The Stephen Dowle Collection
Stephen Dowle spent the 1970s and the early 1980s documenting his home city of Bristol. His photographs of Barton Hill are atmospheric and evocative, revealing poignant scenes that have changed significantly over the following years. His work is historically significant in that he captures Barton Hill and surrounding districts during a period of great change.
Stephen has published the following book: Bristol A Portrait 1970-82
See his 4,700 images (not all of Barton Hill!) here
“During the early 1970s I mostly photographed places in Bristol that were being knocked down before the advance of ‘comprehensive redevelopment’. In between photographing the most urgent cases ...the ones where the houses were already vacant, boarded-up and ready for demolition... I paused to turn my attention to those streets which, although still intact, looked as though they might become future candidates for the chop.“
Stephen Dowle
"Digby Street, Barton Hill, Bristol, seen on Friday 26th June 1970. I was not the only person taking photographs. These substantial four-storey houses, with half basements, were boarded up ready for demolition, but the upper floor of one of them (the fourth from the end of the rank, I think) was still occupied. A young woman, who looked to me as though she might have been a social worker or something of the sort, was also taking pictures, perhaps as evidence of the poor housing conditions. She then entered the house and re-emerged with the lone resident, a blind man with a white stick, whom she guided down the steps to a car. She carried a small suitcase. On the back of the original print are two notes in pencil; "Houses demolished by Oct 1971" and "Site vacant, April 1981". In the latter month the gasholders in Day's Road, seen here peeping over the roofs, were also dismantled. Digby Street was the first turning on the right (coming from Lawrence Hill) at the far side of Barrow Road bridge and the rear windows of these houses must once have enjoyed a stupendous view across the yard of Barrow Road locomotive shed. Looks like a dropped kerb in the foreground, perhaps needed for deliveries to the corner shop behind my back. Gas lighting 'til the end here. " Stephen Dowle
"At the time this photo was taken, Friday 26th June 1970, one of these houses was still occupied. The others have probably been left to hold it up. The lamp post stood in Bridge Street whose surface and kerbs remain although the houses have gone. The backs of the houses in Digby Street had once looked out over the railway and Barrow Road locomotive sheds. " Stephen Dowle
"I think the turning off left was Meyrick Street. Derelict cars visible are a BMC 1100, a Morris Minor, two Austin Cambridges and an Austin A40. Photograph taken Thursday 1st September 1977. Subsequently the recreation field of a school. Stephen Dowle.
