Post 16) Housekeeping

Project Progress

No blog posts since July, but I have been maintaining the flavour of the project with relevant finds posted on facebook, see links bar above

Have been as busy as ever 

Taking  a lot of time with collating and organising nearly 4 years worth of pdfs, photos, maps, plans and watercolours that had got very very out of hand and messy on 2 drives and numerous USB fobs!!

Creating photo real textures in adobe, or buying them from turbosquid and CGtextures

Scanning square on building photos from Reece Winstone books for accurate ”quick wins”

Grouping all evidence by street

Further digital Map and contour tracing

Screen dumping Britain From Above evidence

Screen dumping and re-stitching sections of zoomed in auction catalogue watercolours

Scanning Walter Ison elevation drawings from the Georgian Buildings of Bristol

Further photo recon trips to Redcliffe, Clifton, Cliftonwood and the Old City including specific visits to Goldney Gardens, Royal Fort, Red Lodge and 2 river trips

Finding loads more 18^th and 19^th century Bristol digital pdf guidebook, topographical book and history book scans in mainly north American sponsored online archives.

Practising and learning further sketchup 3d modelling techniques and time saving and organisational tips.

Discovering dozens of relevant surviving (pre 1830) building elevation drawing pdfs on the Bristol City Council planning applications portal

Doing gradient plans of key city streets to drape the traced map layers over

Actual modelling work, mostly map alignment and elevation drawing alignment  including selected buildings in King Street, Redcliffe Hill, St Nicholas church,

Back of Bridge Street, St Werburghs Church, St Stephens church, The Pithay, Union Street, River Frome , the Cathedral and Clifton St Andrews.

Also Cornwallis Crescent, Elle Bridge Island group at the Narrow Weir watering place and St Peters Church / Hospital area as per the 3 renders below.

Post 15) Coming soon........

The beautiful Dutch House of 1676-1940, 27 feet square and 5 storeys, 45 feet high plus 4 foot wooden balustraded parapet and rooftop annex. It was the Castle Bank in the 1820s, exposed timber framing with limewash plaster panels, and casement windows. Bombed 1940 and pulled down as unsafe by sappers. There are plans to rebuild it, but the often mentioned derelict bank of england complex on the corner of high street is nowhere near the site of the dutch house, being some 130 feet away thanks to high street being widened to 4 times its original width in 1962/3.

Post 14) Italianate Beauty

George Townesend completed the rebuilding of All saints Church tower in Corn Street in 1717. The coursed Bath stone rubble and ashlar tower rises 88 feet, capped by an Italianate balustraded parapet, with octagonal lantern. 8 pairs of  corinthian shafts support arches which in turn support a great moulded cornice which is surmounted by Luke Henwoods great plain dome, ball finial and golden cross of 1807. 

As city surveyor, he replaced the original bell shaped dome of 1717. The upper lantern-dome stage is 50 feet high, making 138 feet in all to the cross. Work in progress.

Post 13) Christ Church

The medieval Christ Church in Broad Street, City, with its 140 foot spire at the east end of the Church was completely taken down and this new Church with 160 foot west spire was built between 1786 and 1790. This is Walter Ison's 1950 book endpapers digital trace coming together nicely. The tower was symmetrical. Further triangulating of elevation data comes from my telephoto zooms from the top of St Stephens and the university complex, along with site measurements and as always the trusty 1885 Ordnance Survey 1:500 city maps

Post 12) The High Cross roads from the roof of the Dutch House (Castle Bank)

This is the 1823 view, (work in progress) from the flat roof of the Dutch House, 45 feet above the High Street, Wine Street, Broad Street and Corn Street crossroads, showing the second Council house of 1704. It had a frontage of 55 feet along Corn Street and 30 feet on the Broad Street return and 47 feet high.

Behind is a “holding model” for St Ewens, with its 73 foot tower. The Council house was angled back from Corn Street, just like the present old (third) Council House of 1828, as it was parallel and butting onto the nave of St Ewens, which was perpendicular to Broad Street.

 Walter Ison's 1950 drawing is here shown, half traced then details are being projected onto the box and then fleshed out. Additional information comes from the 1742 All Saints Parish plan, the watercolours of Edward Cashin, Hugh O'Neill (2) and James Johnson along with the 1795 and 1823 building plans.

Wideangle.

Post 11) St Ewen's Church Tower

This is the work in progress of St Ewen’s church tower, 15 feet square and 73 feet high. The church was on the corner of Broad Street and Corn Street at the very summit and heart of the medieval city, behind the 1704 Council House.

