Simon Knott

All Saints, Clifton, Bristol, for ##FontsonFriday, the River of Life and the Tree of Life by John Piper.

My favourite church glass seen today, St Francis and St Clare in St Stephen's, Bristol. They're signed 'Greg 2010', I'd love to know who they're by.

3/3 Edward Colston today, in his glass case in the M Shed Museum, Bristol.

I live in Ipswich, which has its faults. god knows, but the council is very good at removing graffiti as soon as it is reported. Bristol, like Brighton, seems to make a virtue of it.

Back to St Mary Redcliffe then, this time with my DSLR. The lady chapel, glass by the great Harry Stammers.

St Thomas, Bristol.

Q: How many Churches Conservation Trust officers or volunteers does it take to unlock a church door?

A: I really have no idea. Once again, I turn up at a CCT church at the advertised opening times to find it locked, an increasingly common experience.

I can't help thinking that Bristol has managed the interpretation of its past rather differently to Liverpool, a city which benefited from the Atlantic Slave Trade even more than Bristol did, but which seems more capable of staring it matter-of-factly in the face with more light than heat.

A different situation to Ipswich, which also has a very large Romanian population. They had been using the redundant St Nicholas before the Diocese, which had bought it back from the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust for a pound to use it as a conference centre, decided to sell it. It's now closed.

St Stephen's, Bristol, the reconciliation reredos by Graeme Mortimer Evelyn, 2011.

First open Bristol church of the day, St Stephen. (A handy one for #AdoorableThursday too).

And today's ruined Bristol church is St Mary le Port, bombed in the War and now completely surrounded by dereliction of a later vintage. Inaccessible, I'm afraid.

Christ Church with St Ewen, Bristol for #AdoorableThursday. 'The Book of Common Prayer is used at all services'.

2/2 A plaque records the removal. Bristol has a curious history as a conservative kind of place that occasionally erupts into radical violence. In 1831, the reform bill riots led to more than 100 deaths, and the 1980 St Paul's riots took many people by surprise, including some in the city itself.

Good morning from Bristol. The statue of Edward Colston, wealthy 17th/18th Century philanthropist and notorious slave trader. Except, of course, he's no longer here. On 7 June 2020, he was hauled down and unceremoniously dumped in the harbour by angry protestors.

Now wandering past the Art Gallery and Wills Memorial Building, Bristol.

Vaulting in the east lady chapel of Bristol Anglican Cathedral.

Bristol Anglican Cathedral looking east in the nave, including Helios, much more effective in this more intimate space than when I saw it in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral a few months ago.

A welcome to Bristol Anglican Cathedral from Rajah Rammohun Roy and friend...

Mother and child. A carved brick relief on the outside of Bristol Eye Hospital, one of several.

Well, up to a point! I'm a big fan of Harry Stammers, but this is no Glasgow Cathedral I'm afraid.

St Mary Redcliffe, looking east

And so, to St Mary Redcliffe!

There's not much left of the castle itself, once home (unwillingly) to Eleanor of Aquitaine, destroyed by Oliver Cromwell to prevent its use by Royalist troops.

The church has been left as a memorial to those killed in the Blitz on Bristol.

Good morning from Bristol. Castle Park, and the bombed out ruin of St Peter.

A close-up of the hole at Rushmere St Michael. About 30 years ago, I met a man who told me about being one of the children who went scrabbling through the dirt in the churchyard and field to retrieve the bullets as souvenirs.
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/rushmerestmi...

#31daysofgraves 15: damaged

The headstone of Robert Lincoln Andrews, 1907, holed by a machine gun bullet from a German plane strafing a navigation beacon in the next field during WWII, at Rushmere St Michael, Suffolk.

More: www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/rushmerestmi...

#31daysofgraves 15: damaged

Yes, I like both buildings very much, but I think Liverpool is immediately graspable, which partly explains why it's such a moving experience. The lighting is clever too. But Clifton is more articulate, it unfolds as you walk through it and even at its heart it retains a connection with the outside.

The SS Great Britain from the river.

I do like that, thank you.