We’ve been given a grant by the Avon Gardens Trust to progress a new orientation board for the Kings Weston Estate. The artwork is almost ready now and hopefully the steel board, matching those at Ashton Court and Stoke Park, will be commissioned in the next couple of weeks and installed by the end of the year.
IMPORTANT CAFE UPDATE
Just so everyone is aware the cafe at Kings Weston House is changing ownership. Cafe Retreat who have been running the vaulted coffee shop for 13 years are moving on. They have provided excellent refreshments, the cafe has really helped in making the park an attractive destination, and it’s a shame to see them go. They will continue to operate their popular cafe on the Downs.
Please don’t panic though. There will continue to be a cafe, and it’ll be operated by the Kings Weston House team as a going concern. There isn’t expected to be much interruption between Cafe Retreat leaving in October and the new cafe service commencing, but we will update you if there are any changes to the plan.
I hope you will join us in wishing Gayle Tate and her team at Cafe Retreat all the best for the future.
The working party was in full swing last month with the clearance around, and in, the ponds below the Echo. Here are a few images of the results along with the shots kindly taken by Bob Pitchford of the work in progress. A full record and more detail of August’s work is available here.
Next month the working party will take place a week later than advertised on the 20th September. The 13th of September will be Bristol Doors open day at Kings Weston House.
Not the best match up of views of the upper pond, but you can see the difference. From overgrown mud hole to open water.
The lower pond was cleared of debris, and the upper pond appears out of the undergrowth.
Looking across the lower pond towards the Echo showing the quantity of material on the banks that we dredged out of it. Laurels vanish from the middle distance.
Saturday 9th August saw our regular working party event hit the pond just below the Echo. We carried on removing the overshadowing laurel bushes and cleared out the black dead pools in the hope that we will be able to revive them in coming months. The water level around the main pool dropped a good four and a half inches as we removed rocks, branches, all manner of rubbish, and lots, and lots, of porridgey mud from it. With the rain over the following few days the water level should be replenished and the water settle before we look at how best to return it to a natural wildlife feature.
Lots of the surrounding Laurel was removed and views can now be got looking right back up to the Echo above. We hope to be able to cut the fallen trees away too to further improve the area.
Another great find from recent weeks has been these illustrations of the trees in Kings Weston park from a book published in 1834. ‘Studies of trees with and without foliage” was a collection of 12 bound lithographic prints taken from life by Miss S A Young while she was convalescing in the Bristol. To pass the time she sketches the trees in Lord de Clifford’s park at Kings Weston at various times of the year.
Many of the locations can still be identified for each of the trees and there is a high degree of accuracy in the illustrations. Sadly all of the trees have, as far as we know, long since died though we still have this beautiful record of the park in its heyday.
The book is held in Bristol Central Library Local Studies collection and is free to view there on request, but you can see all of the plates in a new gallery on our website here.
It has taken a while to complete, but now, for the first time since 1916, there’s a new guide combining both park and house for Kings Weston. We are indebted to Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeology Society for the grant that enabled us to compile and publish the guide, and make it free for everyone. The first 5000 copies are now complete and, following a launch at July’s National Archaeology Festival, are now available.
The illustrated guide coincides with the 350th anniversary of the birth of Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect of Kings Weston House and many of its garden buildings. It includes a potted history of the house and parkland, incorporating some of KWAG’s very latest research. Open the pamphlet out and you’ll find a comprehensive plan of the historic landscape with all the important landmarks and historic sites pinpointed. Perhaps there’s even some that will come as a surprise to the most seasoned visitor!
Presently they are stocked at Kings Weston House and our leaflet dispenser at the end of the public car park off Shirehampton Road. We intend that they will be available through the City’s library and museum network soon. However, if you are eager for a preview you can now download your own copy on this web site. Head over to the downloads area and you’ll find it at the top of the list!
It seems so long ago now! But here are the results of the working party on the 12th July. A great and productive event cutting down laurels from around the small pond on the Echo walk. Some of these were so different after the event that it proved extremely difficult to find the same vantage points!
The plan is to continue this work and remove more of the laurel that chokes the woodland floor preventing native species from fighting their way through. We plan to clear out the pond and with the improved sunlight it should be possible to turn it back into an attractive wildlife feature. A clean pool, some oxygenating plants, and a bit of care and it should be as good as new.
Although we don’t know the date of the pond it is possible that it was built as part of Napier Miles’ oriental gardens laid out below the Echo. During our work we chanced across a remnant bamboo plant which, along with the Japanese Cedar, Capadocian Maple, Japanese laurel, and even Japanese knotweed (!) appear to have formed some of the original planting.
It’s always lovely when people come along and share their reminiscences with us, and on this event we had someone recall the 1950s when there was much much more bamboo around the pond and they enjoyed hunting through it playing Cowboys and Indians.
See a full gallery of our work in July here
A view from the back of the rear walk between the Echo and House, here looking back across the pond in the middle distance and towards the central walk
Don’t forget to come along to our free family nature event this Sunday, 6th July! Full details here on our poster. 
Another really exciting historical find!
Most of the family members of the owners of Kings Weston House are buried in the parish church at Henbury. We have posted a few of the most important memorials here before including one by the famous sculptor Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) for Sir Robert Southwell.
Now we have identified ANOTHER important Grinling Gibbons monument in the church and dedicated to Sir Robert’s wife Elizabeth Dering and their son Rupert. After Elizabeth’s death in London 13th January 1681 her body was brought back to Kings Weston and buried, but the memorial wasn’t set up until some time later. When it was it was a far more elaborate and accomplished piece of work by Gibbons than Sir Robert would have as his own stark memorial.
Grinling Gibbons’ memorial to Elizabeth Southwell of Kings Weston and her son Rupert, both buried in Henbury parish church. On the right is her portrait which still hangs in Kings Weston House.
Grinling Gibbons received £20 for his labours on the monument in 1684 and a further £30 was paid to his business partner Arnold Quellin in October the following year who ‘composed’ the inscription.
We are able to make the identification of this monument by Gibbons thanks to the help of Roger Forse at the church who kindly offered to seek out Elizabeth’s memorial for us, and it appears here for the first time properly identified as a work by one of Britain’s foremost craftsmen.
June’s working party was a real slog. The hot weather always tires you out quicker, but with a dozen or so volunteers we managed to get on top of the situation and return a bit of form back to the Circle.
This area, at the end of Shirehampton Road car park, at the entrance to the park, was once the historic focus of the whole estate. Avenues and paths once radiated out from a circular grove and the main carriage drive ran through its centre on the way to the house down the Lime avenue. Whilst the track and some of the avenues remain the Circle itself was in danger for becoming entirely overgrown.
The working party undertook the clearance of the major wall of brambles and undergrowth and managed to return a sense of circular enclosure to the area. Once again you can get views between the different paths and we hope that the Council will now undertake to maintain the area more frequently to prevent its decline again.
A full gallery of photos can be found here.
The Circle at Kings Weston from a 1720 estate plan
