People / My Bristol Favourites
My Bristol favourites: Andy King
Andy King is curator of industrial and maritime history at the M Shed. Here are his top-five Bristol favourites:
Bristol Harbour
is needed now More than ever
“I’ve been lucky enough to spend 34 years working in offices that overlook the Harbour and its history has become my passion. I take huge delight in knowing the back stories of all the multifarious areas of the water, from Cumberland Basin to Netham, and I love seeing other people discovering its delights.”
My allotment
“We have a nice plot on a small allotment site in Bedminster and I find it’s the perfect place to forget about everything that’s hassling me. We keep bees there, too, and the combination of watching these perfect team players and communing with nature drives every black thought out of your head. It’s hard work but worth every minute.”
Marksbury Road library
“My local library is one of the seven that are threatened with closure. The area around it is already starved of community assets of any sort. – Even the nearest pub is over half a mile away, there’s no church and precious few shops where people locally can meet and pass the time of day – and the library serves that role for some, at least. It’s one of the Robinson libraries, paid for by the printing magnates who believed that the huge new council estates being built round Bristol in the 1930s needed facilities like this.”
East Street
“Topped and tailed by the Wills and Robinson factories, reminding us of the thriving industrial community that this used to be. It’s a shadow of its former self, but still down to earth and honest, and immensely improved with the new fish stall that’s joined the greengrocers and other useful shops. It’s not all coffee bars yet!”
Bedminster Down
“I love coming in from the south west of the city on the old Bridgwater Road and getting the panorama over the whole of Bristol. The view down to the Suspension Bridge, punctuated by Bristol City’s ground; the industrial buildings; the posh terraces of Clifton; and the academic hillside just sums up Bristol’s eclectic nature.”