Bath Tec School

Info.

8/16/2009 6:56:10 PM
That's a great set of pic's you've been adding Tony, certainly jogs the memory, will add a few more comments eventually, sensible ones, (mostly).
For anyone who's interested here's a couple of web addreses for further information.
 
http://www.francisfrith.com/bath/photos/  photograps from the 1880's to the 1970's, mostly early 20th. century.
 
http://www.thejwarrens.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk  a mine of information about the WWII Baedecker boming raids of Bath, combining the Green Park and other area photos that Tony has added, and the maps on this site should give a clearer picture of locations, Although I was fairly familiar with most of the bomb site locations in Bath I was amazed at just where some of the bombs fell.
 
Any more research I turn up I'll add as and when.
 
Stu
 
PS If anyone's got any old photographs of the Holloway area, pre road improvements, I'd be really interested in seeing them.

Comments

- 8/16/2009 8:01:30 PM
Hi Stu, The Bath in Time web site has loads of the Holloway. I was only reminded of the old Chip shop up there earlier in the week when I was browsing.
 
There may also be some on Flickr, I was amazed at the stuff I 've found on there.
 
Rich.
 
 
- 8/16/2009 8:25:06 PM
Thanks for that Rich, have spent a few minutes looking, will look in greater depth later, seems a shame that such an individual area of Bath was destroyed, especially with what replaced it. My mother owned the greengrocers at the bottom of Holloway when I was a small child, and I have fond memories of the area, a shame that Bath City Council in its wisdom managed to destroy what Hitler didn't.
- 8/17/2009 2:36:04 PM
I have a book called The Sack of Bath and After which shows how the council did more damage to Bath and it's biuldings than Hitler Did. There is a picture in it of 17th century buildings (grade 3) in Holloway that they just pulled down. So many other buildings in Bath which were once declared slums are now worth millions. My Dad and his over large family lived in one room in Beaufort Square which he himself describes as a hovel and falling apart. Thankfully this was one place that was rebuilt, many others were just bulldosed. Bristol Council did the same with all the medeival buildings that could all have been saved !!
 
Shall we now comment on the people who re design our traffic systems?  I think Not !!
 
Be Good,
 
Rich
- 8/17/2009 3:07:21 PM
I think it would have been a major mistake to allow Bath to become a Georgian version of Venice. However, with little evidence of any truly exciting and inventive achitecture (sympathetic to the very best that the Woods could offer) having been built since 1945 we have much to be extremely angry about.   I fail to understand how and why the city fathers approved the hideous reconstructed Bath stone monoliths that still scar parts of the inner city.  The second post war attempt at a shopping complex at the bottom of town with its pastiche neo-georgian frontages (wildly out of scale and proportion) is further evidence of an aesthetic illiteracy that still plagues the planning offices after sixty years.

I'm certain that if Peter Coard was still alive he'd be banging a few heads together in the planning offices and burning his beard in protest.

Sorry...it's one of my hobby horses...I'll keep taking the tablets!

Mike
- 8/17/2009 3:28:21 PM
Steady Mike, remember the blood pressure. I do agree though, if you take a look at the continent, wher ther was a great deal of rebuilding after the war and in later years, there are many, (not all), places where they had the good sense to retain the facade of buildings at the very least. What was done to Bath in the 1960 is more reminiscent of Soviet Russia, I haven't visited recently to see what's become of the remodelling of the Southgate area, I suspect it'll be the insane concoction of some modern "Mallist".
- 8/17/2009 4:43:28 PM
My daughter has just completed her 3 years at Exeter.  During that time we've watched with satisfaction the redevelopment of a hideous post war shopping area (now known as Princesshay).  The new centre is superb, ultra-modern but with medieval touches (the street plan, curves, varying widths of pedestrian ways, courtyards etc.) and with a thoughtful interpretation of the archaeology and bombed remnants of 39-45 that scatter the area.
Even the modernist Japanese have done it successfully in parts of Kyoto and Osaka, why not Bath - a World Heritage Site?

Yes Stu you need to amble down beyond M&S and give it your view.........its miles better than the glorified public loo that it replaces (and even the new bus station has a pleasing functionality about it).  What horrified me was the way in which the architects took some of the generic Georgian styles, seemingly blew them up on a photocopier, and redrew them at a much larger scale........why?

Yes it was the blood pressure tablets I was referring to but in my old age I'm gaining more than a slight sympathy for some of the views of our heir in waiting.

Best wishes,

Mike


- 8/17/2009 8:37:54 PM
You're right about Exeter Mike, it's where we go now if we want to do any serious shopping, or rather when Shirl wants to do some serious shopping, theres a good mix of well preserved old, well thought out new, and a few streets of "non high street" shops, a decent city museum which I think Bath lacks, I know Bath's got a museum for this and another for that but I find them too specialised, and for the size and status of the city the Victoria Art Gallery's a joke