Downend, Bristol, 1981.

Fray Bentos
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Downend, Bristol, 1981.
Downend, Bristol, 1981.

We all have our foibles and one of mine is that I've always disliked walking anywhere by way of a direct main road. If there's an alternative, by way of side streets or, better still, some nettle-fringed footpath where brambles poke through creosoted palings, that's the way I'll go. So, looking at this dramatic sky I would probably have taken my photos and legged it back to our house pronto, before the rain came on. The house was about a quarter of a mile up North Street, off right of the small roundabout at the right-hand edge of the picture, but rain or no, it's a virtual certainty that I would have taken the road behind the camera and then used the path through the graveyard of Christ Church, Downend. This is the way I always went to and from the Downend shops. It did my spirits good.
My reason for taking this photograph was that the building off left was about to be demolished. The paved area in front of the camera and the bollards were part of the property and would also be going. They had been a feature of Downend for 20 years, but I remember the expanse of hummocky wasteground which had been here before ...a favourite impromptu playground of ours and known to us simply as "the tip". The building had been a car showroom belonging to Welch, a Vauxhall dealership which later disappeared into the Arriva empire. On the opening day, all the current Vauxhall models were displayed inside the showroom. Seeing me and my pal Tommy Tuppence gawping in from outside, a smart young salesman asked us in and invited us to sit behind the wheel of what I think must have been a brand new Vauxhall Victor FB. I seem to remember a full-width bench seat with slidey leather upholstery. The showroom was demolished soon after the photograph was taken on Monday 16th March 1981. See also next photo...

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Taken on: November 18, 2009
Tags: Everybody's photos tagged with Bristol Bristol Everybody's photos tagged with Downend Downend Everybody's photos tagged with South Gloucestershire South Gloucestershire more » Everybody's photos tagged with Welch car dealership Welch car dealership Everybody's photos tagged with car showroom car showroom Everybody's photos tagged with clouds clouds « less
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