Hotwells, gas works, street art and Banksy’s in the wild

2 September 2015

We’d made it to the Cumberland Basin, the main entrance to Bristol Docks and a place that features high on my work life list of disaster areas. Part of me was interested to see what all the fuss was about. The swing bridge we were about to cross would lead us from Spike Island to Hotwells and, looking over the side at the boats moored in the calm water, it seemed peaceful enough. Of course the problem, as always in Bristol, revolves around the roads not the river and over the expanse of water in the basin, we could see plenty of traffic even on a quiet Wednesday afternoon. At least we were walking so traffic shouldn’t cause us too many problems.

On the other side of the bridge we could see the terrace of houses built for the Bristol Docks Compnay in 1831 and, once we’d crossed, we stopped to have a look at the Pump House, built by Thomas Howard. This once housed the hydronic pumps that powered the bridges and machinery but it’s now the Pump House Pub. If we hadn’t already eaten we might have been temped to stop there. Hotwells was once a salt marsh called Rownham Mead. Apparently hot springs bubble up through the rocks of the Avon Gorge beneath the Clifton Suspension Bridge, hence the name. If we’d turned left instead of right we might have seen them but then we’d have missed all the other things we came to see and there are always other visits. In Georgian times Hotwells was a spa but it couldn’t compete with nearby Bath especially when the waters were found to be polluted.

CJ spotted a beautiful piece of stencilled graffiti, an instantly recognisable portrait of Salvador Dali. This, I later discovered, was painted by Ben Slow, a graduate of UCA  Canterbury. Disillusioned with the art world, Ben moved to London to gain more conventional work but the street art he saw there inspired him. He was commissioned to paint a mural at the Royal Albert Hall and has since had exhibits in America, France, Italy and Ibiza but still finds time for street art. His Dali piece certainly brightened my afternoon.

A little further on we finally got to see Brunel’s SS Great Britain. It may not have been the close up view we’d been expecting but at least it was free. Designed for transatlantic cruises to New York, she was the first ship to combine an iron clad hull with a screw propellor in a large ocean going vessel and, in 1845, the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic. Sadly, the enormous cost of building her forced her owners out of business in 1846 after the ship ran aground in Dundrum. In 1852 she was sold for salvage and, after repair, carried immigrants to Australia. Later she was retired to the Falkland Islands and used as a warehouse, quarantine ship and coal hulk.  Finally, in 1970, Sir Jack Howard paid for her to be towed back to Bristol to the dry dock where she was built and she is now a museum ship. With her six masts and one funnel she looked impressive, even from across the water and we stopped for a while to admire her.

Walking along the wide promenade beside the river we were looking for a roundabout which would be our cue to turn onto St Georges Road in search of our next Bansky. Unfortunately we got distracted by the intriguing ruined building we’d seen from the other side of the water. The promenade veered away from the road towards the ruins, leaving us in a quandary.
“Shall we go and have a look and risk getting lost?” I asked CJ, “or should we stick to the road?”
“Let’s go and have a look, we can always turn back.”
So curiosity got the better of us and led us astray. It wasn’t long before we could see the dirty sandstone blocks of the building above the high blue hoarding. Somehow I’d thought there’d be a plaque or something to tell us what it was but there wasn’t. We couldn’t even see it properly. Then, just as we’d passed it, we came to a narrow lane between high, rubble stone walls that both answered our questions and led us back to the road. This was Gas Works Lane and the building was a disused gas works.

Here whale oil was once converted into gas by the Clifton Oil Gas Company. Known as Canon’s Marsh Gasworks, it was built in 1824 and expanded in the 1870 s. Later converted to coal, the works remained in use until the advent of natural gas in the 1960’s. The Luftwaffe are responsible for the roofless, derelict state of the building but, on the other side of the lane, there’s a mirror image, once Purifier House, now offices. We had to walk back a little way to get any kind of  view and, sadly, there was no way to get inside. All we could really see above the old wall was a triangle of sandstone brick with a round window above a row of arched windows. We turned and walked on, not realising we’d passed the roundabout when we were walking behind the building.

