After a fashion

Plans for a new Fashion Museum of Bath – based within the old Post Office and alongside St Michael’s Without – are part of an overall scheme for the area that B&NES likes to refer to as the Milsom Quarter.

A visionary regeneration project that will of course depend on getting the financial resources and – no doubt – the interest of private developers – to make a dream come true.

Just by chance l recently caught sight of a report – commissioned by Bath City Council towards the end of the Second World War – for the reconstruction and future development of the city.

It involved the ‘thoughts’ of Patrick Abercrombie whose ideas for town-planning schemes were well known by many local authorities across the country.

He wanted the right sort of development in the right place and was a great believer in ‘zoning’ – a separation of domestic and industrial.

His bound report – printed here in the city at Pitmans Press – was released alongside an exhibition which featured an architectural model of the city centre of the future.

I won’t go into the report detail – other than to mention some of the suggestions included turning the Royal Crescent into council offices and building a new concert hall on Abbey Green – but it was another illustration from the book/report that caught my eye.

The idea of creating what appears to be a large open space in front of the (then working) Central Post Office. Look how many/few cars there are too!!!

I had to smile because while Abercrombie talked about ‘zones’ our present local authority talks about ‘quarters’ and maybe some of our current plan makers have also looked at this old image because for the ‘Milsom Quarter’ the idea is to create a new public square in this same area!

We will see.