What have we here?

Richard Wyatt

Look what popped through my letterbox this cold and frosty morning. I am assuming many other people who live around me got one too!

“Re: A46 Charmy Downs geotech surveys.”

ChatGPT tells me: ” A geotechnical survey is a study of the soil, rock and groundwater at a site to determine how the ground will behave when something is built on it.”

Google Maps

Further evidence, it would appear, that they are serious about building on the old airfield. Did l hear three thousand homes are being talked about?

We don’t want or need satellite settlements. Just imagine the new vehicular loading from there onto the A46 in and out of Bath.

Brown fields come first and not green.

Published by Richard Wyatt

Freelance Journalist, broadcaster, columnist and local historian. Director of Bath Newseum. Married and lives in Bath. Interested in local history, architecture and visual display in museums and urban spaces.

7 Comments

  1. Profiteers will always obsess over green fields to lower their building costs and increase profit. This does not add to Bath, only worsens quality of life elsewhere!!

  2. Can you identify a single large brownfield site within the city which is not already scheduled for development?

  3. I learnt to drive on this old airfield some 60 plus years ago! I think it is more brown than green because it was used and hasn’t been agricultural.
    An attractive settlement with its own infrastructure – e.g. not relying on Batheaston’s surgery – could be built that can accommodate all incomes from social housing and starter homes to larger detached residences. (The development round the Chocolate Quarter in Keynsham seems to have got it right)
    Perhaps they could use part of it as a Park and Ride too. A round- about or lights would control the flow in and out of the site. Much as we all hate change and the thought of losing countryside realistically this could work extremely well and help to control the flow of traffic into Bath.

  4. From my reading of the notice it is the A46 itself that is being surveyed. I imagine this is to ensure that it is not likely to slip into the valley with the traffic loads that it now carries. The A36 has had to have a lot of work done to prevent it sliding into the Limpley Stoke valley, and parts of the A46 may be liable to the same issues.

  5. I also think it is more brown than green and we need more houses for local people to live in. I am more concerned about what type of housing they build.

  6. Like many of our generation, my brother and I learnt to drive at Charmy Down (late 50s/early 60s) we also used it to race his go-kart! At that point, the old runways were just about intact and many of the original buildings still standing – in various states of disrepair. I used to think the place was haunted by the ghosts of the airmen who served there when it was operational. Happy memories.! I agree, however, that access to/from the A46 Gloucester Rd is absolutely key to any future development. Linked to an ‘Eastern’ Park & Ride, perhaps?

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