In need of a rebrand? Tread carefully. A small change to a name can make a difference. In the past week I took a trip over to one of my favourite places, Gloucester. In leafy genteel Cheltenham it's considered by some to be the 'dark side of the moon' despite being only 8 miles away. These genteel folk think it's full of footpads and rogues. The difference between the two places is quite marked, but Gloucester has shedloads more history. Gloucester's City Centre has some of the worst housing in the area and is high on the 'deprived' list whereas the centre of Cheltenham has some of the most expensive housing in the county.
I took the bus making good use of my bus pass and was deposited right in the centre of the City. Cheltenham is a town, Gloucester a city, the former is bitter about the latter, and the latter thinks the former is a bit 'up itself', which to be frank, it is. My plan was to walk through the city after a modest lunch, then to the Docks, through to the canal that joins Gloucester to Sharpness at the mouth of the River Severn. I had no intention of walking all the way to Sharpness, Hempsted just out of the city would be far enough.
First impressions off the bus into Kings Square? Seagulls, dozens of them swooping around the square. This has been a problem in Gloucester for many years. Urban gulls are a menace that the authorities seem to be powerless to control. The general advice is to try and ignore them and not to eat outdoors unless you like to share. The square has been renovated and now has fountain displays in the centre and the 'being renovated' ex Debenhams store fronting the area. They are making it a place to house students for the local college. Great idea!
Then round the corner from there.a quick peek at the New Inn. Lovely old building with apparently resident female ghost. Remarkably quiet when I walked in there, where no doubt, horses used to congregate.
The New Inn, which is anything but new. An old coaching Inn right in the centre of the City
After a pleasant sandwich, indoors, I headed for the Docks. Down past Robert Raikes House ( he was the man responsible for starting Sunday Schools in the UK in 1781 ) the building, now a pub, has been completely restored, looks terrific. Bought by Samuel Smiths the Yorkshire brewers, they brought the building back to life some years ago, and have maintained it too. They are a bit of a strange pub company and don't allow mobile phones in the bar nor do they have music, wouldn't surprise me if they have sawdust on the floor.
Robert Raikes House
Down into the Docks basin. Sunny day and warm, security man watches another man power washing the steps down to the large area of warehouse, with Museums, narrow boats and big ships around by the dry docks at Nielsen's Yard. I love this spot, where you can see an array of ships being repaired, refitted, and made, watertight again. A large ship is dockside, quick chat to a bloke on the stern to find out what it is. A former New Zealand Navy ship he tells me, it's been in the Docks for a couple of years and they are putting the finishing touches to it to make it properly seaworthy. Someone else told me that it had been used in the past for smuggling drugs in the Caribbean, so a ship with a colourful past. I wonder what the new private owner will use it for other than its present use as a hole to pour money down. It's about as large a ship you can navigate up the canal from Sharpness, though 'he-man on poop deck' told me that the tugboat in the dry dock had more trouble than they did as it is bigger below the water line.
Tug in the dry dock
Moving on, and on my left now is the new Quays Shopping Centre. Not my cup of tea, with its glossy shops that can be found in most high streets, this development sucked out the shops from the City Centre and I remember when it was being built, we lived close by at the time.
This was the start of the new shopping Centre, the demolition of the former Fielding and Platt factory. I chose a day when they weren't working! Taken in July 2007
It was a massive project and thank goodness it survives.I stuck to the canal side for my walk. Just past the new college building, a bit of an unimaginative looking square block facing opposite to a fine old derelict building on the edge of the shopping centre. One of the last derelict buildings of the docks, all the other warehouses now converted to either offices or smart quayside living accommodation. This one with its colonnades and brilliant brickwork an old survivor, together with its little corrugated gem next door. Both buildings sealed off from the public and probably dangerous. As I understand it the owners of these beautiful wrecks are unwilling to sell them to the shopping centre people. They overlook the lightship Suma, where you can stay the night if you have a mind to. All are faced on my side of the bank by the lovely Llanthony Priory, set back behind a large grassy area. Cheltenham has nothing on this scale of interest, in fact not many places have. One is knee deep or deeper in history in this City.
