The Bath Magazine March 2021 by MC Publishing Limited

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ISSUE 217 | MARCH 2021 | thebathmag.co.uk | £3.95 where sold

EARTHLY ENCOUNTERS A story of maps by geologist William Smith

GOING GREEN

Debating the city’s new Clean Air Zone scheme

SETTING THE TONE

How much store do we set by colours of the year?

HIP HOTELS

New visions of hospitality from Ian and Christa Taylor

T H E C I T Y ’ S B I G G E S T M O NTHLY GUIDE TO LIFE AND LIVING IN BATH

Our showroom will re-open in April. In the meantime, we are operational and are here to help

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Contents 5 THINGS

March 2021

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Here are some things to get up to this month

CLEANING UP THE CITY

CITY NEWS

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The latest business and green stories from the city

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Introducing Bath’s Clean Air Zone, the very first outside London, which is being rolled out this month, and including commentaries from a selection of local figures

THE ART OF HOSPITALITY

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Emma Clegg talks to Ian and Christa Taylor about their idiosyncratic approach to the boutique hotel and discovers why every room needs to have its own character

TAKE FOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Monserrat Pis Marcos chooses four objects with personal resonance

WHAT’S ON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

PURE GREEN

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Emma Clegg talks to Steven Day, co-founder of Pure Planet, the Bath-based green energy company with a unique approach to its product provision and its working culture

HEAD TO THE FIELDS

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Andrew Swift takes a socially distanced walk around Bushey Norwood, and discovers some quality sticks and stones

SETTING THE TONE

How much do the various nominated colours of the year inform our own interior colour choices? Emma Clegg asks for the perspectives of our local interior experts

Check out this month’s events and arts in the city

BOOK LUST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

HELLEBORE PASSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74

A selection of books by women to celebrate International Women’s Day

Juliet Davis explains how we can bring fresh hues to our gardens in the winter and early spring months

STRATA MAN

HOT PROPERTY

A handsome new book, Strata, showcases the revolutionary work of 19th-century geologist William Smith

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The finest homes to buy or rent

FOOD FORWARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 The food world has changed beyond all recognition in the last year, says Melissa Blease, as she wonders what lies ahead

ON THE COVER

A section from William Smith’s 1815 geological map, with the technicolour markings representing a rich variety of strata. See page 34.

More content and updates discover: thebathmag.co.uk

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FROM THE EDITOR

THE SMART GREEN WATER BOTTLE

“

Editor photograph by TBM

or more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.” These words from Greta Thunberg in a speech to the United Nations in 2019 typify her criticism of world leaders’ inaction on climate change. Thank goodness that this Swedish schoolgirl has challenged the world in this way, inspiring an international movement. This issue sees us tackling the fight against climate change in our region. It is six years since courts first ruled that air pollution levels in Britain were illegally high. On 15 March Bath will be the first place outside London to introduce a clean air zone with charges, and this has to be a source of pride. Critics say it has taken far too long; others are nervous about the impact on businesses. On page 16 we present the case, talk to Sarah Warren, Cabinet Member for Climate Emergency and Neighbourhood Services, and invite contributions from the community. There’s another take on the green issue on page 42 in my interview with Steven Day, the co-founder of the Bath-based energy company Pure Planet, one of the 23 companies now forming part of the Bath Unlimited brand. This company has pioneered the provision of green affordable energy to consumers, and the whole culture of Pure Planet is a refreshing reinvention of the status quo. We find green in the interiors world, too on page 58, but also brown, blue, purple, grey, yellow and orange. We consider the different colours that have been nominated as fashion leaders for this year, including Pantone’s controvertial yellow/grey duo, and wonder how much influence they really have. Our local interiors experts also give us their evaluations. There are more spectacular interiors on page 22 with my interview with hotel owners and developers Ian and Christa Taylor. Both cultivated their hospitality skills in large hotel chains and then joined forces to develop their own hotels. They have become sparkling lights within the boutique hotel sector in our region, doing it their own inimitable way with an eclectic interior vision and a fresh, innovative energy based on creating an unforgettable experience for their customers. We also have an insight on page 34 into a recently published book, Strata, about William Smith’s groundbreaking work on fossils and strata, much of which was based in Bath. Melissa Blease also looks back on page 38 on how the food world has changed for retailers, consumers and diners and what the future of food and eating might look like. We hope you’ve been enjoying our weekly newsletters, giving you regular updates on what’s going on, things to read, things to admire, things to buy and uplifting stories to keep us all smiling in these trying times. Just go to our website and sign up to receive them. We can all make a difference. So let’s protect our world and make green our priority this month, and forever. Emma Clegg Editor