It’s main aisle was around 66 x 20 feet with a great east window facing onto the street opposite the door to Christ Church. The tower, shown here full height was modified, along with the nave into a council repository when the church closed following dwindling parishioners, the upper stage of the tower being removed. The whole site and  1704 Council House, was cleared in 1824 to build the much larger present old council house (Registrar’s Office) finished in 1828.

Post 10) A Juxtaposition of Regency

     This Project is really all about celebrating the huge collection of watercolours, drawings and oil paintings held within the museums, galleries and institutions of Bristol and bringing them back to life. In particular, I want to translate every facet of the 1500 Braikenridge Collection topographical images held within the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery into a living virtual gameworld of 200 years ago; The washerwomen, children with hoops, sailors, gentlemen on horseback, glass workers, sugar refiners, potterers, shopkeepers and Redcoats, everything brought back to life, the sights and sounds, but not of course, the smells!



    

This is St Mary Redcliffe from the Mud Dock at the Prince Street ferry in June 1805, just before Trafalgar, by James Pellor Malcolm, from the 1814 book Excursions in the counties of Kent, Gloucester, Hereford, Monmouth, and Somerset, in the years 1802, 1803, and 1805. This was drawn whilst the navvies were digging and blasting their way through the fields of Bedminster for a new tidal channel for the river Avon from Rownham Meadows to St Annes; The "New Cut" The power of 3D virtual modelling can give you any state of tide, so if one wanted to see the floating harbour drained and the Frome being cleared of accumilated mud in 1827, that would be possible. Here, we see the old tidal Avon before it became forever at high tide.The Red Triassic sandstone of wooded Addercliffe slopes straight into the river with no quay wall. Redcliffe Parade East isnt yet built and three great glass cones are visible on Redcliffe Backs, Temple Gate and Prewett Street, along with the Spireless Church and shot tower. A ship is being built in the Wapping East dockyards, then still owned by Sydenham Teast and great Indiamen unload their cargoes on the Grove. Prince Street lifting bridge with toll houses replaced the ferry in 1809, the present iron swing bridge dating from 1878.





     

    

This is a celebration of the Regency Era City that had not long began to shed its medieval cloak and evolve through the Stuart and Georgian "Early Modern" era into the future Victorian age of Warehousing, great public buildings and Railways (The second Industrial Revolution of the 1840s and beyond)

    

We are at a crossroads in time, where casement windows, wattle and daub and pargetting hang on besides red brick, Bath, Portland and Dundry Stone and uniform tall sash windows. Bringing those lovely old watercolours, drawings and oils back to virtual reality and walking those cobbled streets will fuse together topographical, architectural and social history like never before. The signwriting above the shops in the watercolours belonged to real people and by recreating Bristol, building by building, street by street, everything will be tied together using the Mathews Trade Directories, where over 6500 names are listed. Not just pretty old pictures, this was all real and will be brought back to life for all to enjoy.

    

Plumley issued his prospectus for his great map of the city in 1813, but Ashmead was the one to finish it in 1828, after his death and so we have a map that took many years to survey and produce, for it is a work of art in itself. See it on the Bristol Know Your Place Website, link above. I have my own paper copy from the Library which has a numbered key to all the 100+ public buildings numbered within.

     So, the Plumley / Ashmead map took a long time to produce, which means that come its completion in a city which was evolving daily, there must be a lot of new buildings that missed being surveyed and vice versa, a lot of buildings that were gone by 1828 but existed and were drawn in at the start of the survey.

     Likewise, I'm setting a tentative date of 1825 for the context of this City model, based on the sheer great percentage of the watercolours drawn 1824-1826 out of the total of around some 2-3000 preserved across the city today and based on the final coming together of the Ashmead map.

     Just like the map I am going to juxtapose buildings that were demolished at the begining of the 1820s, with those that were not built until the end of the 1820s, because of their importance to the topography and because I can!

     So you have examples like the Old Hotwell House, jutting out into the Avon under St Vincents Rock; Newgate Gaol at the crossroads of Narrow Wine Street, Little Peter Street, Castle Green and Castle Mill Street; The old (1704) Council house with the church and truncated tower of St Ewens on the corner of Broad Street and Corn Street, all gone by 1825, rubbing virtual shoulders with Acramans Warehouse on Narrow Quay, His Ironworks on the feeder, and Churches such as Holy Trinity, Hotwells and St Phillips and St Pauls and Zion Chapel, Coronation Road, All not built until 1828-1830.

     Taking in a wider spectrum, this is a celebration about Regency era Bristol, and some special buildings are worthy of incusion from the wider era of George 4th as Prince Regent and King, 1811-1830 and indeed, the second half of the Georgian era, 1775-1837.

