This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.
Unlike some of the photographs in this series, this time the now photograph was an intentional photo.
Back in May 2016 I went for a lunchtime walk and saw the building work in the Redcliff Quarter of Bristol. One place caught my eye, Kiln House, where the majority of the building had been demolished, but the facade was retained (it was probably listed).
This is another view of the facade.
The other day I was out for a similar lunchtime walk and remembered taking the photograph (didn’t actually remember when, I had to find the older photograph when I got home). So I took another photograph from a similar (but not quite the same) perspective.
Kiln House is now modern flats, but I don’t know much about the history of the original building.
Back in the summer we were visiting relatives in London. We went on a sightseeing walk around London. We were staying in Kingston so caught the train into London. We changed at Vauxhall and caught the tube to Green Park. The aim was to do something of a quick walk around some central London tourist landmarks.
Wefirst walked through the park to Buckingham Palace. We did wonder why anyone would book a deckchair for the whole day to sit in the park.
We took some photographs of the palace and watched as the Guards standing on duty were inspected.
Military officer was riding around on his horse, quite surreal in some respects.
As we walked to Clarence House, we saw Rod Stewart. It was looking like he was filming a music video.
I stopped to take a photograph or two.
One of the reasons for posting this post, was that the video has now been released.
We then walked around to St James Palace. We missed the entrance as we were on the pavement next to the palace, but it was interesting to see what was originally the home of the royals. Through St James Park, through Whitehall, down to see the Houses of Parliament.
It was then pass Downing Street with a couple of protests. Back through Horse Guards Parade.
We then walked past Admiralty Arch into Trafalgar Square.
Then wecaught the tube to Waterloo and then caught the train back to Kingston.
On 11th September 2001 I went to work at Norton Radstock College in my role as Director of the WCC.
I was working in my office, when someone came and said a plane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York.
I went the BBC News website, but it wouldn’t load. I initially put it down to the college network, but of course realised later on that it was excessive demand on their servers which was causing their site to fail to load. I tried a fair few times to get the front page to load, but had no luck.
In the end I went to the canteen where the news was on the TVs in there and there was loads of people, students and staff, just watching the TVs. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but as the day progressed it became much more apparent what had happened.
I listened to the radio news in my car on the way home, there was a lot more detail about what had happened, but less about the who and the why. We went to the gym and as I cycled away on the cycle machine the news was on the screens in front of me and the devastation and destruction was shown. It was awful. The cycle of news, of the plane crashing, the towers collapsing, the dust and debris cloud was right there in my face and it just added to my shock and disbelief.
Those memories of that day have stayed with me ever since then.
So there is a new series of the A House Through Time starting 7th September, 9pm BBC Two.
I really enjoyed the previous three series. The series on the house in Bristol was really interesting, though I think I preferred the first series on the house in Liverpool.
I always think I should give them a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart.The first instance of this that came to my attention was last year in May when I went to Manchester.
It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart!
Back in August 2007 I took this photograph of St Pancras Railway Station.
At the time the station was undergoing an £800 million refurbishment to become the terminal for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link as part of an urban regeneration plan across East London.
London St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is the terminus for Eurostar services from Belgium, France and the Netherlands to London. It provides East Midlands Railway services to Leicester, Corby, Derby, Sheffield and Nottingham on the Midland Main Line, Southeastern high-speed trains to Kent via Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International, and Thameslink cross-London services to Bedford, Cambridge, Peterborough, Brighton and Gatwick Airport. It stands between the British Library, the Regent’s Canal and London King’s Cross railway station, with which it shares a London Underground station, King’s Cross St Pancras.
This is the (similar) view of the station which I photographed in June 2016.
Two years later I was back and took a similar shot in September 2018.
This time I was actually catching a train from St Pancras to Paris (and then onto Brest) for a conference presentation.
I was back at St Pancras in August 2021, however I took a photograph from a different perspective.
At the weekend we went for a walk around Leigh Woods. I went to Leigh Woods once, about twenty years ago, but have not been there since then. This I find quite surprising, as I do live in the area, and go regularly to Ashton Court, the Downs, which are all roughly in the same area.
Leigh Woods is quite small, a 2-square-kilometre (0.77 sq mi) area of woodland on the south-west side of the Avon Gorge, close to the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
We parked the car and looked at the map and thought about which route to take. We walked through the woods and down to the Avon Gorge.
There were a couple of streams which feed into the River Avon.
With some modifications to stop flooding of the paths I assume.
We went under the viaduct on the Bristol Portishead railway line.
As it was Saturday and only carries freight now and then, we didn’t see any trains.
We then walked along the Avon Trail in the Gorge. It was really nice to see the Gorge from the other side of the river.
Generally I either see the Gorge from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, on the Portway or from the Downs.
We walked along the River Avon Trail and then as we reached the Clifton Suspension Bridge we took a right back into Leigh Woods.
We passed some grazing cows which looked out of place on what was quite a steep rocky footpath. Once back at the top we walked back to the car. It was a little further than we planned but was a lovely walk.