If you have been following us on Twitter or Instagram, or have signed up to receive our weekly newsletters, then you’ll know we recently ran a competition to win a Smart water bottle that uses clever UV light technology not only to purify the water but to clean the bottle too. It’s by a company called Grey Ark Tech and will help us cut down on plastic bottle waste. £80 greyarktech.com

QUOTE OF THE ISSUE

If being green is the preserve of just a few, we’re never going to get there STEVEN DAY

B IS TWO BUBBLES

We are loving this quirkystylish twist on the alphabet book called B is Two Bubbles, where it’s the shape of the letters A to Z that counts. It’s designed for all ages and features numerous images inspired by the city. Bathonian Jonathan Hope’s teasing couplets are stylishly illustrated in the book by Riccardo Guasco. £14.99, available from Mr B’s and Topping & Co; jonathanhope.co.uk

All paper used to make this magazine is taken from good sustainable sources and we encourage our suppliers to join an accredited green scheme. Magazines are now fully recyclable. By recycling magazines, you can help to reduce waste and contribute to the six million tonnes of paper already recycled by the UK paper industry each year. Please recycle this magazine, but if you are not able to participate in a recycling scheme, then why not pass your magazine on to a friend or colleague.

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ZEITGEIST

March

Join

Lola Swift

The Bath Half organisers have launched a virtual series to help runners maintain motivation to train through the colder months. The virtual events are designed to help you focus on your regular runs, give a helping hand to those training for the half marathon, and support those just starting out. Whether you’ve been running for years or have only just started hitting the tarmac, Bath Half’s virtual challenges are a great way to keep you focused while you strive for those crucial miles. bathhalf.co.uk

Design This month, look out for Lola Swift’s Love Living Colourfully online course. Often when starting an interior project, we get overwhelmed by the possibilities. This course gives simple processes to help you define your style. Giving you the tools to start your project with confidence and clarity, to create a home with personality bringing together colour, pattern and texture. Launching on 16 March, learn how to design your home with inspiration, colour and creativity. Course costs £125. lolaswift.co.uk

Learn The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRLSI) is running its second Vienna Symposium this month in what is set to be their biggest event of the year. Following the great success of their first event in 2019, the event titled A New World view: Vienna's Contribution to European Culture 1890–1935 will see outstanding speakers throw light on a turbulent and exciting period in European culture that had an influence we still feel today. Stefan Zweig’s connection to Bath; music in Secessionist Vienna; modernist women writers on Vienna; the art of Oskar Kokoschka and how a new direction for architecture took root in the city will all feature in a richly varied programme. brlsi.org

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Support For many years Bath Foodbank has been working tirelessly to ensure that no one in the local community is going hungry – but this year, in particular, they need your help. Over 90% of the food distributed by food banks in The Trussell Trust network is donated by the public. Every month the foodbank puts together a shopping list of their most-needed items, asking donators to help the supply a balanced and nutritious three-day food package for those in crisis. If you’re able to, why not pick up an extra can of tinned fruit, double up on sponge puddings or buy another packet of cereal when you’re next at the supermarket – your simple act of generosity and goodwill is sure to go a long way for those struggling to put food on the table this month. bath.foodbank.org.uk

Nurture As we sail forth towards the warmer months, we look forward to welcoming back the usual springtime dwellers to our gardens and porches. Robins, sparrows, blackbirds and other garden birds are often busy building nests during March and if you fancy giving them a helping hand this year, you can tie up bunches of tiny twigs, dried moss, and other stringy vegetable matter near your feeders. Tiny warblers such as chiffchaffs will be returning from Africa and hedgehogs and frogs will begin to become active after hibernation. If your garden is looking particularly desolate, find out how you can attract frogs, amphibians and other wildlife to your baths and feeders. rspb.org.uk

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The city

ist

THE BUZZ

MAKING A SPLASH

My BATH

David Trick played rugby for England at every level from U16 through to international. He joined Bath in 1978, while still at school, and played almost three hundred games, scoring 191 tries. Here, David tells us how it all began, which players he still keeps in touch with and remembers his best and worst memories on the field. Cleveland Pools Trust has received a Capital Kickstart Fund award of 290,000 from the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund for their restoration project that has been delayed by the pandemic. Ambitious projects at 22 heritage organisations, including Cleveland Pools will benefit from £13.5 million in targeted grants allocated by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to restart planned work that now face delays or increased costs. The funding will be used to support the additional costs the Cleveland Pools restoration project has faced due to the impact of Covid-19. clevelandpools.org.uk

I have lived in the village of Laverton for 29 years. It’s a great place with a wonderful community.

playing for England. He was probably the only player who didn’t need to introduce himself – a class act.

