| Location: | Bath |
| Story Number: | Story-004 |
| Themes: | built heritage, culture, documentation, heritage |
| Listen: | |
| Transcript: | Transcript by Jayde Stevenson So… Bath went through a really dark period, the darkest period of Bath’s architectural history, um… was between about 1963 and 1975, umm… and it became known as ‘the Sack of Bath’ and during this period the city underwent, um, wholesale systematic demolition of a lot of late 18th and early 19th century buildings- mainly houses. Um, and sometimes entire streets were just flattened. Um, and in 1973, a group of volunteers got together and set themselves up to try and stop that demolition, to kind of protest against it, about all the… the value of all these historic buildings that were being lost. Um, and they called themselves the Bath’s Buildings Record, and at the heart of the Bath’s Building Record were these two extraordinary women, um, Ruthe Coard and Lesley Green-Armytage. And, um, amongst the sort of more dramatic campaigners in England who were protesting in the street and picketing in front of bulldozers and buildings, um, these two women undertook a… a… a sort of quieter but no less monumental form of protest, um through… essentially the form of power of the written word and the captured image. So, Ruthe’s husband, Peter Coard, recorded hundreds of drawings of destroyed buildings, um and published them in a series of books called Vanishing Bath. And when they were first published, when volume one was published, it only bore Peter’s name as the author, um, uh but by the time all three volumes were published in1973, Ruthe was credited as co-author, which was really recognising the fact that actually all the of the research and most of the writing in the book was actually hers. Um, and she collated all Peter’s drawings, she crafted an overview of the city’s historic development, which highlighted the importance of the buildings and the streets that were being torn down. So, for Ruthe’s words helped inspire others to join the campaign, to… to record the sack of Bath. Um, even more powerful were the photographs of Lesley Green-Armytage that, um, became one of the… the sort of strongest weapons in the fight against further demolition. Um, she had absolutely no photographic training, um, but she managed to create incredibly beautifully sort of framed and lit images, where colour, texture and design often outshine the signs of decay. And it’s the signs of decay that were being put forward as the reason why these buildings were demolished. The idea was that… that they were no longer habitable, um it was better to demolish them and build new than actually repair. And… and um what Lesley was… was showing in her photographs was… was actually, that… that with a bit of attention, a bit of work, these were good homes. These were building that were worth saving. So, they’re not sort of, famous every household names in the city, um, but in a way I think that makes them even more powerful because it was this… it was this such quiet but monumental form of protest, um… and it wasn’t just over in a moment, it… it… its work that enables us to continue to do what we do today. Notes: Link to the Bath in Time, Image Library – Peter Coard’s drawings: Link to the Bath in Time, Image Library – Lesley Green-Armytage photo: |