KWAG Will be running one of our popular guided walks of the Kings Weston Estate on the morning of Saturday 27^th September starting at 10:30 am at Shirehampton Road car park.
Our Chairman, David Martyn, will take you around the historic highlights of the Kings Weston estate from the well known, to the well hidden. Based on our most recent research the illustrated tours take in four hundred years of Kings Weston’s history. The tour lasts approximately three hours and the route is about 1.8 miles long. Prices are £5 per person, payable on the day, with under 16s free, however, numbers are limited and BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL.

These always get booked up quickly so please get in touch soon if you would like to secure places for you and your friends. To book, email us at kwactiongroup@gmail.com, or by hone to 07811 666671. All proceeds go towards projects at kings Weston.

Once again Bristol Doors Open Day is upon us. Next week, Sat the 13th September is the annual event held across the city and Kings Weston House returns to the programme. All venues are free to visit and at Kings Weston this is a great opportunity to take a look at the progress in restoration that has been made over the last couple of years.

KWAG will be in attendance with our exhibition, and an art fair to help raise funds for our projects, particularly for the restoration of the historic avenue that will go ahead in November this year.

Come along and learn more about the  house and estate and help celebrate the extraordinary history of Kings Weston. Take a sneaky peek at what you can see in our photo gallery here http://www.kwag.org.uk/gallery/inside-kings-weston-house/

We are extremely grateful for the generous donation of £1000 received from Bristol Port Company this week to secure the restoration of the avenue in memory of KWAG’s co-founder Tim Denning. In 2011 Tim helped build KWAG’s first major project, the Echo exhibition, with the help of Bristol Port Co so it is with incredible thanks that we accept this donation from them.

It has taken a couple of years to pass through the various hoops to get permission from the City Council for the project, but we can announce here that it will be going ahead this Autumn.

The donation from Bristol Port Co matches the donations from Tim’s friends, family, and KWAG volunteers. We are still need to find additional funds to complete the project and we are asking everyone out there if they would be able to make any contributions.

We are continuing to fund raise for this project and if you would like to support this project we will be collecting at Bristol Doors Open Day at the house on Sat 13th September. We welcome bank transfers to the KWAG account with the following details:
Account name: Kings Weston Action Group
Sort code. Barclays Bank: 20-13-34
Account No 33567737
Cheques can be sent to Kings Weston Action Group, c/o75A Alma Road, Bristol, BS8 2DW

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.

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