The first time I played for Bath Rugby was as a schoolboy from Bryanston School in Dorset. It was a Friday evening and I’ll never forget entering the city and The Rec on that occasion.

It a was genuine honour to represent England, I was the 1078th player to represent England since 1871 – this made me realise just what an achievement it was.

I’ve always enjoyed visiting the Guildhall market, it’s far more appealing than big stores and there’s a good community feel to the place. I was ‘football mad’ until the age of 11 and half an hour into my first rugby training session I absolutely knew it was the sport for me.

LOVING FRAGMENTS

I spent the best part of two years travelling the world between school and university. I studied Economics and Politics at Bath University but, to be honest, I spent far too much time playing rugby and socialising with teammates to get the most out of the university experience.

Tristan Buckland’s first photography book Fragments is a chronological depiction of the world he saw through caring full-time for his terminally ill mother when he returned to Bath, his childhood home. It is shot entirely on film with no post-production manipulation or editing. Just 150 editions of the book are being printed with a few copies going to the British Library and a few stores in London. Tristan has dedicated the book to his mother, Shuna Mackintosh, who died two years ago. He would like to show his appreciation to Dorothy House in Winsley and the Motor Neurone Association. tristanbuckland.com

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Rugby is a team sport which appealed so much more than the individual events of an athlete. My first game for Bath was in September 1979 against South Wales Police – it was a Friday night game, Bath won and I scored two tries, so not a bad start. Players I spent a lot of time with and still see today are Gareth Chilcott, who is one of the funniest men I’ve ever met; Simon Jones, who I shared a flat and house with for five years; and John Horton, who was England’s Grand Slam fly half in 1980. When I walked into the Bath changing room for the first time, John came over and introduced himself, saying he hoped I enjoyed my time at Bath. Two weeks earlier I’d seen him on the TV

My proudest moments have been watching my two boys, Will and George, making their way in the world and their desire to make a positive difference. The ‘player I once was’ would easily fit into the current game. Anyone who can run 100m in 10.4 seconds would do well, however, ‘the trainer I once was’ would not last five minutes! Best memories are winning the John Player and Pilkington Cup finals at Twickenham. Worst memories…every defeat. I played in a team which celebrated victories and ABSOLUTELY hated to lose. I became involved with Bath Rugby Foundation in 2013 because I felt I should. Since then, it has become more than a passion. The foundation undertake amazing and successful work with vulnerable children and young people in the region. Anyone who would like to find out more can email me david.trick@bathrugbyfoundation.com. As a fundraiser for the foundation, lockdown has meant that I’ve had to become much more creative in my approach. I enjoy public speaking and look forward to returning to it when we have the pandemic under control. This year, I’m planning to raise more money for the foundation and go on a cycling challenge in Europe with my wife Jill. ■ bathrugbyfoundation.com

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The Bath Magazine and The Bristol Magazine are published by MC Publishing Ltd. We are an independent of all other local publications

The Bath Magazine is delivered free, every month to more than 15,000 residential addresses as well as businesses throughout Bath and the surrounding area. We also have special distribution units in many of Bath’s supermarkets

2 Princes Buildings, George Street, Bath BA1 2ED Telephone: 01225 424499. Fax: 01225 426677 www.thebathmag.co.uk © MC Publishing Ltd 2021 Disclaimer: Whilst every reasonable care is taken with all material submitted to The Bath Magazine, the publisher cannot accept responsibility for loss or damage to such material. Opinions expressed in articles are strictly those of the authors. This publication is copyright and may not be reproduced in any form either in part or whole without written permission from the publishers.

