Virtual Museum – BATH NEWSEUM

Off the streets & into the kitchen?

My thanks to Virtual Museum follower Terry James for this image. A sign painted on a Georgian house in Gay’s Hill, Lower Camden in Bath. Can anyone tell us more? There must be a connection between this ‘institution’ and the efforts to get young girls of ‘ill repute’ – off the streets?

by Richard Wyatt

Turning Bath’s past into a digital future.

There cannot be many people – with an interest in local history – who have not heard of Bath in Time. It’s an organisation which – since its inception in 2007 – has managed to amass an on-line collection of nearly 28,000 historical images and articles relating to Bath and its environs. It was all […]

by Richard Wyatt

Art and the rail engineer

Brunel’s Great Western Railway certainly opened up Bath in terms of transport and trade but this engineering marvel came in handy when the city needed to promote its recently discovered Roman baths and its spa and Georgian architecture to a new type of visitor – the rail-travelling day-tripper. A new exhibition at Bath’s Victoria Gallery […]

by Richard Wyatt

Respect! – for the ‘Penfold Hexagonal’

It is, he said, faded and defaced. It’s little companion coin-in-the-slot stamp dispenser empty and forgotten. This is a ‘GR’ pillar – that’s George the Sixth – which dates the letterbox to the 1930’s. Meanwhile, I was dismayed to see a much earlier and rarer box looking in a similar sorry state on Great Pulteney Street. […]

by Richard Wyatt

Shop window on Medieval Bath

A rather forgotten period in Bath‘s illustrious past is getting a shop-front showing in a new business that has just opened in the city. Ora et Labora – which means pray and work – not only offers an opportunity to discover Bath’s monastic heritage but showcases and sells the very best of today’s artisan goods […]

by Richard Wyatt

Bath’s hidden Chinese history

A little bit of Bath‘s hidden history is going to be revealed to us all in a couple of months and it has nothing to do with the city’s Roman or Georgian past. Just across the road from the Assembly Rooms – and around the corner from the Circus – you will find the Museum […]

by Richard Wyatt

Statue moves!

Looks like the double-life-sized torso of Olympic swimmer Mark Foster – which stands at the entrance to the SouthGate Shopping Centre – could shortly be on the move. However, the artist who sculpted it would rather it doesn’t budge and tells the Virtual Museum why.. Ben Dearnley’s giant Bath-stone plinth-based statue of the 6 feet […]

by Richard Wyatt

Bath Rugby Club’s Vision for the future!

Bath Rugby Club’s plans for a new arena at the Rec have finally gone on show. A 16,500-capacity stadium which would transforms facilities, increase ground capacity and open up a key stretch of riverside. On Thursday the club invited local residents – who live around the ground they’ve occupied for 120 years – to have […]

by Richard Wyatt

‘B.C.’ was here!

The Virtual Museum bicycle had been dropped off at Take Charge Bikes on Bathwick Hill for essential brake repairs – leaving your Director free to wander for an hour with a camera. As one who delights in looking up – rather than continually down at a touch-phone or portable video game – l came across […]

by Richard Wyatt

‘Doing the Pools’

We are not talking here of that old weekly ritual of getting eight football draws in a pools-coupon line but instead paying Bath’s Cleveland Pools a visit during a special Open Day arranged for November 1st. The idea was – with half-term coming to an end – that it would make an original and low-cost […]