St Peter's Church

Wide Angled Wednesday: St Peter's Church

The theme of this week's Wide Angled Wednesday challenge is history and there is a bit of a tale to this shot.

The weather had been very wet again.  I delayed my lunch break as the BBC's (not so reliable) forecast app indicated that things would be drier at 2pm and that there was even the possibility of some brief sunshine.  Needless to say when I looked out of the window at 2:30pm it was still raining reasonably persistently.  In the end at 4pm it had stopped and I raced out to try to grab a blip.  Although there was still a big blanket of cloud, the sun was starting to go down and, to my delight had found a gap below the cloud base, to provide some more interesting light..

This shot is of St Peter's Church in Castle Park - In the centre of Bristol just next door to the Broadmead shopping area.  It was the site of Bristol Castle.  The castle is now long gone, but it once looked something like the Tower of London.  The area around the castle was the original medieval retail heart of the city.  

In the early part of the Second World War Bristol suffered a very significant air raid, intended to destroy Bristol's industry and port facilities. Wikipedia recounts that 135 aircraft reached the target area, and dropped 156,250 kg (344,470 lb) of high explosives,4,750 kg (10,470 lb) of oil bombs and 12,500 incendiaries. As the raid progressed, the fires could be seen from 250 kilometres (160 miles) away. 

The old medieval centre of Bristol was badly affected, and after the war this largely raised area became Castle park.  There are two notable historic structures still remaining. The first is this building - the remnants of St Peter's Church.  The second is the tower of St Mary Le Port, which I blipped some time ago, here, along with a very emotive Stephen Spender poem.

The area around the Church features a herb garden, as well as this rather nice water feature.  Unfortunately, the secluded nature of the setting also means that, like many parks, there are some parts that can feel a little less safe than others.  I certainly would not feel that comfortable in this location late at night.

Just after taking this shot, I found perhaps 10 policemen and two police cars on the other side of the church busy searching a small group of individuals.  The individuals concerned did not appear to be rough sleepers (Bristol has a major problem with homeless rough sleepers), so I imagine that they were perhaps looking for drug dealers.  Having said that, as far as I could see, no arrests were actually made, despite the fuss.  

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