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CITY | NOTEBOOK

Richard Wyatt: Notes on a small city Columnist Richard Wyatt is missing being in a crowd, reminisces about his early experiences of live music and gives thanks to those who have supported us through the pandemic

t seems a bit late to be sending you my best wishes for a happier 2021, but it seems appropriate given that the new year hasn’t quite got going yet. As I put fingers to computer keyboard my kid sister is recovering from a few weeks in intensive care at the Royal United Hospital. One among many worldwide struck down by the pandemic, she has been receiving amazing medical care. It’s certainly brought it home to my family how potentially devastating this virus is, and of course for some there has been NO homecoming. I am in possession now of my own vaccine card with a space to fill in the details of the follow-up jab. Many of you I am sure will have also been through the vaccination system run so efficiently by the health professionals and their band of volunteers. Despite viral mutations the hope must be that – however many tweaks may be necessary – the world’s scientists will deliver us from this Covid-19 evil. I don’t know about you but I have so missed collective human company. I am lucky enough to have a partner to share my lockdown, and l know there are many going through this alone, but I do miss being part of a crowd of fellow human beings. The ‘good old days’ now seem to include many more recent gatherings, whether it’s a sports ground, theatre, cinema or pop concert. What has been denied us is that shared physical and mentally uplifting experience of being together in large numbers. I have lived in Bath for ten years now, after a working life in Bristol, but hail originally from Weston-Super-Mare. Ironically, talking about shared experiences, I have just heard from fellow

The Rolling Stones performing at the Odeon Cinema in Weston Super Mare in 1964

Westonian David Andrews who is a collector of black-and-white photographic pop memorabilia featuring many of the groups that came to my seaside home town. One of my earliest shared experiences was seeing the likes of Cilla Black standing on a little podium as the star turn at the Winter Gardens Pavilion’s weekly Teen and Twenties Night. David tells me it was actually the day before she got her first number-one hit record! I can’t remember why I didn’t get to see the Rolling Stones at the Odeon Cinema in 1964 – and thank you David for letting me share that side-stage snapped image of them performing – but I know a man who did, and one I was to work with professionally in not too many years. It wasn’t until I reached HTV West that I saw the blackand-white footage of Bruce Hockin’s cinema rooftop interview with a young Mick Jagger. Bruce asked ‘Mike’ what he thought of the turn-out of fans. “Mick is my name”, said Mr J with plenty of emphasis on the ‘ick’. This story passed into local television folklore. Mind you, I got to interview Jagger when the Stones played Brighton’s Big Apple Club in the early 70s and l received an even worse reception when raising the question of drugs. “I don’t like you” he shouted over his shoulder as he Jumping Jack Flashed away. There’s no Glastonbury Festival to look forward to this year but hopefully we’ll still fill our city’s streets with music from our homegrown festival events. It would be nice, too, if we could find a way to come together for a thanksgiving celebration of deliverance (he says with fingers crossed). In no way do I dismiss the severity of this terrible pandemic, which has so far seen more than 106 million cases and 2.32 million deaths worldwide. There have been other viral outbreaks in the more recent past – the last great global pandemic was the devastating Spanish Flu of 1918. While World War I still raged, 50 million died on another global battlefield. There were no vaccines then to offer much in the way of defence and, in the aftermath of the Great War, no big desire to celebrate its eventual passing. This time around humankind has all been on the same side. And for me, there is no better way of expressing a shared emotion than to come together to say thank you to those who helped get so many of us through this nightmare. n Richard Wyatt runs the Bath Newseum: bathnewseum.com

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Breathe easy:

Bath’s clean air zone As we prepare for the arrival of Bath’s Clean Air Zone on 15 March, we take a closer look at what will change, how our city’s businesses will adapt and whether the scheme will in fact be a breath of fresh air for us all

he first of its kind to be introduced outside of London, Bath’s Class C Clean Air Zone (CAZ) will come into being at midnight on 15 March. It will see high-emission vehicles, including taxis, private hire vehicles, minibuses, vans, buses, coaches and lorries incur charges for driving through certain areas of the city.

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The zone is designed to help reduce Bath’s dangerously high levels of nitrogen dioxide, which make heart and lung conditions worse and, over the long-term, can reduce lung development in children. In the months leading up to the launch of the CAZ, however, both residents and businesses have celebrated its arrival and criticised its timing in equal measure. Small businesses and local

independents have questioned the council’s decision to press ahead with the measures despite the year-long Covid-19 restrictions severely impacting business. This month, we spoke to some of the ciy’s key voices who were able to shed light on how the CAZ will affect us, why it is so important that it is introduced now, and when we will all be able to breathe easy.

