.
By the early 1970s all this railway land had become a beautiful expanse of waste ground ...exactly the kind of place I loved. I spent countless hours wandering among the Buddleia bushes and Oxford Ragwort, observing Peacock butterflies and Cinnabar moths, dreaming dreams of vanished, never re-attainable steam-age glory. I usually jumped down from a place I had found just in front of the camera position here. It was quite a drop I remember and I don't suppose my old joints would be up to it these days. The wall in the foreground was at the foot of the gardens in Morley Terrace. What a view they must have had when this place was in full swing. Always one's eyes returned to the giant gasholders, built by the Bristol Gas Company in the 1860s and dismantled in 1981.