The lost buildings of Bath

7 min readOct 22, 2020

This photo essay is about the city of Bath and the events that happened in the book ‘The Sack of Bath’. It will look at what happened to the city and its buildings after the war, in the 1960s and the 1970s and how the power of photography and campaigning helped to save the city from being completely demolished.

As a Bath resident who has lived in the city for over 18 years, I often hear the phrase ‘aren’t you lucky living in such a beautiful city!’…. Yes, I am.

To this day I still find Bath beautiful and often come across parts of the city that I have never seen before. I explore the city on foot and take photos of the architecture with my camera. Bath is located in the South West of England, near to Bristol. From London Paddington a fast train takes 1 hour 20 minutes, arriving in the heart of Bath. The city is famous for being a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was inscribed in 1987. The Bath World Heritage website states that “Bath is included because of its Roman Remains, 18th Century Architecture, 18th Century Town Planning, Social Setting, Hot Springs and Landscape Setting”[1]. Only two cities on the planet are World Heritage sites, the other being Venice.[2] To this day, Bath continues to be a desirable place to live and visit, and according to a YouGov poll in 2018 “Bath emerged as the second most popular city out of all 57 in England, Scotland and Wales.”[3]

‘The Sack of Bath’

Last year I was given a book called ‘The Sack of Bath’ by Adam Fergusson, and whilst reading it I began to learn that Bath could have looked quite different from how it is today. After the war, in the late 1960s and 1970s, acres upon acres of Bath’s Georgian minor architecture was demolished. It all happened over the course of a decade and a half. “The Bath of the working classes, which made Beau Nash’s fashionable resort possible”[4] had been swept away. What is more, the buildings that were demolished are unreproducible and irreplaceable and therefore unique; so much so that many people living in Bath today would not recognise parts of the city before the mass demolitions.

“Until the 1950s Bath remained among the two or three most complete period cities in the world”[5]

The set pieces, for example, The Royal Crescent, The Circus, Milsom Street and the Pump Room, were spared due to being buildings of great importance. Furthermore, what is upsetting is that a lot of the buildings that were demolished could have been renovated for less than the cost of the new unloved replacements. The replacements were in the style of brutalist architecture and were far from what the Georgian architecture was like in form and style. The horrible new unsympathetic, brutal developments were “changing the character” of the city. When asked in 1972 whether he was proud of the new buildings, the then Chairman of the Development Committee of Bath Council answered “None.”[6]

Figure 1 The Royal Crescent in 1972 © Bath and North East Somerset Council.

Figure 2 View of the Circus and The Royal Crescent c1960s © Bath and North East Somerset Council.

Figure 3 The Circus in 1987 © Bath and North East Somerset Council.

Nearly 2000 Grade I and Grade II buildings in Bath had statutory protection under the 1947 Act which “first established the lists of Britain’s buildings of particular architectural or historic interest”. There were also 1000 Grade III buildings which were “important enough to be drawn to the attention of local authorities and others” and many hundreds that were unlisted but would have certainly being considered for “statutory protection in almost any other town.” [7]

“In few places has the notion of ‘urban renewal’ been applied with such destructive vigour as here, or with such callous disregard for the finer subtleties of urban charm”[8].

Figure 5 Lambridge Street being demolished in 1971

The standout pieces of architecture weren’t the only buildings that survived. The campaigning work of the Bath Preservation Trust (set up in 1934), the author Adam Fergusson and his 1973 book and the subsequent media attention had a big impact. They managed to stop a lot of the destruction of those times and saved some well-loved parts of the city, for example, Walcot St from the bulldozers.[9] An example that I am very fond of is St Anne’s Place because I recently discovered it and then did some research on the place. It is pictured below in the 1970s and more recently in 2018.

Figure 6 St Anne’s Place © Bath and North East Somerset Council.

Figure 7 St Anne’s Place Photograph: Sarah Bannister

Developers wanted to tear down the whole city and rebuild it, so this is what the campaigners were up against in the early 1970s. There is no doubt that there were parts of Bath that needed redevelopment after the war damage and years of austerity. But the failure to recognise the special qualities of the Georgian City and to purposefully destroy parts of the city that were “far from beyond repair”, was a deliberate blind spot in the consideration of how to undertake the redevelopment [10]

Figure 8 This map shows Bath before ‘the sack’ began Photo from the book “The Sack of Bath” by Adam Fergusson

Figure 9 This map shows Bath after ‘the sack’. The black shows what had been demolished by 1973 and in grey cross-hatching other developments. Photo from the book “The Sack of Bath’ by Adam Fergusson.

Figure 10 The Hilton Hotel and ventilation shaft, September 1988 © Bath and North East Somerset Council.

Figure 11 Bellhanger Court, Morford Street, Bath. Photo by Sarah Bannister

Bath today

Fast forward to today and Bath still has threats. In 2009 the city was nearly stripped of its World Heritage Status due to the new SouthGate shopping centre and 2,200 new flats (now built) on Western Riverside. The inspectors were alerted because of the poor quality of these latest building projects.[11] Luckily, Bath continues to be a World Heritage Site and is supposed to be protected by a buffer zone which its purpose from UNESCO’s point of view is to “restrict development if it threatens the quality of the site”. Bath and North East Somerset Council had argued that the Green Belt and the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) comprise the buffer zone but are proposing to build a large number of houses within the areas of the Green Belt and AONB.

Bath is a beautiful city and is a World Heritage Site, so the planning authority needs to recognise this and take this into account strongly. The city is uniquely special and should plan with this in mind first and foremost, and not from a “formula-based housing assessment of housing numbers”. The people that are going to be living in new houses should be properly engaged from the very start of the process so that the occupants actually feel listened to and subsequently feel happy with their homes. Did the occupants of the Georgian homes that were demolished like their new replacements? Would they have preferred living in the more traditional style of building? These are all questions that are relevant to today, particularly in relation to the large- scale housing developments that are springing up all over the country. We need to continue to campaign for better homes and a better-suited planning system that puts amongst other qualities: streets, beauty, community spirit, community engagement; good design and historical protection at the forefront.

We don’t want a repeat of the ‘Sack’ happening again.