Cleaning up the Arches

For the last few months, our local Neighbourhood Partnership has been funding work to clean up Gloucester Road, led by a furiously efficient local resident who has made it her life’s work to get the place looking nice by cutting flyposting, getting rid of graffiti and so on. Only a tiny part of Gloucester Road is in Cotham Ward (the north side between the Arches and Zetland Road – plus Cheltenham Road between the Arches and Arley Hill), but I’ve been lending her a hand where I can.

The local resident who is leading the project is looking for keen volunteers to help generally with the work that she’s doing. She tends to go out and blitz the street every week or so, removing flyposting and washing off graffiti, so she’s always grateful for an extra pair of hands from other people who care about the area and want to see it looking good. If you might have the occasional hour or two to spare, drop me a line (neil.harrison@bristol.gov.uk) and I’ll put you in touch.

We’ve also started looking at cleaning up the Arches railway bridge itself. It’s a beautiful structure and it should be a key landmark for the local area. Unfortunately, it’s covered in ugly tagging and it’s become a bit of an eyesore. The first steps have been taken to start a conversation with Network Rail and to get a quote for cleaning it and spraying it with anti-graffiti paint. Now we need to start finding the money from various sources to make it happen.