     I am pleased to have had 2000 hits on this site since 28th April, and mention on Bristol Culture and the new Bristol Games Hub websites.



Post 9) Getting it right…..or don’t believe all the facts

     I’ve been working my way around the centre, (St Augustine’s Trench) building by building and my last post was the image of the John’s Porter House and Severn Tavern façade on the north corner of Zed Alley. Pickfords, directly north again next door is also now in the bag (below) and then I started on Stone Bridge, before tackling the giant ten storey sugar house at quays head.

      After a while things weren’t adding up and I decided to cross check what i'd worked out as the the modern water level in the float with that of Jessop’s 1793 plan of the Avon and Frome; from Rownham ferry to Temple Backs and Traitors Bridge (Wade St)

     It turns out that the quay gauge normally read 15 feet in 1793, increased to 16 feet in the 1820s. The Quay gauge at the end of Narrow Quay by the Arnolfini (Acramans Anchor and chain warehouse) or Prince St bridge pier was an iron wheel linked to a float that read the height of water in the Frome like a clock hand. Zero on the quay gauge being low tide on the Frome.

     I cross checked all the land measurements of Jessop’s cross sections with the 1885 1:500 Ordnance Survey spot heights and found that the water level in the Floating harbour was kept at 19’4” above Ordnance Datum as opposed to 22’4” which i'd previously incorrectly worked out, a difference of three feet! So 19’4” AOD was 16 feet on the gauge in the 1820s. I should have remembered my modern quay gauge photo below north east of St Philip's bridge!

     I will now have to go back and redo the arches and approach ramp from Clare Street on my model of the Drawbridge as they are too flat! (Below)

     With this important matter out of the way, I decided to begin work on Bristol Bridge as a showcase model and new header image for this blog.

     Bristol Bridge has been rather difficult to get right. Fifteen hours of cross checking photos from my ferry trip, city walks, 1768 plans and 1885 and 2013 maps all threw up anomalies. The size of the arches has been the cause of the problem, hindering the start of my model. The 1793 Matthews Guide and all subsequent publications that copied the original disclosed dimensions are wrong. The main span was quoted at 55 feet and the two side arches at 40 feet from the springing. This may have been a case of rounding off. Both measurements as built are actually a few feet out, which is why I could not fit the three arches and two piers and two abutments into the physical 165’8” from the old St Nicholas pier wall to the 1723 Redcliffe river wall available.

     So cross checking sources and getting it right could make all the difference to a whole street of models being out, especially where you have vanished buildings and only watercolours and a line on a map as evidence of what they looked like.

     The Bristol bridge model is now coming on well. Below is a weigh house with weighbridge, nearing completion, that stood on the southwest corner of Bristol Bridge nearest St Nicholas Church from approximately 1816-20 until the 1860s/70s widening of Bristol Bridge and Baldwin Street.

     It was drawn by Architect James Foster in March 1816 and appears in watercolours by Rowbotham and Delamotte next to the Oyster Women’s shed. Two other Weigh Houses stood at Broad Quay as drawn by Hugh O’Neill and Temple Gate, (location yet to be found) Whether or not Foster designed it for Parnall's of Narrow Wine Street remains to be seen as they did not start business until 1820.

Post 8) Corner of Zed Alley

     Johns Porter House and Severn Tavern, on the north corner of Zed Alley, Under-The-Bank (Colston Avenue) next to the Pickfords Warehouse. Mid Georgian, 3 storeys plus cellars. Frequented by the Severn Trow sailors.

Post 7) Celebrating 1000 Hits

Post 6) Peaks and Troughs

     Although I completed 5 metre interval contour tracing of the city some time ago from the OS Maps and English Heritage OS Maps, the contours do not and cannot show the river basins and tops of hills, nor the camber of the roads, gutters and pavements. All these must be worked out "manually" from visual observation, photos and spot heights / benchmarks from the 1880s 1:500 OS city survey. At this time, the cobbled streets had remained largely unaltered in their sinuous paths for well over a century or two, save for the well known new Victorian streets that preceeded the horse trams. The river banks of the Frome, Avon, tributaries, law ditches, gouts and drains must similarily be manually treated before combining with the 5 metre contour curves and pressing the magic sketchup "from contours" button which forms the skin of solid 3d landscape mesh to texture and add buildings to.

This is the gradient profile of Host Street, Steep Street, Lower St Michael's Hill and St Michael's Hill, up to the junction of Southwell Street. The middle and bottom sections have been badly mauled by the creation of the Perry Road retaining wall vastly altering the topography and Colston Street around 1869-70, the latter destroying the short but highly picturesque Steep Street.