When I saw a sign saying we were on Anchor Road I realised our mistake. We turned back and, at the first side street, Lower Lamb Street, I checked Google Maps. It seemed we could cut through to get back on track so we began to walk along this narrow street boardered by high walls. For a horrible moment it looked like a dead end but, as we turned, we spotted some steps. We were just about to climb them when I looked to my right and realised we’d accidentally stumbled upon the very thing we’d been looking for. On a plain red brick wall two air vents had been used as the eyes for a smiley face made of black stencilled words, ‘you don’t need planning permission to build castles in the sky.’ The stencilling looked as if it was meant to be there but this was, in fact, graffiti. Our next Banksy in the wild.

At the top of the steps we were on Deanery Road, right where we were supposed to be, and within sight of our next objective, Bristol Cathedral. Founded in 1140 it was originally St Augustine’s Abbey. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1542 it became a cathedral and home to the newly created Bishop of  Bristol. Much of it was rebuilt around that time. The entrance and nave we walked towards were actually built in the nineteenth century in gothic revival style by George Edmund Street. The twin towers flanking the door were built at the same time by John Loughborough Pearson.

On College Green people we sitting about on the grass enjoying sun that none of us had expected, most of them probably office workers on lunch breaks. We walked across looking at the Cathedral slightly jealously. Possession of a cathedral was once thought to be the main criteria for a town becoming a city and, of the sixty nine cities in England, only eighteen lack one. Southampton is one of those.
“I wonder why we don’t have a cathedral?” CJ mused.
“My best friend from school came from Liverpool,” I told him, “she always joked that Liverpool had two cathedrals because it had stolen Southampton’s.”

On the other side of the green we turned onto Park Street in search of our next Banksy, Well Hung Lover. Although it’s actually on a building in Frogmore Street, I’d read the best place to see it was from the Park Street bridge. Before long we were looking at it. Painted in 2006 on the side of what was then a sexual health clinic, it’s a humorous piece showing a naked lover hanging by his finger tips from a window ledge while an angry looking husband, his scantily clad wife behind him, looks out suspiciously. Well, it made me smile. Sadly someone has thrown blue paint at it.

With one more Banksy in the bank, we crossed the road and turned onto St George’s Road and then onto Frog Lane to get down onto Frogmore street where I knew there was more interesting graffiti. The first of it was a colourful and well executed piece by Silent Hobo, directly below Well Hung Lover. Silent Hobo is the pseudonym of Wei Ong whose distinctive work has been commissioned by various UK councils  Coca Cola, Levi’s, Google, the National Trust and the 2012 Olympics.  It seems strange that an artist who’s work sells for thousands of pounds should paint on a wall in a quiet Bristol street but I’m glad he did.

The other side of the building was so completely covered with artwork it was hard to see where the door was. As we were admiring it and wondering who painted it Commando rang to see how we were getting on. While I talked to him I looked up at the bridge we’d recently been standing on and wondered how many people passed by each day never knowing about the strange graffiti world below them.

Once Commando was satisfied we hadn’t got hopelessly lost or run over by Bristol traffic we carried on. We didn’t get far before we found two more interesting pieces of graffiti. These were both by JPS, otherwise known as Jamie Pail Scanlon who dropped out of a graphic design course due to lack of funds and was later inspired by a Banksy exhibition. Like Banksy he uses stencils to create his pieces and the first we saw was Sparticus, a full sized, muscular gladiator just around the corner from the bridge. Close by was Big Deal, a smaller piece in black and white. On closer inspection, the two children huddled closely together we’re not quite as sweet as they seemed.

On we went, past The Hatchet Inn, named after the axes woodsmen used in Clifton Woods back in 1606 when the pub was built, or so the story goes. Touted as the oldest pub in Bristol  it’s still in use today although it didn’t seem to be open when we passed. This was a shame because we both agreed we could have done with a coffee.

