Online Archive Images
Bath in Time
As the result of a partnership with the Bath in Time image website, many of the Bath Preservation Trust’s extensive historic collections have been digitised and can now be viewed online, and prints obtained. The website has proved extremely popular since its launch in March 2007. Now with over 8,000 historic images of Bath online, the addition of the Bath Preservation Trust’s collection adds an important chapter to the growing comprehensive ambitions of the project.
Many people are familiar with the fine objects on display at the Trust’s museums. However, hidden behind the scenes lies a vast archive of material that chronicles the tireless work of the Trust as well as a comprehensive record of the city’s development. This important collection includes a record of much of the 20th century’s most controversial developments in Bath.
Continuing today, as it did in the past whenever the unique fabric of Bath was threatened, campaigns are mounted, policy established, and public awareness increased. Deposited in the archives is a great deal of material detailing these events, providing a unique insight into the struggle between the need for change, and the policing of what change is appropriate for the setting. The most notable threat was during the period in the early 1970s known as the ‘sack of Bath’.
Previous Trust members including Peter and Ruth Coard, Lesley Green-Armytage and Jean Pratt worked tirelessly to record Bath, and combined their skills as artists and photographers with their love of architecture, to produce an extensive record of Bath as it was, and as it was becoming.
The beautiful drawings of Peter Coard are well known through the ‘Vanishing Bath’ books of the 1970s. However what may not be appreciated is the prolific nature of his work, comprising nearly 2,000 drawings and several hundred photographs from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. If a house was under threat, or doomed for demolition, it was recorded. His entire archive is deposited with the Bath Preservation Trust.
Elizabeth Bird (nee Coard) said: “My mother, Ruth Coard, and I are delighted that the Bath Buildings Record, which includes my father’s drawings as well as many fine photographs taken by Mrs Green-Armytage and Miss Pratt, is now much more accessible to the general public and to researchers. The Preservation Trust and Bath in Time are to be congratulated on this wonderful initiative in making these collections available on line.”
Lesley Green-Armytage left the Trust her comprehensive collection of over 3,000 Bath Photographs. From the 1950s onwards, she combined her love of Bath with her photographic skills to create one of the finest full colour records of a time we usually only see in black and white. Her photographs of the first buildings to be cleaned when all of the city was black, a city without traffic, the riverside buildings of Claverton Street and the proud but decaying houses in Ballance Street and Holloway, are expertly set against beautiful blue skies, lit to look their best.
Daniel Brown from Bath in Time said: “The addition of The Bath Preservation Trust’s collection is a great step forward for the Bath in Time project and provides an important record of a time of much change in the city’s continual development. The quality of these images is outstanding, created by talented artists and photographers, and the result is a breathtaking and colourful look back at our recent past. These are freely accessible, and high quality copies of all the images are available to order with part of all sales going towards the wider work of the Trust”. Daniel Brown can be contacted on 07836 558866, or by email at dan@bathintime.co.uk.
Caroline Kay, Chief Executive of the Bath Preservation Trust, said: “Part of the Bath Preservation Trust’s mission is to provide educational resources which focus on the architectural and historic importance of the city. This collaboration with Bath in Time allows us for the first time to provide these visual resources online. At a time of considerable change and with great development pressures in the City, it is vital that the lessons of the recent past are learnt and understood; and a visual record can often tell the story most powerfully of all. We would encourage scholars, journalists, architects and developers to use this visual archive to inform their understanding of the past and their ideas for the future”.