Steep Street was less than 150 feet long, but became the main route to the Bristol Channel coast when Queen Street was made into (Christmas) Steps in Sept 1669. Fortunately, Steep Street is well and beautifully recorded by camera and many watercolours from different angles between 1820 and 1870, including the great 5 storey house, the Ship Inn at the top which saw fierce hand to hand fighting in the Civil War.

Post 5) Investing in the Quay

The Tontine Warehouses were built after the clearance of the covered fish market, the moving of the quay pipe and the widening of the quay infront of St Stephens church bringing about mass demolitions for the construction of Clare Street in the 1770s.

The Tontine Warehouses were completed in 1785 and demolished around 1935 for the present Eagle House. They were of 5 bays, 111 feet of quay frontage, 74 feet high to the hipped roof, consisting of 5 storeys plus cellarage below quay level; coursed pennant stone with brick pilaster strips and brick arches to the windows and door openings. Tracing is underway here, to be imposed on the model, then textured.

Post 4) Ups and Downs

Clay render of the Drawbridge across the Frome, from today's Hippodrome to Baldwin Street. This was produced by aligning William Halfpenny's plan of the 1714-1755 drawbridge with the 1885 1:500 os map and from Samuel Jackson's pencil drawing BMAG M2919.

Since 1239, the lowest bridging point across the Frome from the old city to Gaunt's hospital and St Augustine's was the twin arch Christmas Street bridge, lined each side with tall jettied timber buildings.

In 1714, to facilitate construction of the new Georgian Streets in the former Gaunt's orchard, a bascule lifting bridge was built at the south end of the Quay near the great tower, of two 16 feet timber leaves and two stone arches, worked by rope and hinged overhead lifting beams. This gave a 30 foot clearance at river level for Trows, Brigs and other medium to small coastal ships.

This bridge was replaced by a stronger pair of timber leaves in 1755 and four cast iron pillars worked rack and pinions, driving subterranean cogs in the piers to raise the bridge, worked by one man each side turning handles on the towers.

St Giles Bridge of two stone arches came between the drawbridge and Christmas Street Bridge in the same year, at the head of the quay, as an extension of Small Street across to the timber wharf at Under-The-Bank.

In 1796, timber outriggers widened the drawbridge deck to around 30 feet, as pictured above. On August 10th 1827 this drawbridge and arches were heavily modified or rebuilt to give a 40 foot clearance for ships with a cast iron swivel bridge of 120 tons, replaced again in 1868 with a more robust heavier swivel unit of 130 tons aligned with Clare Street, lasting until 1893 when the upper Frome harbour was culverted into a 22 foot channel and the sides filled in.

Post 3) The little church on the Butts

     St Augustine The Less, as pictured below, was new in 1480 and stood on the bluff jutting out from College Green towards the Frome, know as The Butts, which is a medieval term for archery range. Its three stage tower was 60 feet to the leads with a 22 foot stair turret ontop. It was slightly damaged by fire in WW2, closed in 1956 and inexcusably demolished in 1962. The present annex to the Royal Hotel of 1865 on the spot came in 1985/6.

Model made using photo-match technology and from the 1880s 1:500 ordnance survey

A photo is aligned with X and Y axis which automatically creates the horizon line, then tracing the edges of the building turns it into 3D faces. Textures are then projected onto the 3D faces automatically

Parallel projection shows the textures burnt onto the model from the angle of the original photographer's viewpoint which can be over riden with your own textures. The north and east sides were creamy Dundry ashlar; the other two sides being Brandon Hill Grit and Pennant Limestone. 

Quick Render with hard shadows

Work is required to model the trefoil tower parapet and window tracery. The rubble stone church was clad in creamy ashlar and presumably robbed of this outer layer in most places, except the entrance parapet and stair turret. There are three nice watercolours in the Braikenridge collection in its former glory. This will require photo texturing and weathering. The churchyard facing College Green was cut back for the tram lines in the 1870s and again in 1894, when the east part sat on the hill was also heavily chewed away for the current watershed dock complex.

Post 2) Time and Tide wait for no Man

Before 1809, the floating harbour was the tidal rivers Avon and Frome and it was important to know the times of the tides for loading/unloading from ships and embarking and disembarking. The great St Augustine's trench had been cut through the marsh land and shallow ridge of the Butts jutting out from College Green towards the centre of Queen Square between 1239 and 1247 by the Monks and hundreds of labourers. The great trench was 18 feet deep at high tide and presented a soft, muddy level bed for the ships that came up to the centre of the port to discharge their goods. The Frome was reduced to a trickle, off set to the west of the trench at low tide. This compared to the sloping and sometimes hard stony banks of the natural Avon which had a range of about 22 feet at Welsh Back.

