Tags
Bristol, City Hall Bristol, cityscape, E Vincent Harris, English Literature, Georgian Britain, Great George Street Bristol, John Pinney, Museums, Romantics, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, slavery, sugar, The Georgian House Museum Bristol, views, William Wordsworth
The view from The Georgian House Museum isn’t what it was, for better or worse; I don’t know the history of Bristol well enough to say. E Vincent Harris’ Bristol Council House, opened by The Queen in 1956 and renamed Bristol City Hall in 2012, dominates the centre of this cityscape; with Bristol Cathedral barely visible behind.
I would imagine that, in the 1790s, when John Pinney, sugar merchant and slave plantation owner, moved into the property he would have been able to see as far as College Green. The Georgian House Museum’s website suggests that John Pinney would have been able to see ships in the harbour from his bedroom window; you’d have hardly thought it looking at this view!
The Museum’s website also informs me that the Pinneys entertained the Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth at their Great George Street home. What would they have made of the view from this window, I wonder?
The Antics Roadshow blog 
Pretty mundane view now, isn’t it? I imagine if the Pinneys looked more to the left or the right they’d have seen ships more readily than towards College Green, where the bulk of the Cathedral and St Augustine’s (now demolished) on the Green’s eminence would have blocked their line of sight. To the right the low ground of Canon’s Marsh would have allowed identification of ships approaching up the Avon to a berth upriver from the shadow of Brandon Hill. I’m guessing!
It was like looking forward in time, from my Georgian stand point, to a future that, as you put it, looks pretty mundane from this angle!
That’s interesting to know that the low ground is to the right. It is claimed that Mr. Pinney could not only see ships in the harbour, which I how I phrased it, but could identify his own ships coming up the Avon, which must have been very handy.