Bath’s annual Industrial Heritage Show – held at the city’s Twerton-based football club – has proved such a success that there is going to be another event later this year. It’s going to be on Saturday, September 12th at the same venue.
Cllr Bryan Chalker is the man behind an almost annual attempt to remind the people of this World Heritage city that it has an industrial as well as a Roman and Georgian past.
Bryan told the Virtual Museum: ‘Over the course of the 6-hour exhibition, it is estimated that in excess of 700 people attended and it’s a clear indication that there is growing interest in the City’s rich industrial past and I am now planning a further event for later in the year.
A number of people came forward to offer industrial relics as additions to my collection; some linked to Stothert & Pitt. Needless to say, I have accepted!’
Bryan’s display of Stothert and Pitt memorabilia – and other artifacts of the past – formed just one of the collections featured.
Supporting attractions at the event – held in the Bath City Football Clubhouse – included everything from the Kennet and Avon Canal, and brass making at Salford to the little steam engines of the Somerdale Railway that served the chocolate factory at Keynsham.
The Radstock and Midsomer Norton coal mining industry was well represented, there were artefacts from the amazingly unique museum at the Mineral Water Hospital and even a piece of decorative ironwork from one of the three gas holders that have now disappeared from the Bath skyline.
Long may the past be a reminder of where we have come from and – in a way – a celebration of the ordinary men and working class women who generated local wealth – away from spas and assembly rooms – in factories and around furnaces during the years of Bath’s industrial past.