The great sundial on Broad Quay opposite College Green was 28 feet high of freestone on a Tuscan Column with octagonal base and great 2 foot diameter gold leaf ball on top. It was perhaps, late Stuart or Queen Anne, Maybe even erected on the ascension of George 1st as it appears on Millerd's map revision of 1715. It was demolished and the 4 Frome slipways filled in 1861 for the Dublin Shed of 1862. The Water Bailiff used the dial to regulate the hours allowed for working cargoes and the Quay Warden used it to tell the tide times. A large West Indiaman required up to a dozen tow boats of 100 oarsmen to back her out into the Avon, swing her 110 degrees to port then nurse her down the channel to Hungroad or Kingroad on the Ebb tide. The signal mast on the Butts, used by the Quay Warden and drawn by Hugh O'Neil, here in 1824 will be next

 

The model just requires some more work on the octagonal base, photo texturing and the dial numerals adding. The base map layer has now been geo-referenced to google earth giving exact sun and shadow detail for Bristol. This render was set at High Noon on June 21st (local time)



The great trench. The heart of the City, Port and Model. Hundreds of different Map Sections are being stiched together in different eras, then overlaid, with building data from the older plans and maps stretched to fit and referenced against surviving buildings, photos and drawings.




Post 1) Welcome!

This ambitious long term project aims to reconstruct a fully explorable and immersive 3D Virtual City of Bristol as it appeared around 1825, with YOUR help!

 Background

      At around the age of ten I discovered Victorian and Edwardian Bristol through a small Reece Winstone Bristol black and white photographic book collection Grandad had been bought as retirement presents in 1981 and have collected most of the 43 volumes containing some 10,000 photos over the last decade. There is no comparible photographic record for any other English City. http://www.reecewinstone.co.uk/booklist.htm    

     In 2001 Redcliffe Press published Sheena Stoddard's magnificent book, Bristol Before The Camera - The City in 1820-30, which introduced the wider public to late Regency Bristol for the first time, going back a whole generation before Fox Talbot, Hugh Owen, Calvert Jones and friends. As Curator of Fine Art at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, her book transformed the seemingly distant city of Reece Winstone’s black and white photographs into a more personal and indentifiable world of colour and depicted romantic impressions of a medieval city in transition without trams and early motor cars. It replaced the great polite Victorian public edifices with the creaking vernacular half timbered, wattle and daub world that Braikenridge had his Bristol School of Artists depict in their own different ways.

     In March 2009 I discovered the great Google Sketchup, now owned by Trimble, http://www.sketchup.com/ as a powerful, much under-rated 3d modelling tool for the masses.

The Buildup

     In December 2010 Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery had their core 1,500 Braikenridge Collection drawings and watercolours photographed and digitised following a major grant. http://museums.bristol.gov.uk/index.php

That, along with the launch in March 2011 of the Bristol City Council Know-Your-Place Map overlay Website http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/planning-and-building-regulations/know-your-place  was the catalyst for me to attempt something grand, appealing and very worthwhile. Nearly all my spare time, over three years of research, 3d CAD model learning and practice is now bearing fruition and I’m at a stage where things have snowballed and allowed proper construction of the 3D world of 1820s Bristol to commence.

Tools for the Job

      Computer Graphics have come on leaps and bounds in the last dozen years or so, and with programs such as Trimble Sketchup 8.0 and Unity3D 4.0, http://unity3d.com/ constructing your own buildings and importing them into an immersive virtual gaming world has never been so easy or appealing.

     Game series such as Medal Of Honour, Call Of Duty, Far Cry and Elder Scrolls have brought us big interactive gaming worlds, from WW2 to fantasy realms but the Assassins Creed series tops them all, drawing you in with massive immersive cities lovingly recreated such as 15^th Century Rome, Florence and Venice.




Above and below, in game screenshots from Assassins Creed 3 (2012) - recreations of 1776 New York and Boston (pictured) have raised the bar of immersive virtual historic cities to an entirely new level, populated with fully interactive Artificial Intelligence (AI) townsfolk going about their daily lives and now with livestock, poultry, horses and carts in the filthy cobbled streets, docksides, markets and alleyways. A stunningly beautiful and immersive example is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEdCBIsJQ0o

Turn up the volume, enable full screen 720 dpi and enjoy. This clip is simply the best example of virtual time travel i've ever seen. 