Huge old warehouse, there are trees growing out of the top gof this beautiful old building
This is what the place looked like in 2009, probably worth rescuing then but it now looks very sorry for itself
I'm a particular fan of industrial buildings and from my side of the canal walking down to the little bridge at Hempstead the opposite side of the canal has factories and warehouse storage if all sorts. There used to be loads of timber yards here that supplied a wide array of businesses in the City and beyond, including the Englands Glory Match Factory, their Morelands building still standing on the Bristol Road. Nicks Timber is still there, a place where you can get just about any length of wood. Other places are now non descript businesses with loads of tubes and a fair amount of noise. Despite some sound proofing barriers the housing on side so the canal might have some noise issues to deal with, and there's a lot of housing on my side. Stretching these days from the big new ( a few years old now ) Sainsbury supermarket all the way to the Hempstead bridge. It used to be derelict or semi derelict industrial land. Monk Meadow Dock once looked like this and now looks like this:
and now looks like this. One thing hasn't changed, that boat is still there! The first photograph taken in October 2009. So the boat has been parked there for 15 years plus.
I recall some years ago that I bought my heating oil supplies from a place on Monk Meadow Dock, nothing like that there any more and not many people using oil to heat homes if they can help it. Our old heating back in those days was called a 'Wallflame', because it was simply that: a circular wall of flame fed by dripping oil. It used more fuel than my car! Kept the place warm but was a little frightening as it roared away in the kitchen.
The Hempsted bridge, my target turning round place, and where I could cross the canal, is even more decrepit than ever. No longer fit to take the odd car like it used to. There's someone stationed there to open it for the ships that come back and forth. There's a relatively stress free job. Take a book into work and wait for the slow moving ship to approach before sliding the book mark in and the lever out. Chat to boat owners about the weather, shut the bridge, get back to the book.
Hempsted Bridge, my walk turnaround place.
Across the bridge onto the Bristol Road, face with the old industrial estate where I worked for ten years. Walking passed Nick King Cars, I kid you not nicking cars, where second hand cars is still big business, all legit! Then passed Avon metals where they forge metal, old metal wheels piled high ready for the flames. It's a big successful business with the odd car in the car park with special number plates, so must be profitable. From there on past Forge Motorsports, where they don't forge metal but build cars, or rebuild them into something that doesn't resemble what the original designers had in mind. They've grown too as they occupy more building than when I worked at the factory just around the corner at the end of the estate.
There it was lying quietly asleep at the end of the estate. I sort of wished I'd not gone down there. Car park empty, the building looked tired. Where once you could hear the sound of huge print machines churning out colour print at a rate of 10 thousand sheets an hour, all you can hear is the odd gull. The butterflies must like the budlia bush. I hear that the business opposite which as I recall makes paving stones and is heavily into engineering will be taking over the old factory. This place once housed huge litho printing machines as well as quite a number of digital print machines, big kit, huge investments in hungry machines, and people. I recall that at one time when I worked there the company had over 50 people working for it, with skills acquired over many years. The years of printing experience in there was phenomenal. The place had a good atmosphere generally and it's green ethos was popular with a lot of clients. It's been brought down by changes in ownership and ultimately an owner who just stripped out the machines and moved them to Swindon, so Severnprint exists no more.
In the last few years of its life it had rebranded as Severn. A real mistake. We and people before us had spent such a long time building the company name and the name was perfect, near the Severn in Gloucester and we printed.Simple.Cutting the end off the name made no difference to its sad eventual fate. One of my grandsons once described a famous writer slightly wrong and re branded him as William Shakesfear, now that is genius, but just William Shakes simply does not do it for me.
I've made a short film of my little trip around. It was a grand day out and makes a bit of a difference to my bucolic sauntering in the Gloucestershire countryside.
The Severnprint Factory, this just a part of it. I worked under that tin roof for ten years, actually I got out a lot, it's what salespeople did in those days
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