Just one stop on the train from Clifton Down, the suburb of Sea Mills feels so utterly divorced from the steep pavements, packed flats and abundance of coffee shops in the next neighbourhood along. With its wide open spaces and flat landscape, we wonder if perhaps we zoned out sometime during the five-minute journey and ended up in the wrong destination.
Confined to the south and east by the Avon and the river Trym and flanked by the neighbouring areas of Combe Dingle, Shirehampton, Westbury-on-Trym and Stoke Bishop, Sea MiIls primarily consists of a neatly contained, well-ordered garden estate built to provide "homes for heroes" as part of the 1919 Addison Act - designed to address the shortage of quality housing for working people and provide homes for troops returning from the First World War.
Developed using garden city principles, including building at no more than 12 houses per acre and a 100-year-old oak at its heart, as the roar of the Portway recedes, even on a dull January day, it's striking just how much verdure there is. The spacious residences, some double-fronted, all show off back gardens, front gardens, and kerbside verges. Clifton could never.