Above, Boston Docks 1770s. Imagine this hustle and bustle transposed to Bristol and multiplied ten fold. Cross the Avon on the Temple Back, Redcliffe, Grove or Green's Slip ferries or take a rowing boat up the Frome to the weir under Philadelphia St bridge. Mingle amongst the merchants on the Quays. Take a hackney carriage from St Augustine's place to the Hotwell House and take the waters to cure your consumption. In a 3D virtual city, anything is possible.

The Evidence

      Why attempt to recreate the 1820s? As summarised below, no other period of Bristol’s past or arguably, any other city in England is there a greater concentration of pre-photography visual evidence than the Regency period, (broadly interpreted for the proposes of this project as 1809-1837)

1) The Braikenridge collection of stunningly romantic watercolours, oils and drawings of the city and floating harbour totalling some 1200 building, street and landscape views, drawn mainly 1821-1828, including 4 great 1830 panoramas from Clifton, Pylle Hill, Kindsdown and Montpelier; the earlier panoramas of the brothers Buck and Kip and Samuel H Grimm’s drawings of 1786-1790

2) The 1:2400 scale Ashmead map of 1828, covering the city as then existing, West to East, from the Rownham Ferry to Eastville and North to South, from Redland (without) down to St Johns Church Bedminster, around 6 square miles of map. Donne, Rocque and Millerd also offer great cartographic evidence.

3) Plan books A to E in the city records office, other City Parish church records, Corporation plans and surveys and the great Jessop floating harbour plans and soundings.

4) The great historical literary works of Barrett, Seyer, Evans, Britton, Latimer and others, usefully noting the great Georgian topographical changes and documenting the Norman city walls, watercourses and churches in great detail.

5) The street directories and city guides by Sketchley, Matthews, Pigot and Chilcott

This core evidence is backed up by

Lavar’s stunning 1887 lithograph of the City taken from plate glass camera photos from a tethered balloon 2000 feet above modern Hartcliffe Way retail park.

Surviving pre Victorian buildings in 2013

The detailed City Council conservation area character appraisals  http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/planning-and-building-regulations/conservation-area-character-appraisals

Over 500 immediate city area beautiful line drawings of Samuel Loxton from 1883-1909 and later, FG Lewin of 1922




Above, The 1813 Donne map covers the old city and Clifton, around 4 square miles, not long after the new cut had been dug through the fields of Bedminster, from Totterdown to Rownham Meadows.

The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological society (BGAS) splendidly recording Tudor and Stuart building changes and earlier excavations over 4 decades by the great John Pritchard. http://www.bgas.org.uk/publications/transactions.html

The great work, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol by Walter Ison 1952 and his elevation drawings.

The massively detailed 1:500 scale 1880s Ordnance Survey plans, many streets and buildings little changed from 1828 and dead accurate when overlaid with 2013 maps.

With such a wealth of visual evidence at ones disposal, it would be an appalling injustice not to attempt virtual time travel back two centuries to the lost mercantile city of our ancestors.

The Ambition

     With your help,  it is my goal to allow you to dive into this lost virtual world of tall ships, merchants and horse sleds; walk the city streets and climb the hills, go anywhere with the realms of the 1828 Ashmead map survey and experience a medieval city in transition as it actually was, nearly 200 years ago in first person perspective including the insides of selected public buildings and up the spiral stone stairs to the roof tops of all the 19 City Church towers and Cathedral. 

     Invisible force-fields will stop you walking off into the un-modelled areas of this virtual world but beyond this no-go zone the distant hills, hedgerows and landmark trees will all be drawn in; extending to the visible horizon, with data taken from the watercolours, 1840s Tithe Maps and 1880s 1:2500 county series maps. Even when viewed from the Clifton Observatory, Cotham Tower, St Michaels Church Tower, Somerset Street, Kingsdown or One Tree Hill (Pylle Hill) everything will be in its rightful place.

      So follow this blog as I take you back 200 years and use TRIMBLE SKETCHUP, TWILIGHT RENDER, LIGHTUP and UNITY3D to virtually rebuild that lost Venice of the West.     I will be using Sketchup as a modelling tool with Twilight Render and Lightup to produce a photo real quality of a lost Medieval to Early Modern city not seen for nearly 200 years.




Beginnings of 5m interval Contour mapping (2km x 2km city centre section, centred on Mary Le Port Church near Bristol Bridge. Raster data has been turned into vector contours for about 15 square miles so far.

