File:Towerhirst, Seawalls Road, Sneyd Park, Bristol (8550239911).jpg

The shot was taken on a dull March day from the southwest corner of Durdham Down in an area overlooking the Avon Gorge known as Sea Walls. The commentary that follows is a completely revised version of that of March 2013, when the photograph was posted. For a brighter shot see <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/panr/8924743266">www.flickr.com/photos/panr/8924743266</a>

History of the House      In May 1861 Yorkshire-born architect, John Henry Hirst, invited builders to tender for the construction of two houses near the Sea Wall, Durdham Down, Bristol (1). Each house was to have a lodge. The first of the houses, called Avonhirst, became the home of Hirst and his family until shortly after he died in 1882 (2). There are reports that the second, called Tower Hirst, was built for a wealthy merchant who used to climb up the tower to watch his ships coming in and out of Bristol along the Gorge (3). If true, the tower in question would probably have been the castellated one as it is believed that the round tower, along with the vaguely Tudor-looking appendage beneath it, was added some years after the house was first built.      Tower Hirst, set in its a half-acre plot, was on the market in June 1867 (4). Thus, if it really was built for the ship-owning merchant, he didn’t live there long. In fact, it’s more likely that the house was not completed until 1867, that it was then purchased by Manchester-born James Jones and that it was he who was the ship-owning merchant of the story. Be that as it may, Jones and his family were certainly living in the house in 1871 (5).      Later in the decade Tower Hirst was purchased by Mr Robert Clarke, senior partner in the firm of Robert Clarke and Co, wholesale clothiers of Colston Street and a director of the Cornish Bank. He was a Cornishman who had come to Bristol with his wife Emma Jane (née Ball) during the 1870s.(6) He died in June 1880, but members of the Clarke family continued to live in the house until 1944 when it was put up for sale by the estate of Robert’s youngest child, Emma Florence Clarke (7). She had died as a spinster in July 1943 and was living in the house at the time of her death (8). Quite a few Clarkes had been born, lived and died in Tower Hirst, between the mid-1870s and Emma’s death in 1943 (9).     By the time it went back on the market in 1944, the house had long been more widely known as Towerhirst. And it certainly had its Tudor appendages. Including those, there were 3 reception rooms, a billiards room, 7 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a “tower room” (10). Who purchased the house is unknown but, as reported in the third comment below, a branch of the Bailey family, proprietors of Bailey’s Stores, lived in the house from 1957 to about 1985. Hannah Bailey had opened a hardware shop at 111 Gloucester Road in the early 1870s the enterprise crew of years until it encompassed Penny Bazaar, a carpet shop and a roofing contractor (11).

Tower Hirst in recent years      When the Bailey’s sold the house in the mid-1950s it went to a Bristol accountant and his wife who restored it and changed the colour from the cream and green it was in my days back to the original white and black. Some years later it was sold on again to a wealthy investment adviser and I think he still lives there today. When my parents bought it the place was very dilapidated and almost derelict, so to cover the costs they rented out the lower ground and grand ground floors as flats and we lived in the first and second floors and all the attics - plus the scary, supposedly haunted tower! Shame about the block of flats that appeared beside us in the late 1960's when next door was sold and demolished for development. The subsequent owners put it all back to one lovely house (12).      On 16 September 1994, Towerhirst was granted Grade II listed status (13). You can see a description of the house at <a href="https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/results?q=towerhirst&searchtype=nhlesearch" rel="noreferrer nofollow">Historic England</a>.