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CITY | ENVIRONMENT

traffic was the only measure that would ensure the city met compliance in the required time frame. Charges and exempt vehicles The CAZ will operate in the city centre seven days a week, 24 hours a day, all year round. Charges will not apply to private cars or motorbikes, but lorries and buses that are non-compliant with emissions standards will be charged £100 per day while minibuses, taxis, and vans will have to pay £9 per day. Certain vehicles will be exempt from the measures. For example, you will not be charged if you have a vehicle that has ultra-low emissions such as Euro 6 diesel vehicles, Euro 4 (or newer) petrol vehicles, fully electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles or hybrid vehicles; you have a disabled passenger tax class, military or historic vehicle; or you have a vehicle retrofitted with technology accredited by the Clean Vehicle Retrofit Accreditation Scheme. While the city is not charging private cars, the council is looking at ways to improve walking, cycling and public transport to encourage people to choose more sustainable ways of getting around. It will be up to drivers to check whether their vehicles comply with the new measures – go to beta.bathnes.gov.uk for more information. Why is the Clean Air Zone being introduced? In 2017, the government directed local authorities across the country, including Bath & North East Somerset, to take action against their high levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which in places exceed the UK’s legal limits. The council’s technical work showed that diesel vehicles and older petrol cars were the biggest contributors to the city’s poor air quality and it was decided that a charging zone for

Supporting businesses The council has contacted thousands of businesses across the city that will be regularly affected by charges, offering financial support in the form of grants and interest-free finance. Businesses will have to decide whether they will use the money to replace or adapt their non-compliant vehicles or pay the daily charges.

Cllr Sarah Warren The Councillor for Bathavon North, Cabinet Member for Climate Emergency and Neighbourhood Services gives her perspective on the Clean Air Zone

Why the Clean Air Zone is an important policy for Bath Air pollution is a real problem in Bath, with certain hotspots exceeding the legal limit for nitrogen dioxide pollution (NO2), which we know is mainly caused by vehicle emissions. Some of these hotspots still exist, despite the reduction in traffic last year as a result of Covid-19 restrictions. We have pressed ahead with the zone, despite the pandemic, because air pollution is also a public health issue. This situation is not fair on those that live or work here, especially those that are vulnerable or have asthma. We’ve been mandated by the government to improve air quality in the shortest possible time, and by the end of 2021 at the latest. Other cities are also introducing charging zones and some, like Bristol and Birmingham, will charge private cars. While it’s a tough adjustment, we need to recognise that this is a one-off chance to quickly bring NO2 pollution under control, with significant financial help from the government. So we’re embracing this opportunity and we’re confident that we’re doing the right thing for our health, our children’s health, and the environment. The government is providing all the funds

required to install the zone including funds to mitigate the effect on our economy. This includes grants and interest-free loans for local businesses to replace their noncompliant vehicles with cleaner, compliant ones (so they don’t need to pay). The government has also provided the funds required to upgrade all of Bath’s scheduled bus services so that they’re compliant in the zone, with no need to pass the significant cost of retrofitting engines on to the customer. Without this level of funding, we would not be able to bring this problem under control quickly enough to protect the public. Once the zone has paid for itself, any additional revenue must be invested in cleaner, greener transport for the city, including better walking and cycling facilities. How the zone will be monitored We need to achieve compliance by the end of 2021. The target is to reduce nitrogen dioxide to an annual average of below 40 μg/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter of air) at all hotspots. We have collected baseline air quality and traffic data and will continue to monitor progress. There are now 120 monitoring

locations across the city. Four of these are automatic analysers that collect hourly average concentrations of nitrogen dioxide. Three of these also measure particulate matter. The rest are diffusion tubes that are dispersed around the city and collected monthly (they are then sent to a laboratory where they are analysed). Additional monitors have been installed recently to ensure that the council has good baseline data against which to measure the effectiveness of the Clean Air Zone. Data gathered from monitoring stations is reviewed at the end of each year, to allow annual average nitrogen dioxide concentrations to be calculated. This information is set out in reports available at the Council’s Air Quality web page. ➲

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CITY | ENVIRONMENT

Why the Class C category was the right approach We engaged extensively with the public before reaching a decision on a Class C Clean Air Zone. The overwhelming opinion was that while something needed to be done about pollution, charging cars would penalise the most vulnerable in the city, and that retail and hospitality in the centre of the city would suffer. We opted for a Class C zone to protect the economy, with an accompanying financial support package to help local businesses replace their noncompliant vehicles. More than 750 vehicles are currently being assessed for the scheme, and we hope to replace upwards of 1,500 over the course of the year. We have extended our financial support package since the pandemic so that local businesses regularly entering the zone don’t fall through

our net. Our message to businesses that are worried about the effect of the zone is to talk to us. Details are on the website: bathnes.gov.uk/BathCAZ

“We’re embracing this opportunity and we’re confident that we’re doing the right thing for our health, our children’s health, and the environment.”

