NOTES ON A SMALL CITY

Richard Wyatt

Columnist Richard Wyatt feels that our World Heritage City is often let down by the way it is presented, particularly relating to rubbish disposal, and suggests a Heritage Tsar to ensure the city and its assets are seen at their best

It’s been good to watch tourists returning to enjoy the delights of our World Heritage City. Just to remind you, we have a double inscription from UNESCO –an agency of the United Nations that promotes culture. The first, granted in 1987, was for our architecture, archaeology, social history and setting. The other, given more recently, celebrates our thermal waters and our place as one of the Great Spas of Europe. No other European city –apart from Venice –has the whole of its central area covered with such a distinction. It’s an international status, always regarded as a big PLUS when it comes to attracting overseas visitors.

I see from next January that day trippers to ‘La Serenissima’ (Venice) are going to have to pay to get in! You avoid a fee if you stay overnight in the Lagoon. It’s a tourist tax of course, and something Bath has been mulling over for years. We have a similar problem in that many arrive early in the day by coach, visit the Roman Baths, get a ‘selfie’ in front of the Royal Crescent and then are whisked off to Stonehenge. We need to encourage our visitors, who are still a major source of revenue and a mainstay of the local economy, to stay for longer.

As café and restaurant tables and chairs spill over into the road to replace cars on our inner city streets, the pressure grows with increased rubbish and the left-overs from our visiting bird population, who want to join in the outdoor eating feast. During fine weather, it’s extra revenue for hardpressed businesses, but am I alone in seeing ever more of these multi-coloured giant wheelie bins gathered in pretty obvious clumps around the city? They are not easy to hide and our ancient architectural infrastructure and narrow streets ‘take no prisoners’ when it comes to camouflaging their presence. Agreeing on a standard, less-obtrusive colour might be a good start in trying to lessen a necessary ‘evil.’

With more and more upper floors in the ‘High Street’ being converted into flats there is also the issue of people not knowing how to deal with their refuse. Too many black bags end up on the street and, because they have food scraps in them, are pecked to pieces by hungry gulls.

I know it’s a question of money, when it comes to the efforts of a financially stressed local authority, but with what resources we do have, bins should be emptied before the tourists arrive to take their pictures. The photo here I took at 9.30 in the morning in front of the Royal Crescent. Every bin along the path was the same.

So how does our World Heritage European twin deal with its waste? Venice does a daily door-todoor collection service, but they also have centralised disposal points for rubbish and, being a city afloat, these hubs are boats moored at various places throughout the canal system.

Here in the UK, Edinburgh –our Georgian ‘sister’ city –is opting for communal rubbish hubs too, but these would simply be lines of large ‘wheelies’ strategically placed around its 18th-century New Town. Already there is uproar in the Scottish capital about how dreadful these would look and how they might threaten the city’s World Heritage status.

How do we sort out our collection services for both private and commercial waste? Maybe it’s an issue that could be taken on board by a new and independent Heritage Tsar. One of the biggest bees under my bonnet is the fact that the city’s historical fabric – its architecture and urban/rural setting – is not guarded by someone who is aware of the sensitivity of Bath’s World Heritage status and how best to utilise and enhance that in terms of tourism.

Someone who would keep an eye on all things affecting our heritage assets. Apart from rubbish, they could speed up repairs where vehicular accidents or graffiti has damaged or disfigured historic fabric. Scan planning applications, inspect ‘photo opportunity’ areas to keep them looking spruce and maybe even look at how we can best deal with the aerial bombardments from our feathered residents who make their homes on the urban version of a cliff: a city roof.

We are such a clever species. We can explore Mars by robot and devise telescopes powerful enough to look back to the creation of the universe. Surely, coming up with a less obvious and more fitting way of containing our city waste is not beyond the bounds of such inventive minds? n Richard Wyatt runs the Bath Newseum: bathnewseum.com

THE WHS VISION

An excerpt from the Statement of Bath's Outstanding Universal Value adopted by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in June 2013:

Bath exemplifies the 18th century move [...] towards the idea of planting buildings and cities in the landscape to achieve picturesque views and forms [...] Bath’s urban and landscape spaces are created by the buildings that enclose them, providing a series of interlinked spaces that flow organically, and that visually (and at times physically) draw in the green surrounding countryside to create a distinctive garden city feel...

“The city’s historical fabric is not guarded by someone who is aware of ... Bath’s World Heritage status”