Luckily it wasn’t long before we turned onto Pipe Lane and, at the other end we found Colston Hall, a concert hall built on the site of thirteenth century Carmelite friary, Whitefriars. Actually there have been several buildings on the site since the friary, a Tudor mansion, the Colston Boys School, and several incarnations of the concert hall. It seems a shame the old buildings couldn’t have been preserved but I was glad of the modern, glass fronted building with toilets and coffee.

Having replenished our caffeine levels and taken advantage of the free wifi to check out our bearings we made our way to Nelson Street. Once this was one of the most depressing and run down streets in the city but an art event, See No Evil, organised in 2011 by street artist Inky, changed all that. The week long event was the largest of its kind in the UK and was partly funded by Bristol Council who saw it as a way to revitalise the area. A further event was held the next year and the evidence of both is easy to see. We stood and gawped at the huge mural on the side of a tower block, painted by Nick Walker for the 2011 event. Walker is a local artist and part of the 1980’s stencil graffiti movement that inspired Banksy. Bowler hatted men are a feature of his work and this one is tipping a tin of paint down the side of the building. His pieces have been used in a Black Eyed Peas video and in the Kubric film, Eyes Wide Shut. Like Banksy, this bad boy has turned from illegal graffiti to six figure gallery pieces. Who says graffiti is vandalism? He can paint on my wall whenever he likes!

Beside the tower block we found the arches of St John’s Gate, part of the fourteenth century Church of St John the Baptist and also the last remaining gate in the lost medieval city walls. This narrow church was closed in 1984 but is now looked after by the Churches Conservation Trust and the inside of the arches beside the gate are covered in commissioned graffiti. It looked beautiful although the taggers had been at work. Had we not peered through the arches we’d have missed Irish artist, Connor Harrington’s marvellous sword fighting mural on a wall behind in Broad Street. Now based in London, Harrington started out as a graffiti artist but has gained international renown as a conventional artist and mural painter.

The ubiquitous Bristol road works below the mural stopped us exploring the church further so we turned back onto Nelson Street to look at the front. The stained glass of one arched window had been replaced by a colourful display of tie wraps. Whether this was commissioned, like the archway paintings, or just more street art is a mystery but it was probably the best use of tie wraps I’ve ever seen. Beside this was a more conventional wooden door and further still a conduit which has, apparently, supplied water from Brandon Hill since 1374, although I’m not sure the tap still works.

Another giant office block mural that had us craning our necks was a strange, clothed, dog like creature created by Ariz. Born in Barcelona, he uses brushes, spray cans and rollers to adorn abandoned factories with his massive murals but is also an illustrator. On the very next building was another mural I’d have missed if CJ hadn’t pointed it out. As large as the others but far simpler, the stylised stick man almost blended into the background. This was the work of Stik, a London based artist who’s trade mark is humorous but sad looking stick figures. Stik runs graffiti workshops in London and has had a solo show at the Imitate Modern Gallery. His work sells for tens of thousands of pounds but, until recently, he was living in a hostel.

Whether the art event has been successful in regenerating the area remains to be seen as many of the properties are decaying and empty but, behind some beautifully painted hoardings, a new building seems to be going up. We stopped for a moment to admire the work before craning our necks once more to look at the next giant piece above a row of scooters and motorcycles outside a derelict building. This was Mechanical Bird by Pixel Pancho, part of the second See No Evil event. The artist from Turin specialises in large wall murals of robotic figures in earthy colours.

Our final stop on Nelson Street was, as Monty Python would say, something completely different. At first I couldn’t work out how the flowers and birds on the front of the disused Central Police Station had been created. CJ, who knows more about these things, explained they were made using stencils and pressure washers. This innovative medium certainly lends an ethereal quality to the work. One of the lamp posts outside was sporting a colourful, if slightly tatty, yarn bomb by Podinit. In exchange for my new knowledge of pressure washer art I explained the concept of yarn bombs to CJ. I’m not sure he was interested.

So far most of the work we’d seen was by well known urban artists who’d turned professional and made it big in the art world. Our next stop would be something a little more down to earth. If we could find it, we were off to a place I’d been curious about for some time, the Bear Pit.