    

     The 3D world will be imported into a game engine (Unity3D) so you will eventually be able to move about within a fully immersive city from your web browser (a virtual world for historians, but without the violence of the Assassins Creed series) which I hope to interest other people not only to help model, but also to populate with animated 3rd party people, ships, sleds, carts, hackneys, animals, sounds and a storyline. Smoke will issue from glass cones and chimney pots. The Avon and Frome will have animated water. Birds will fly in the sky. This will bring to life the world of Bristol as imagined by the text based multiple choice game as per the Myers/Insole Local Learning website:- http://www.locallearning.org.uk/tudors/merchant1.html

     By intimately studying the 2000+ Braikenridge and Loxton drawings and watercolours, each building will come back to glorious 3d life, complemented by buildings that survived to be photographed from 1839 onwards, as collected by Reece Winstone in his 43 volumes of Bristol and buildings that survive in 2013.

The Artists

     As each 3D Multi-Jettied Tudor and Pargetted building rises between the ships masts, pubs, chapels, sugar refineries, glass cones, churches and later Georgian buildings, it will add to the pinpointing of the lesser known locations by helping to confirm the angle of shadow, background detail, chimney, gable orientation, angle and composition of the street etc as portrayed by the competent artists in Braikenridge’s charge; Rowbotham, Cashin, Jackson, Delamotte, Johnson and the Great Hugh O’Neill, to name the top 6 out of over 40 contributors to this visual feast of material, a whole generation before the invention of photography.

 





A View On The Floating Dock Looking S.W. after W H Bartlett. The great harbour of 1239-47 diverted the wide, shallow meandering post ice age Frome from its Broad Quay / King Street course into a new straight trench 2400 feet long by 80-120 feet wide and its bed 25 feet below ground. This view from Stone Bridge of 1755 shows the second drawbridge, also of 1755 in its widened state of 1796. Left are the Tontine Warehouses with St Stephens. Right, the Butts (medieval archery range) with Georgian Trinity Street and St Augustine the Less church, St Augustine’s Parade and the great railed-in  stone whaleback retaining wall of Under-The-Bank, built 1794. The single 127 foot tower of the Cathedral rises behind. This 600 x 80 foot upper harbour was culverted into a 22 foot brick barrel and the sides filled in during 1892/3. A great opportunity to open this back up for the recent millenium was lost.

     Each of the Bristol Artists had their own style and each of the watercolours, oils, pencil and pen and wash images portrays a different message to the viewer, not just visually but subliminally. Some chose to exaggerate the height of church spires, the widths of the rivers and missed out certain buildings or detail and went for an idea whilst others painted the same viewpoint exactly as they saw it to the best of their artist's or architectural draughtsmam’s abilities. Some just drew the buildings whilst others populated the streets with donkeys and panniers, horse sleds, washerwomen, children playing with hoops and gentlemen on horseback. Only by sifting through all sources at ones disposal and cross referencing maps, drawings, plans and photos is it possible to recreate this lost city. Only then do some of the visual quirks mentioned about the artists above become apparent.

      With all this material, we are very fortunate that nearly every building that existed in the main city thoroughfares around 1825 was either drawn in elevation view, painted in a street scene, drawn by Samuel Loxton 80 years later or recorded on camera from 1839 onwards. There will of course be many back alleys, side streets, courts and hovels whose identity will forever remain a mystery and these will, for now remain as generic 3D representations of buildings of the style of the period that they were built, taking into account the architectural fads of the Regency era. However, enough information will be collated to be able to give uninterrupted truthful walkthroughs of the more well recorded areas; mostly now so vastly different from the late medieval / early industrial world of 2 centuries ago.

The Setting 

      First we must set the scene because there are precious few buildings left standing from the Regency Era and before in the heart of the old city area, which had never been consumed by fire or destroyed by Vikings or any other attacker for its 1000 year existence. Here is why………..

     Between 630pm and 11pm on Sunday 24th November 1940, 135 German bombers laid waste to the medieval heart of Bristol which had developed over 1000 years, flying back and forth in small waves adding to the conflagration of the initial drop. Incendiary’s, Explosives and new Explosive Incendiary’s destroyed treasured half timbered buildings such as the Dutch House, St Peter’s Hospital and hundreds of others. Grandad was on incendiary watch on the roof of the GPO building in Telephone Avenue that night. His GPO trailer parked on Back of Bridge St just off Bristol Bridge was blown into the floating harbour. The next morning he remembers having to negotiate piles of rubble over 20 feet high in Wine Street.





Above, The burnt out shells of St Mary Le Port and St Peters are all that remain of the core of a shopping area that was once second only in rateable value to Oxford Street, London. Luckily, desk based or on-site archaeology has to be performed before new buildings are erected these days and so the jigsaw of the past continues to come together slowly.

    

The bustling core that had sprung up in place of the demolished Norman Castle (which contained the largest stone keep in England), along with large swathes of Welsh Back, Broadmead, Redcliffe and Temple were left in smouldering ruins.