Towerhurst, Leigh Woods      Especially during its early days, Tower Hirst was often misspelt Towerhurst. It was no surprise then that it was sometimes confused with a house called Towerhurst that had been built during the early years of the nineteenth century in Church Road, Leigh Woods, on the other side of the Avon Gorge. That house still stands and it’s even more prestigious than Tower Hirst. A timber merchant called Arthur Hoskins Low and his family lived there, probably from when it was built until he died in 1900. In 2014 it went for £2,730,000 which made it the most expensive property in Bristol to be sold in that year.(14)

Saw Three Ships Go Sailing By      "Circular Road The sheer drama of the Avon Gorge has nudged at least three centuries of architects, or perhaps their clients, towards including a viewing tower which will command either the coming and going of ships into the Inner Harbour or their arrival at the more stable moorings of the Hung and the King's Roads nearer to the Bristol Channel. There are viewing towers at Goldney, a rooftop widow's walk on a late-Victorian villa on the other side of the Gorge in suburban Leigh Woods, the famous Cook's Folly tower painted by numerous eighteenth-century artists and Edward Southwell's Penpole Lodge at Kingsweston.     "This example at Towerhirst, where the Circular Road swings closest to the sheer cliff edge just up from Cook's Folly, is a particularly uninhibited example. Anyone taking the stairs to the tower would have enjoyed the final surprise view of the Gorge after a dark, windowless climb up a narrow stairway. The half-timbering is caught up again in stone, tile and plaster on the main body of the house suggesting that the tower was added by a later, Edwardian owner to what was originally a relatively retiring early-Victorian villa" (15).

A brief note on the life of JH Hirst      John Henry Hirst was born in about 1827 in Heckmondwike, near Duesbury in Yorkshire and set up an architectural practice in Harrogate where, amongst other buildings, he designed <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jtsretired/16133724173/">St Peter’s Church</a>. He also served as City Architect of Hull for a short time and, whilst there, designed the <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cavernbeatles/3426427524/">City Hall</a>.      Though he retained his Harrogate office for a while, by his late twenties, Hirst had moved to Bristol and married Harriet Jane Wyld. In his early years in Bristol he sometimes worked in partnership with Samuel Burleigh Gabriel, though mainly on his own account. He was later in partnership with William Gingell who influenced the style of his commercial buildings. He about 1860 designed Towerhirst, Avonhirst and possibly another house called Locarno, all in Sea Walls Road, Stoke Bishop. He was also a captain in Bristol’s Volunteer Artillery.      Hirst lost his life on 6 July 1882 as a result of a fall at Avonhirst. He had been in poor health for some time and it is believed that, before going to bed, he had been seized with a fit and fallen backwards down the stairs.      Hirst's eldest son, Henry Cecil Montague Hirst, was also an architect. He designed <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/48028479@N00/23896968124/">St Thomas’s Church, Eastville</a> in 1889 (16).

References 1 Western Daily Press, 25/05/1861. 2 Ancestry tree number 21498874. 3 <a href="https://issuu.com/bgsd-studio/docs/bristoltimes-bp-10sept13" rel="noreferrer nofollow">Bristol Post, 10/09/2013</a> (bottom of the last page of the Bristol Times supplement). 4 Western Daily Press, 20/06/1867. 5 The 1871 census return for James and Janet W Jones; Mathews' Bristol Street Directory 1871. 6 Ancestry tree number 18515697. 7 Western Daily Press, 22/01/1944. 8 Probate of Florence Emma Clarke of Stoke Bishop, 13/12/1943. 9 1881 and 1891 census returns for Emma Clarke (born 1831 in Truro). 10 Western Daily Press, 05/02/1944. 11 <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/2129188850/">The History of Bailey's Stores (Bristol) Ltd</a> 12 <a href="https://www.flickr.com/people/61195215@N06/">MWJ Bailey</a>. 13 <a href="http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-380520-towerhirst-/comments#.VzTdxfkrKCo" rel="noreferrer nofollow">Towerhurst: Grade II Listed</a> 14 <a href="https://searchlocation.co.uk/church-road-bs8-3pg/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">Search Location</a> 15 A Bristol eye: the City seen from new perspectives, Steven Morris, 2001, p 46. 16 Compiled from Bristol, an architectural history, Harvey Gomme, Michael Jenner, Bryan D. G. Little, 1979, p437 and The Furniture Gazette, 1882, p 45.