'Development'

this photo shows that the underground car park has been built to ground level .



My restoration theme continues, basically because I had forgotten what had sent this thread of thought off in my head. Yesterday I went into Bath to go to the railway station for something. Now many people who do not live in Bath will not know that this lower part of the city, called Southgate, has been razed to the ground for development. It is here that the railway and bus stations reside, a fulminating heart of comings and goings, only.............. the new bus station does not exist at the moment, but will I'm sure one day.

The Buseometer, though to be honest not quite sure why it is call that.

I took some photos of the chaos that now confront you, and read on the billboards that new shops and carpark were being created (just in time for the recession), though to be quite truthful the old 1960 Southgate complex was an eyesore, but some people do get upset about the tearing down of old buildings, someone once wrote a book called The Rape of Bath, after the 1960s bonanza of squared concrete buildings that were so hideously ugly.

The new buildings going up and the chaos it causes

Well we are to have another bonanzo of pseudo type 'classical buildings,' and I'm not being horrible here, and even the UNESCO delegate that just happened to be in town last week to see if Bath needed its World Heritage Site label removing, was given to remark that it was probably an improvement at Southgate to what had gone before. No they were here to look at the plans for another much larger development by the river Avon, called the Western Side project. A large acreage of disused land that was once home to the great manufacturing factories such as Stothert and Pitt. Again we have similar classical looking buildings to be built but in this case some of them will be 9 stories high, spoiling the symmetry of the real classical Georgian buildings on Bath skyline, and it is here that the fate of Bath depends, the arguments have been fierce.

A more tranquil scene of The Circus