Bath Record Office has announced the completion of their externally funded project ‘Preservation and Change in a World Heritage Site: Architectural Drawings of Bath, 1750-2000’.
In October 2016 department – part of Bath and North East Somerset Council – was awarded a grant of more than £33,000 from the National Cataloguing Grant Scheme for Archives to catalogue four important series of architectural records.
The new information more than doubles the total number of records previously on Bath Record Office’s online catalogue and is a major resource for academics, students and other researchers, locally, nationally and internationally.
Two Project Archivists and a team of 20 dedicated volunteers worked to complete the project, with the volunteers physically checking and editing the information on more than 47,000 individual planning application files submitted to the Council from 1948 to 1996. The volunteers gave over 2,400 hours of their time.
Other collections featured in the project were the architectural drawings of properties owned by Bath City Council (c.1775-c.1995), records of the David Brain Partnership, and the records of the architect F. W. Beresford-Smith.
These collections provide an unparalleled record of the development of Bath’s built environment over a 250-year period and this project has ensured that these collections are now available to all, via the Record Office’s online catalogue.
Councillor Paul Myers, cabinet member for Economic and Community Regeneration, said: “This project has enabled Bath & North East Somerset Council to provide, for the first time, detailed online catalogues for those interested in researching the planning history of a property in Bath. We are especially grateful to the volunteers who gave up their time to create this vital resource.”
To view the catalogue please visit: https://somerset-cat.swheritage.org.uk/records/BC/8/6/8
