Join us for this month's Big Bulb Plant.
Above: Autumn abundance in the formal garden beside Kings Weston house.
If you value our work please consider donating to help support our projects. Follow THIS LINK to donate safely and securely towards KWAG's work
This month:
- Working Party update: A return to Echo Woods
- KWAG's 8th Annual Big Bulb Plant
- WWII artefacts found at Wood Lodge
- The puzzle of the Portland Stone parapet.
Working Party Reminder - Saturday 10th October
Reminder: Please check the main article below for full details of the Working Party arrangements for the Big Bulb Plant this coming Saturday. .
KWAG volunteers who intend to spend most of the day on the Big Bulb Plant should come directly to the Lime Avenue for 10am rather than meeting in one of the car parks. When you arrive please make sure to keep distances at 2m, bring a mask if you would feel more comfortable, and the groups will separate from there to the two work areas.
Jim Ellis has already been in contact with some volunteers, but if you would like to come along please let us know in advance so we can monitor numbers and also let us know if you would prefer to be in one group or another. The groups must operate individually, so once you are allocated a group you will not be able to move to the other. We will also need to take a register of names and contact numbers.
If you are aged over 70, or are in a category identified by the Government as at greater risk you may need to check government guidance and only attend if you are fully comfortable with the arrangements given above.
Please come along with suitable clothing for the weather on the day, bring hand-tools if you have some suitable, and we hope to see you there. Please keep an eye on our Facebook Page in case of any change of location, or call 07811 666671 on the day to find us.
Working Party Update: A return to the Echo woods
Below: KWAG volunteers making a start on the Echo Walk in September.
 Our second post-lockdown volunteer working party ran smoothly in September and completed work getting on top of laurel regrowth and restoring a little dignity to the Echo Walk by re-establishing its original alignment. The two parties operated separately, each in a group of six, allowing us to maintain close to our pre-lockdown progress levels.
Both groups worked fast and tasks we were finished much earlier than anticipated. The path-straightening group had perhaps the most exerting work, using mattocks and spades to dig up the earth and grass that had encroached across the west side of the Echo Walk. This was more work than the previous month on the opposite side, but the new alignment was revealed by lunch time. It’s become apparent that there’s been a lot of gravel washed out along this edge since the 1970s, and the area could do with a lot of new material here to level the path.
Above: The Echo Path realigned between August and September this year.
The group tasked with clipping back the cherry laurel regrowth worked equally as hard, finishing the last of the area on the north side of the Echo Walk quickly, before continuing towards the Echo with more tidying work.
No doubt we will need to revisit the woodland areas again in years to come, and the lower part of the Echo Path, closer to the house, also needs some attention, but for now this area is in a fair condition and after the Big Bulb Plant we hope to move on to another area of the estate in November.
Below: Laurel regrowth tamed in Echo Wood, looking towards the Echo.
KWAG's 8th Annual Big Bulb Plant
As in previous years October’s working party will take the form of our FREE Big Bulb Plant. We have worked out a system to ensure that we can work within Government restrictions on Coronavirus and we will necessarily need to limit numbers. Naturally this has complicated our usual open invite arrangements.
There will be four teams working at any one time. Each team will have a maximum of 6 members and be allocated a specific area to work within. There will be two teams of KWAG volunteers, 12 people in total, and two other teams who will need to book in advance. If you are intending to come along as a KWAG volunteer please get in touch so we can make sure have a space. The remaining two teams are for family or other groups of up to six to book a timeslot in advance. Time-slots are 30 mins, but more than one session can be booked to extend bulb planting to as long as you are able to spare.
Working areas will be set out and marked with barriers with a vacant plot between each team at all times. Once plots are filled with bulbs the locations will be nudged over to the adjacent empty plot in synchronisation, to maintain an empty plot between teams at all times. We’ve designed the areas to ensure there are at least 8m between teams.
Below: the arrangement for safe working areas on the Lime Avenue at the front of Kings Weston House.
We do ask that everyone comes along with their own tools if possible, but we will have some available subject to regular cleaning. We will have disinfectant sprays and wipes. All bulbs will be provided.
We hope that there will be a minimal number of teething issues and there will be volunteers on hand on the day to provide instructions and ensure we all remain safe. We hope to see you on the day, but please make sure to get in touch if you want to come along, or book a time to come along with family and friends using this booking site.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/kings-weston-big-bulb-plant-2020-tickets-119870161881
WWII artefacts found at Wood Lodge
Wendy, the owner of Wood Lodge, on Penpole Lane, recently got in touch with us to tell us about a few finds discovered during recent work refurbishing the house. The Lodge was built in the mid-Eighteenth Century, partly as an ornament to the parkland, and part to guard the public entrance into the estate from Penpole Point, but these finds are from a much later date.
