Traces of Tide & Time in Bristol

Traces of Tide & Time in Bristol

Owain Jones and Antony Lyons

• Pill, Pill

• When the nights are dark and stormy And the bitter north wind blows Cross the fields from Shirehampton Where the muddy Avon flows Where the Pillites gaily ride Over on the ferry from the other side The boat starts swingin, you'll hear them singin' Float in on the tide!

• Chorus:

• Pill, Pill, I love thee still Even though I'm leaving.....

Tides

“All that night we were in a great bustle getting things stowed in their place, and boatfuls of the squire's friends, Mr. Blandly and the like, coming off to wish him a good voyage and a safe return. We never had a night at the Admiral Benbow when I had half the work; and I was dog-tired when, a little before dawn, the boatswain sounded his pipe and the crew began to man the capstan-bars. I might have been twice as weary, yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new and interesting to me--the brief commands, the shrill note of the whistle, the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of the ship's lanterns.” TREASURE ISLAND

“During the far greater part of these twenty-nine years, the Tide-Gauge has been at work under my own continual inspection; and it may be important to remark that the clock has, from the commencement, been carefully adjusted to Bristol mean time by transit observations: viz. during the first fourteen years by comparison with the Transit Clock of Messrs.M USTON and GATH, chronometer makers in this city, besides frequent sextant altitudes of the sun taken by myself, and for the last fifteen years by a transit instrument in my own house.” TG Bunt 1838

Ferrymen, dredgers, pilots and hobblers

Disconnection : Re-connection

CREATIVE PROJECTS

"As you know, tidal mud is made by the gravitational pull of the moon over millions of years. The River Avon tidal mud is unbelievably strong and viscous. It has all the natural binding qualities, like cave paintings." He has used mud from other places, Hudson River mud, Rhone Valley mud and Braga mud from northern Portugal, but this is "my favourite mud because it's my local mud. It's a great colour."

Richard Long

Flooding

"The prospect of which place

To her fair building adds an admirable grace;

Well fashioned as the best, and with a double wall,

As brave as any town; but yet excelling all

For easement, that to health is requisite and meet;

Her piled shores, to keep her delicate and sweet;

Hereto, she hath her tides; that when she is opprest

With heat or drought, still pour their floods upon her

breast." M. Drayton, Poly-olbion, (1593)