Towns Named Bristol

Shaun Taylor set to be named Torquay United assistant

Torquay United have appointed former Exeter youth coach Shaun Taylor as manager Martin Ling's assistant.

Taylor played alongside Ling at Swindon Town between 1991 and 1996 and also had spells at Exeter and Bristol City.

Gulls boss Ling told the club website: "It is important that your number two is someone you can trust because you work so closely together.

"Shaun alongside me makes us a solid coaching unit, I'm excited to have an assistant who is the right choice."

Meanwhile, Ling revealed that the club are also in talks to bring in Alex Russell in a player-coach capacity.

Drama Queen « Shipshape Magazine Bristol

We’re sure that sometime this summer will find you, dear reader, in Queen Square, central Bristol’s loveliest and most peaceful splash of green.

But the chances are that, as you loll elegantly across its leafy expanses, chucking a Frisbee or bending an ear to some live jazz, you won’t be reflecting that one of Britain’s bloodiest riots took place almost two centuries ago on those very lawns. But that’s just one aspect of the eventful tale of Queen Square. Nowadays it may be all food markets and open-air theatre: further back in its past, though, the square has seen its fair share of death and destruction.

In the beginning…

An impressive Georgian square, reputedly the largest of its type in Europe, Queen Square occupies 2.4 hectares of lawns and wide gravel paths, with a statue as its centrepiece and a perimeter of mature plane trees. As well as a valued urban green lung, it’s also a much-used corridor between many of Bristol’s major business, cultural and entertainment destinations. And over the past decade, since a successful regeneration project that removed the road carving through its centre, Queen Square has become a busy outdoor venue, hosting everything from gigs and outdoor cinema to business exhibitions and open-air theatre. But things were not always thus.

A little bit of history, then: and here we lean heavily on the excellent ‘Bristol’s 100 Best Buildings’ by architect and historian Mike Jenner. In 1699, soon after the building of nearby King Street for the city’s growing merchant class, Bristol’s Corporation set out to construct more merchants’ houses on the promontory between the rivers Avon and Frome – an area known as the Town Marsh, then outside the city walls. After the eccentric ensemble of King Street, the Corporation wanted something more in keeping with the new fashion for Classical uniformity, or what would become the Georgian style. This uniformity was more or less observed by Queen Square’s various private builders: the houses all share certain features (timber sashes; roughly level parapets and roof lines), but within that, as with much Bristolian architecture down the centuries, there’s plenty of individuality.

Queen Square was finished in 1727, England’s first residential square outside London, and was named in honour of Queen Anne, who had reigned from 1702-1707 during the project’s infancy. A few years later in 1733 came the square’s centrepiece, Michael Rysbrack’s equestrian figure of King William III (1689-1702), now reckoned the finest equestrian monument in northern Europe (and, indeed, a grade-I listed building).

Chambers's journal

Chambers' Edinburgh journal

History of Fall River, with notices of Freetown and Tiverton

Bristol

Bristol. The city charters, Containing the original institution of mayors, recorders, sheriffs, town-clerks, ... To which are added, The bounds of the city, ...