Several fragments of pottery had been unearthed which, conveniently, all carry dates (if only every archaeological find could be so definitively marked!). Dates are 1942 and 1943, both in the midst of the Second World War. The fragments also carry the mark of the NAAFI - The Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes – who provided refreshment, canteen, and entertainment services to troops during WWII.
Above: The crockery fragments recently discovered in the garden of Wood Lodge, Penpole Lane.
Looking at aerial photos from 1946, immediately after the war, the finds can be explained by the presence of the army camp immediately on the other side of the garden wall to the Lodge, and covering the whole of the area now occupied by Shirehampton’s Oasis Academy School. The camp was established in 1941 as Sea Mills Camp B, to accompany Camp A that had been constructed across much of Shirehampton Golf Course. Both camps were initially set up to house huge numbers of US servicemen entering the country through Avonmouth or being reserved to supervise US operations through the docks.
Although barely anything remains from the two Sea Mills camps these fragments are reminders of the busy life the Kings Weston led during the dark days of WWII and the men who served their countries.
Below: Detail of a 1946 aerial survey showing Wood Lodge and the proximity of Sea Mills Camp B
The puzzle of the Portland Stone parapet.
Below: some of the stones revealed recently in the bulb plant area.
 A frequent query we receive asks what are the big stones littered along the Lime Avenue and the Circle? Following our recent clearance along parts of the avenue some of these blocks have become far more prominent, and October’s Big Bulb Plant will need to take place amongst them. The blocks are huge, massive lumps of white stone that are so large they have managed to remain largely unmolested for, as far as we can tell, their entire time at Kings Weston.
Their story is unusual, and unanswered questions remain about them, but what we do know is that they are the original parapet stones of the Georgian Bristol Bridge. The once-famous medieval bridge across the Avon was replaced by a smart new one that opened in 1768. Designed by the appropriately named architect James Bridges it followed similar designs for Blackfriars Bridge being built across the Thames at the same time, and shared the same high quality Portland stone quarried from the Isle of Purbeck.
Below: A Georgian view of Bristol Bridge from the east by John Hill (1812-1879) showing the balustrade.
The bridge served Bristol well for just short of a century, but an increase in traffic during the Nineteenth Century required the old bridge to be modified and widened. The old parapets and balustrade were dismantled in 1864 and, for some reason, caught the eye of Philip William Skinner Miles of Kings Weston House. Members of the Miles family were senior partners in a bank on Corn Street, not far from the crossing, so the work may have caught his attention and some plan come to his mind for how to recycle the stonework on his estate.
The  stonework was duly dismantled and carefully transported to Kings Weston, where it appears to have been laid out along the length of the Lime Avenue and around The Circle. Miles’s acquisition is recorded in a drawing of the old bridge in Bristol Record Office with a pencil note explaining when it was moved, but, sadly, no explanation at all for what was planned for it.
Many of the stones in the parkland today are still identifiable, with mouldings, and features recognisable from James Bridges original drawings. Some are from the base course of the balustrade, some the piers, and others the copings. Some retain the square mortice holes into which the decorative balusters would have fitted, and others have a carved channels and sockets where wrought iron chain bars were intended to strengthen the structure.
Above-right The original drawings of Bristol Bridge by James Bridges and showing some of the stone recognisable today at Kings Weston (Bristol Museum & Art Gallery)
Below: Victorian traced drawing of the bridge with captions dating the transfer of the stones to Kings Weston (Bristol Archives)
Below: A block on the Lime Avenue showing socket holes for the stone balusters.
 The next mention of the stones doesn’t come for another century, in January 1946, after the last of the Miles family had died, and when a notice is posted in the Western Daily Press advertising “Sundial or birdbath pedestals of historic interest. Limited number of stone balusters from parapet of old Bristol Bridge. £3 3s each - apply foreman, Kingsweston Estate yard, Kingsweston”. The advert must have piqued the interest of a journalist at the paper as, six days later, a short article appeared saying that a phone message had been received from Kings Weston house stating that all of the ornamental carved balusters had since been sold, “The balusters, by the by, came to light when a workman on the Kingsweston Estate was digging for a new place for his runner beans. How they came to be buried no one can say”. None survives in the former estate yard behind the old stables on Napier Miles Road.
Sadly the balusters and the balustrade will never now be reunited, and only the most immovable masonry survives on the estate as a constant curiosity. Perhaps there’s some local garden still adorned by an errant balustrade stone propping up a birdbath?
Below: Balustrade stone from above one of the bridge piers with distinctive mouldings.
|
