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A watching brief at New House Farm, Tytherington, South Glos.

An evaluation at the Bristol City F C training ground, Clevedon Road, Failand, North Somerset

An archaeological evaluation on land at Catbrain Lane, Almondsbury, South Gloucestershire.

Increasingly, scholars have turned to the urban built environment as a medium of communication in its own right. The bricks and mortar of cities are communicative insofar as they shape, constrain, and ultimately also mediate the everyday lives of individuals and communities. We draw on our own and others’ work in the broader field of rhetorical studies to state that “being through there” matters as a methodological approach to examining the urban built environment as a key form of mediation. Looking both backward and forward, we argue that this approach to studying the city is centered on three key concepts: materiality, bodies, and movement. This means that we must directly engage as fully embodied communication scholars with the built landscape, with temporality, and in movement. We therefore offer a number of examples to show communication scholars how to bring their own material possibilities into experiencing contact with the urban built environment, how to reconstruct urban landscapes’ histories and ongoing changes, and how to integrate considerations about both direction and speed into the study of urban communication.

Level 2 building survey of St George's Church, Bristol In Autumn 2016 Avon Archaeology Limited undertook a Historic Building Survey on the Grade II* listed (HE list entry 1202248) St George's Church, Brandon Hill, Bristol. The survey was commissioned to satisfy a condition of planning (application ref: 15/02984/f) associated with the construction of a new facility attached to the eastern side of the church, as such work was primarily focused on the north-east elevation of the church. In accordance with this planning condition the survey was undertaken to Historic England Level 2 specifications (HE, 2006), prior to any alterations taking place. The land on which St George's church now stands was purchased in October 1819 as a new burial ground for the parish church of St Augustine-the-Less, located at the bottom of Park Street on College Green. Robert Smirke was appointed architect for the church of St George's which was constructed between 1821 and 1823. In the 1870s Canon Norris appointed G. E. Street to transform the 'previously bare protestant interior'. During the air raids of 1940-42 an incendiary bomb dropped through the ceiling onto the altar, although fortunately failed to ignite. In the late 1960s - early 1970s the church was redecorated in order to return it to its original Georgian scheme. The church was closed for congregational use in the late 1970s and taken over by St George's Music Trust. To accommodate St George's new function some structural changes were made to the interior of the building both in the main church and the crypt. Apart from cleaning the exterior of the building remained largely untouched. In 1999 the building underwent further refurbishment work. A rapid photographic survey was carried out, both internally and externally, of the areas to be affected by the development. Through the use of existing survey drawings and the photographic record, plan and elevation drawings were created. The uploaded report discusses St George's historically significant features, with particular focus on areas directly affected by the development, and places them within a phased chronological narrative.