2 Kingsmead Street, City Centre

2 Kingsmead Street forms part of the Georgian Grade I listed Rosewell House, situated in the Bath conservation area and World Heritage site. Rosewell House constitutes an unusual example of Baroque stonework within the historic city centre, and maintains a significant aesthetic contribution to the conservation area both on Kingsmead Square and along Kingsmead Street due to its dual-facing shopfront. Historic England notes the ground floor to consist of “two poor C20 shopfronts”, and the Trust are therefore supportive of efforts to improve Rosewell House’s social and aesthetic contribution to the conservation area and World Heritage site.

BPT has no comments regarding internal changes.

Unfortunately, we do not feel that this application adequately considers the proposal’s impact on the historic significance of a Grade I listed building. Very little information is provided regarding changes to the shopfront; we would recommend that more information is provided regarding the proposed material palette, particularly for the fascia board and lettering.
BPT remains in favour of high-quality, traditional signage that reflects the vernacular character of the city of Bath and complements the appearance of its listed building stock; we maintain that fascia boards should be timber, on which lettering is either hand-painted, or individually mounted if metal lettering is used. We do not feel that more contemporary materials such as vinyl are aesthetically appropriate within the conservation area.

Furthermore, we note that no information has been provided regarding the potential reuse of the existing hanging sign bracket. We would recommend that any proposed hanging sign designs are uploaded as part of the overall planning application, and we would again emphasise our preference for timber, hand-lettered signs that suitably reflect Bath’s shopfront vernacular.

Whilst we have no comments regarding the internal mounting of CCTV cameras, we do have some concerns as to the visual impact of the mounting of a CCTV camera over the shop door. This aspect of the proposal is not included as part of the proposed elevations, and therefore ourselves and the LPA cannot suitably assess the degree to which the camera might affect the appearance of a listed building. We would therefore suggest that a proposed street view elevation is included in which the camera is featured.