Why Bath’s OUVs are so outstanding

An OUV is an Outstanding Universal Value. Bath has six OUVs attributed to the first of its two UNESCO World Heritage Site Inscriptions. A series of six lectures at BRLSI about these inscribed attributes, determined by UNESCO in 1987, will provide information and insight in equal measure.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites are places of cultural or natural significance which are considered to be of importance to all of the global community, hence ‘Outstanding Universal Value’. Each Site is conserved for current and future generations. The City of Bath is exceptional in having two UNESCO inscriptions, in 1987 and 2021, each inscribed for different aspects of the City. In 1987 it was inscribed for six OUVs: hot springs, Roman archaeology, Georgian architecture, Georgian town-planning, 18th-century social ambition and the green natural landscape setting. Bath’s inscription that year was made in the same year as Westminster Abbey in London (as well as The Acropolis in Athens and the Great Wall of China) and the year before The Tower of London, such is Bath’s perceived importance to World Heritage. In 2021 the second inscription was received as one of the Great Spa Towns of Europe – fashionable spa towns laid out around natural springs used for health and wellbeing.

The series of lectures at the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution (BRLSI) on Wednesdays at 7pm from 22 March until 3 May, will explore these six attributes. Bath is one of only two entire cities inscribed as World Heritage Sites, the other being Venice. With the 2021 UNESCO Inscription, Bath became one of only 22 double-inscribed World Heritage Sites (of the 1152 sites worldwide).

Professor Barry Gilbertson, Chair of The City of Bath UNESCO World Heritage Site and Chair of the Bath World Heritage Enhancement Fund, will chair each lecture and give his own perspective on a brief history of World Heritage and its importance to Bath’s

“Outstanding Universal Value means cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. As such, the permanent protection of this heritage is of the highest importance to the international community as a whole.

The Committee defines the criteria for the inscription of properties on the World Heritage List.”

UNESCO definition of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) economy. Barry was formerly a Trustee of the Bath Preservation Trust, and for six years an independent Trustee Governor of the University of Bath, as a member of the University’s Council.

The six attributes of OUV featured in the upcoming lectures are set out in these pages. Each lecture will feature a different individual expert speaker focused on one attribute each week, describing their particular OUV in fascinating historical, archaeological, architectural, landscape or social detail. Each speaker will also touch on the importance that each attribute provides to Bath’s economy.

The World Heritage Series of lectures will take place in the Elwin Room at BRLSI, 16–18 Queen Square, Bath on the dates shown below, 7pm–9pm, in person or online, £4–£7, in advance at brlsi.org

OUV: Roman Archaeology, 22 March

Peter Davenport BA, MPhil, MifA, FSA

Heritage consultant and trustee of the Roman Baths Foundation

The World Heritage Status of Roman Bath

The Roman remains were only one of six Outstanding Universal Values which qualified the city to be inscribed on the World List in 1987. Looked at objectively, it is also probably the hardest to justify. This is not to say that the inscription is undeserved. This lecture will attempt to explain what it is about these Roman remains that make them of “cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity”, the UNESCO definition.

OUV: Georgian architecture, 29 March

Dr Amy Frost

Senior Curator, Bath Preservation Trust

Georgian Architecture and the Language of Classicism in Bath

The architecture of Georgian Bath was defined by the vocabulary of forms and proportion drawn from Classical Antiquity. This talk will explore how the designers and builders of Bath translated Classicism for modern life in the 18th and early 19th centuries, achieving new buildings through a blend of imitation and innovation. It will highlight how stylistic developments were unified through the materials that built the Georgian city, and consider the impact that has on the World Heritage Site today.

OUV: Georgian Town Planning, 5 April

Professor Timothy Mowl FSA

Emeritus Professor of History of Architecture and Designed Landscapes, University of Bristol

Bath and the Druid Connection

John Wood, the most successful town planner of English 18thcentury architects, was ferociously eccentric. The very idea that Bath, his grand artefact and a byword for classical order, should owe as much to the prehistoric stone circle at Stonehenge strains credibility, as does his obsession to evoke a lost Druid civilization in the city, which had everything to do with his imagination, nothing to do with reality. Wood’s restored Bath was to provide the template for Robert Adam in his Edinburgh New Town and the inspiration for the crescents and circuses of the spa towns of late Georgian and Regency England.

OUV: Hot Springs, 19 April

Paul Saynor

Director of Water Production at Wessex Water

The Bath Hot Springs – Science, Source and Protection

The only hot springs in the UK are the thermal springs of Bath which have fascinated and captured the imagination of people from ancient times to the present day. Revered as a sacred place by the Celts because of their healing properties, the springs were developed into a bathing complex by the Romans, and have been re-developed and re-used in various forms ever since. Classic science on the chemistry of the waters from the 1980s onwards has provided tantalising clues as to their origins, and the protection of this precious and magical resource remains essential for maintaining the very essence of the modern-day city itself.

OUV: 18th-Century Social Ambition, 26 April

Professor Elaine Chalus (FRHistS)

Professor of British History, University of Liverpool

Socialising with Purpose in 18th-Century Bath

While Austen’s satirical pen mocked displays of social ambition, the sort of socialising she writes about did not dominate society in 18th-century Bath. Bath’s residents and the visiting company may well have socialised with purpose –but their purposes varied widely. Here is a more rounded understanding of sociability in Bath, considering some of the personal, social, intellectual, cultural, and political purposes of socialising. Professor Chalus argues that one of the reasons that Bath was such a draw for 18th-century contemporaries was because it offered the prospective of ‘good company’ and ‘a great deal of conversation’ to many people, however defined.

OUV: The Green Countryside Setting of the City, 3 May

Andrew Grant, Founder and Director Grant Associates, Chair of the Bathscape Landscape Partnership

The Landscape of Bath

The cultural landscape of Bath has evolved through millennia, always responding to the social and environmental influences of each era. Landscape has always been the foundation for much of what we think of Bath as a place. The hot springs, river, streams, wetlands, woodlands, grasslands, parks and gardens each play an essential part in defining the integrity and beauty of the city, but how much care do we take in maintaining this fragile balance? How could we better reflect the integration of landscape and architecture in this time of climate change and biodiversity crisis whilst maintaining the essential qualities of the World Heritage Site OUV?