At this late
date you can't enter by Brunel's handsome and ornate original front entrance,
or even, perhaps, by the direct entrance from the modern booking hall.
The long way round is anticlockwise, via the end of platform 9.
|
 |
| As you move
on under the hammer-beam type roof, you end up in a cramped space held
up by pillars. End of the line in a special sense - 19th Century Bristolians
held that Brunel built the railway to bring Londoners to Bristol, not Bristolians
to London! |
|
|
 |
| . As you make
your way down the platform, into the gloom you see ahead (left), the train
shed - now a grade one listed building - becomes more and more of a time-warp.
The feel of the place takes you back to the 19th Century. The roof
is awesome. Brunel did that for a train station? |
 |
| The
19th Century is with you inside, mid 20th Century Bristol just outside.The
buildings opposite Temple Meads incline (from where we have just walked)
still show signs of the damage which Hitler's bombs inflicted. That gap
opposite had been a bomb site as far as I can remember. |
 |
Back on platform
9, there's a group round a happy couple, just-married, and about to entrain
to Bath... |