 

     Following lesser air raids, what remained was largely and ruthlessly swept away by the city planners of the 1950s 60s and 70s who continue today, to pay maximum homage to speculative developers and the “infernal” combustion engine in one of the most polluted and congested conurbations in Britain. It is not untrue to say, that these Philistines destroyed far more than the Luftwaffe ever did with their appaling angular concrete and glass blight.

 




Imagine if you will and come back with me into this virtual world……..

     First we must remove every modern building, gleefully tearing away the brutal, faceless concrete and glass jungle returning command of the skyline to the 19 City Churches. We must restore the Sugar Houses, chimneys and 13 glass cones, including Redcliffe, the largest ever built at 120 feet high. Every car, lorry and bus must go; even the trams were not around. There is no electricity and gas lighting in the streets has only just begun. All tarmac must go; most roads are just dirt, with only the main important streets being cobbled in stone sets, with side or central gutters. Neither is there any police force, with just three dozen watchmen’s boxes scattered across the embryonic city for protection of citizens during the night.

     We must rip open the quarter mile city centre and uncover Rupert Street and Fairfax Street, all the way back to Wade Street, revealing the stinking, meandering river Frome's three courses. The Back Ditch, The Mill Leat and Castle Moat, flowing around three sides of the Castle Precincts.

     We replace the city centre traffic and empty Welsh Back and Redcliffe quays with 200 plus sailing ships of all sizes and rig, up to 600 tons each, plying trade between the Caribbean, Canada and coastal Britain.

     There is no Suspension Bridge and No Colston Hall. There is no Cabot tower and Brunel is still in London helping his Father, so no railways yet and no aircraft for sure! There is no Great Western or Great Britain, and no tugs. Small packet paddle steamers have just begun to ply the Cork and Dublin routes. The oarsmen of Pill still bring the Indiamen up and down the Avon on the tides, with up to a dozen tow boats of up to 100 oarsmen!

Testing the Twilight render engine with a very rough St Augustines Parade. Distance, Scale and Lighting. As seen from the churchyard of St Augustine The Less.

    
     The city of the 1820s exists only as two square miles centred on Bristol Bridge, having barely expanded in 500 years except for ribbon development out from Old Market and Redcliffe Hill. It has a population less than 21st century Bath. The little villages of Clifton and Bedminster and a few cottages scattered amongst the surrounding fields are all there are in 1825 of the rest of the now built up 100 square mile conurbation,

       The only “modern” thing is the new cut (which most Bristolian’s would not realise is man made!) and the floating harbour (the old tidal Avon) Up until only a decade before (1809) the river level between Bristol Bridge and Rownham Meadows would drop between 20 and 33 feet respectively, twice every 24 hours and any of the unsecured 200 plus  tall ships would roll all ways on the mud banks in a frenzied tangle of masts and rigging!

     They had to be built shipshape and Bristol Fashion for sure to withstand the strains! The Diverted lower river Frome of 1239-1247 up the great flat bottomed canal, the St Augustine's trench, would also empty right out to a trickle, right back to St James’ corn mill at Bridewell Weir at low tide; All river traffic ceasing!

     This then is Britain’s second City port to London, a City of Tall Ships between rows of Tudor multi-jettied houses, many recently rebuilt or refronted in Georgian and Regency Facades. A city that has yet to experience the great era of warehousing, public buildings, suburbs and westward dock expansion fostered by the coming of the GWR, where the tall ship and stagecoach are the staple means of sea and land travel and communication. This sets the scene of the Bristol of the 1820's.

    

Test plotting buildings at the Saxon city heart with the 1:500 scale 1882 map layer. The New Christ Church at 160 feet to the weather cock. This map layer is 99% accurate when overlaid with the 2013 map data. A testiment to the great manual triangulation and surveying skills of the 18th and 19th centuries.

    
      We must applaud Mayor George Ferguson and Nigel Howe from the Oak Frame Training Forum http://oftf.org.uk/The_Oak_Frame_Training_Forum/Home.html for their vision to rebuild the lost Dutch House, St Peter’s Hospital, re-roof St Peters Church, reinvigorate the Redcliffe quarter and create traffic free Sundays. Video here:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHKJb0JWBNs 

     Whether they can punch through the red tape and beat off the vested interests of speculative developers and pull off what Warsaw and St Malo accomplished, albeit 50 years late remains to be seen, but I hope to be able to take you back virtually, with help from new friends, back to experience the glory of Braikenridge's Bristol, the Venice of the West!

Please get in touch if you have 3D drawing, scripting, animating or storyboard skills, especially with Sketchup and Unity3D.