Bath Recreation Limited (BathRec) kindly let me know they had ‘tweeted’ a picture – on Twitter – of the refurbished wooden ticket boxes at the entrance to the Recreation Ground in William Street.
I took a shot of the freshly painted structures – which date from around the opening of the ground in 1894 – myself yesterday.
There will be thousands of people passing through that entrance for Bath Festival’s 70th Anniversary Finale Weekend on May 26th/27th – when artists including Paloma Faith Alison Moyet and Robert Plant wrap things up – musically speaking – at the Recreation Ground.
My thanks too to Irene Simms – who is Office Manager at Bath Recreation Limited. She has sent on an amazing ‘before’ and ‘after’ shot to show just how proficient that ‘paint job’ has been.
They should be good for a good few years more.
Meanwhile, Barry Gilbertson – who is Chairman of the Circus Area Residents Association – tells me he recently asked the Conservation and Planning department at B&NES to “inspect and take the appropriate action needed regarding the very poor state” of a telephone box at the bottom end of the Gravel Walk in Queens Parade Place.
We showed some pictures of its dilapidated state here on Bath Newseum. It’s been vandalised and is not the sort of thing tourists want to see in the middle of a Conservation Area leading up to the iconic Royal Crescent.
Barry sent me a copy of an email he received from Laura Batham – the Duty Conservation Officer for B&NES.
After an amazing preamble, the important paragraph was at the bottom!
“I have notified BT of the damage and asked that they assess the phone box for repairs.
They have advised that an engineer will be visiting the site next week to assess/clean and then works to replace glass should take place within the next month.”
If you walk along the canal from the deep lock by the coop at the bottom of Widcombe Hill, you come across a lovely little cast iron footbridge over the canal, which is, I think, listed. Just beyond that on the opposite side of the canal by the allotments there is a hideous decaying “sculpture’ consisting of two glass fibre canoes (maybe three) forming a kind of star on a pole. It has been there for over a year now and when they were erected the planners said that there was nothing they could do as it was a temporary feature. This is in the conservation area and highly visible from a well walked tow path, and it is now just a piece of junk. How long is temporary?
I wonder if a little publicity in your ‘columns’ might hasten its removal?
Tom Marshall