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For a change, this isn't a 'where was I': I have noticed this shape in paving slabs in a few places now. The first place I saw it was in the then new paving on the incline at Temple Meads, but since then I've seen it elsewhere. Does anyone know what causes it?

_{Model: Squirrel Child No.2. Shoes are model's own. You wouldn't think they could get away with going to school dressed like that! I blame the parents etc etc.}

Is the design not made into the slab on manufacture?

That's weird.  It will freeze really well. 

Paul

It's hard to be sure. I suspect that the flagstones may have been recycled, in which case the shape may have been cut out to accommodate something, but it is equally possible that the shape is formed during the extraction process.

Nice shoes.  :-*

I've not noticed any of these slabs, but will keep a close eye out next time I'm walking down from Temple Meads.

Yeah, I've noticed the same shape or very similar in other paving stones. I assume it is, or was originally, something for drainage. Might well be wrong though.

It is a recycled slab from a pavement.  Probably stolen from somewhere up north.  The big end is the pattern cut where a gutter down-pipe hits the pavement.  The other end would continue across serval slabs as a channel to the kerb.     

I think stolen is a bit strong... Bristol City Council may be guilty of many things, but sending their workers to York to nick pavements would be a bit low...

"York stone" paving slabs have been stolen recently from the Kingsdown area, and probably many other places too: simply dug up in the middle of the night. Obviously not by the council. But it's possible that ones laid by BCC's contractors could have earlier been stolen from somewhere up north, or up south, east or west.

I have to agree that it is possible, but we can live in hope that they show some interest in the provenance of recycled slabs. If indeed that is what these are.

The Northern mill town town where I grew up (Glossop, Derbyshire)  had loads of stone flags and kerbs when I was a lad.  Now it is all concrete and tarmac and a little bit of the character of the place has been lost.  Maybe there was no theft in the legal sense.  But the Council and its contractors (with assistance from the utility companies) got away with damaging and then removing the original pavements (and some excellent cobbled roads) because the stones were just outside ordinary terraced houses where ordinary people lived.  Had the stones been outside the Royal Crescent in Bath they would still be there.  If you go to the towns of Stoke on Trent, you will similarly see row after road of terraced houses which have all lost their stone paving and the fact that there is a demand for recycled stones in "posher" areas and for public projects like stations accelerates this vandalism.

It may be that the stone used at Temple Meads was saved from a genuine demolition project, but many miles of decent pavement have been taken up to be reused elsewhere and the word "stolen" seems appropriate.  

An irony in Glossop was that a few years ago the Council got its hands on some money from a pot for improving "the urban realm" and decided to replace the concrete steps leading to the station with real stone ones.  They choose some kind of golden sandstone rather than to put back the original style gritstone flags.  Now Glossop is damp (as cotton towns had to be to stop the threads snapping during spinning) and within weeks this "soft southern" stone was wearing away and had to be taped off as it had become slick with green mould.  

Agreed.  I was (previous to this discussion) under the clear impression (no pun intended!) that those recesses carved into flagstones were to allow something to be lowered into them - the handles of manually operated points on a tramline, for example.

There's stolen and misappropriated, for want of a better word. I very much doubt if the slabs at Temple Meads or in "urban regeneration" were stolen in the "dig up in the middle of the night" sense I've mentioned; for one thing, there wouldn't be enough of them. Those probably end up in garden centres or landscape architects fancy things. They might have been dug up legally by another council or property. Possibly even from a Glossop tram stop! (if Glossop ever had trams?)

apparently there were trams in Glossop but only for about 20 years and I am not old enough to remember them.  It is possible that the Trams of Manchester Metrolink will one day take over the branch line to Glossop.  This would be good news for Glossop-Manchester commuters but probably bad news for the prospects of reopening the Woodhead line to Sheffield.