Just recently, l reported on a cash grant being awarded that will enable a memorial display to be erected in a field at Odd Down that contains the bodies of many who died whilst resident in the nearby Bath Union Workhouse.
That’s a space owned by B&NES but – at what is now the nearby St Martin’s Hospital lies the main burial site and that’s currently shared between the NHS and private ownership.
It’s a patch of grassland – unmarked in any way – but containing the bodies of more than a thousand people.
A local campaign group has now produced a professional application asking B&NES to officially remove this parcel of land – which also contains the chapel and Frome House – from the local plan as land available for housing development.
I caught the D2 bus from the city centre and went up to meet one of the campaigners at the site.
Andrew says the group has received support from the Museum of Bath Stone and from the Museum of Bath at Work and it was there – recently – that l interviewed John Payne who is the author of Workhouse to Hospital – a brief account of the Odd Down Bath Union Workhouse site.
You can buy copies at that museum – but here’s that interview repeated.