Voices from the city Peter Andrews Chair, Transition Bath

Maureen Lechmere

Richard Hayes

Owner, San Francisco Fudge Factory

Director, TR Hayes I’m totally behind the greener society, but I feel as a business going through the challenges of Brexit and Covid, this is one challenge that may have been wiser to defer. We are in the process of updating our fleet of vehicles; we’ve been here since 1915 and survived two world wars so we will adapt to our situation, but I do worry about a lot of the shops in Bath, especially the independents, which are what makes shopping in our city so special. We will live in a greener city, which is good, but pollution is a global issue and unless the powerhouse manufacturing (polluting) economies do anything about it, our little bit will have a minimal effect. The future is a mystery and sadly the high street’s battle against the internet is being increasingly tilted in favour of online. Unless the government and local councils get behind retailers our high streets will be deserted, and sadly this will have a huge impact on jobs and the economy. I wonder if it will all be too late before people in power realise this. trhayes.co.uk

I feel that the Clean Air Zone and the new measures are too much too soon for small businesses. We’ve been through three lockdowns – if the council could just wait until we’re back up and running, we’ve re-established ourselves and then bring in the measures, that would’ve been better for retailers. Some of our vehicles have been upgraded but some haven’t, so we would have to pay the £9 charge. We wouldn’t feel comfortable passing it on to our customers so we would just have to take the hit. I have been here for 26 years but we are all in a precarious situation trying to stay afloat right now. In a nutshell, we need our retail community and we don’t want to lose any more shops. It would have been better if they had just deferred the Clean Air Zone. sanfranciscofudge.co.uk

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“We’ve been here since 1915 and survived two world wars so we will adapt to our situation.”

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Before we start lets get something straight – pollution from cars, lorries and buses, whether NOX or CO2 or particulates big and small – kills. And if the pollution is not busy shortening our lives it is giving us and our children asthma now and lung problems, an increased possibility of heart attacks and dementia to look forward to in later life – that’s not me saying that; that’s from the council’s own website. So why, when the opportunity turned up did the council not go for the super healthy option of CAZ D? Instead after a ‘public consultation’ and some jiggery-pokery around the world heritage Queen Square (consisting of three sets of traffic lights and some interesting queues of cars), we have adopted the watered down CAZ C. And to be safe you had better hold your breath when you go down the London Road – site of some of Bath’s worldbeating pollution levels – because the zone doesn’t extend very far down there either. It would all be a lot easier to persuade us to leave our cars if we were blessed with an affordable and comprehensive public transport infrastructure. It would all be better if we were not subject to the massive whingeing that goes on when a new cycle lane is installed, a pavement widened or people asked to drive a little slower. But sadly we are where we are. As a council we could’ve shown the UK how things could be done, been leaders in pollution reduction and made the air cleaner for us and our children – but we didn’t. So, welcome CAZ C, hopefully they will promote you to a D soon. transitionbath.org

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Richard Wyatt Journalist, Bathnewseum Environmentally speaking, Bath makes a little bit of civic history on 15 March as being the first place outside of London to introduce a Clean Air Zone. For some, it marks B&NES out as a ‘carhating’ council even though this is a national directive – ordered by the government – in an effort to get all local authorities to clean up their air quality. On top of that, private cars and motorbikes will not be charged – regardless of emissions – though when other local authorities elsewhere come on board they may not be so lenient. Commercial vehicles – if they don’t meet emission standards – won’t get off so lightly. Though grants and loans have been made available for businesses to replace older, non-compliant vehicles. It’s going to be a case of heads down for a bumpy ride as far as public reaction is concerned but those complaining should maybe remember that some of their children – the citizens of tomorrow – may

Darrin Christan

“Change IS coming in the way we must view the future prosperity of humankind AND the damage we are doing to planet Earth. I is starting to become WE – whether we like it or not.” have been amongst those who skipped school to protest outside Bath Guildhall – back in March 2019 – in support of the Youth4Climate Global Strike. Hundreds of thousands of young people joining an international action against climate change in an effort to save the planet. Change IS coming in the way we must view the future prosperity of humankind AND the damage we are doing to planet Earth. I is starting to become WE – whether we like it or not. In 1965, Adlai Stevenson – US

