CHAPTER VII.
ON SION HILL, CLIFTON.
Gilbert Arundel was to meet his mother in Clifton, where arrangements were to be made for their permanent residence there. Clifton was at this time gradually changing its position, or rather enlarging its borders! At the close of the preceding century, or during the latter half of it, Clifton Spa was the chief attraction. To these healing waters, as we know by Mason's celebrated epitaph, a sorrowing husband brought his fading wife. Dowry Square and Dowry Parade, with their little quaint pillars and balconies were in great request for invalids and visitors, from their near neighbourhood to the pump room.
Consumptive patients might be seen slowly walking under the row of trees by the banks of the muddy Avon, and gazing across at the deep recesses of the Leigh Woods with wistful eyes. To the weak and the ailing Nightingale Valley was then, though so near, very far off for them, and only the robust and vigorous could cross the river by Rownham Ferry, and scale the wooded heights which at all times and in all seasons are so fair to look upon.
But at the time of which I write the tide of visitors was setting in upwards. The word "relaxing" was coming into fashion, and enterprising builders had raised, halfway up the hill, Windsor Terrace and the Paragon, that circular range of houses which, entered from the level road before Prince's Buildings, ends abruptly in a house which may indeed be said to "be built upon a rock," the windows looking straight down its precipitous sides.
Along the road which I have mentioned, which follows the course of the river, though high above it, was erected 'Prince's Buildings;' the 'first gentleman in Europe' during his long regency appears to have supplied the names of many streets and terraces in this neighbourhood.
Coronation Road beneath commemorates the auspicious event when Queen Caroline was shut out from her rights, and Prince's Buildings above was also previously named in his honour. Crescents and terraces were quick to follow one another on the heights, and the glories of the Hot wells, and the salubrity of the waters, became things of the past.
Bracing air began to be the panacea for ailments, and the Clifton Downs, now secured to the citizens of Bristol by the merchant venturers for ever, were sought by many who, a few years before, would have buried themselves and their hopes of recovery under the shadow of the rocky heights, instead of facing the keen air upon their summit.
There was a medium preserved, however—Prince's Buildings, and the houses built on the slope of Sion Hill, were sheltered at the back and from the front commanded a view of the Leigh Woods before them, and a shoulder of the great St. Vincent Rock to their right, which might well excite the admiration of those who saw it for the first time.