Mike Killpartrick

Director, Coopers Store

Senior Partner, Ellis & Killpartrick

All the nationwide haulage companies that we deal with are way ahead of the public as far as emissions are concerned. They may have large lorries but they are all very low emissions, so our deliveries coming in and out are not going to be affected. The concern I have more is about the people travelling in to Bath and finding parking to come shopping. Parking has always been a problem and it has been squeezed and squeezed all the time, we’ve already lost a lot of spaces and the cost of car parks are very high for short periods of time. The council really need to expand on the park and ride options and put more energy into affordable public transport coming in to the city centre. The simple fact is that we do live in an incredibly polluted city so something needs to happen. Bath is the sort of city that you need to walk around and if you’re going to enjoy it then you don’t want to be walking around a polluted bowl. The Class C zone is much more palatable. If you look at the type of vehicles being targeted, I don’t think the high street is going to be hugely affected by this, I think it will all be ok. coopers-stores.com

The issue here is not whether we want cleaner air, but crucially how best to achieve this. What is surprising is that both central government and local councils seem extraordinarily blinkered in their approach and appear to think the only answer is to turn the clock back 50 years. Being 73 now I clearly remember spending my Coventry childhood in the 1950’s when everyone rode bikes, walked or caught buses to get anywhere...and we were all poorer. We had no central heating, a pantry rather than a fridge, an outdoor back loo and nobody had heard of pizzas! Prosperity results from the ability to

Ambassador to the United Nations – made a famous speech in which he said: “We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.” Bath takes a small step in the right direction but l hope for bolder action in the future. There are many reasons why – post pandemic – the world must never be the same again. bathnewseum.com

move people and goods around quickly and cheaply. There is no doubt that the global prosperity seen in the past 50 years has been brought about by the extraordinary developments in propulsion technology on land, sea and air and the technology continues to improve and adapt to the environmental issues now being faced. More efficient power units and fuels, cleaner brakes and tyres are all areas which technology can address and continue to improve upon. Walking, buses and cycling simply cannot hope to meet modern time efficient demands, but embracing modern technology can and will help our economy recover from the effects of the Covid pandemic more quickly. ellisandkillpartrick.com

Following the launch of the hop-on hop-oﬀ Voi Technology e-scooters, The West of England Combined Authority has also introduced long-term e-scooter rentals that can be stored at home and used by residents across Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol and South Gloucestershire, giving residents unlimited access to environmentally friendly and cost-eﬀective transport. First West of England is geared up and ready with a fleet of buses on the road already compliant with the new legislation. This is part of a £30-million investment programme to ensure the company is at the forefront of cleaner, greener travel. They are committed to operating a zero-emission bus fleet by 2035. B&NES are working to combat air pollution across the area, monitoring roadside emissions, setting up air-quality management areas and introducing cycle hire schemes, installing more electric vehicle charge points, and supporting bus operators to retrofit buses to lower their emissions. They are also working closely with employers, schools, colleges and universities to encourage more sustainable travel. bathnes.gov.uk/airquality THEBATHMAG.CO.UK

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E-BIKES | FIVE IN FOCUS

E-cycle city

We asked David Tod from Bath’s specialist E-bike shop, Take Charge Bikes, to give us his selection of this years’ best buys.

FOR TREKKING AND ADVENTURE: Moustache Samedi 27 Xroad FS 7 This powerful and tough full-suspension is perfectly equipped to take on any situation. So let’s get in the saddle for an adventure! With its full-suspension frame with 100mm of travel entrusted to the Moustache Magic Grip Control shock and a Mobie 25 fork, its Bosch motor equipped with the Performance Line CX system with integrated 625Wh PowerTube battery, its ultra comfortable Hutchinson Python tires, our Xroad FS 7 will feel like a flying carpet passing over obstacles without any diﬃculty! Thanks to its practical accessories which will simplify your life, such as its luggage rack that’s compatible with QL3 and MIK fixations or its powerful Supernova lighting, or even its new Bosch Nyon computer with touch screen, navigation and Bluetooth compatible, the Xroad FS 7 is a real super hero that nobody can resist! Priced at £4,699

FOR GETTING THINGS DELIVERED:

The Urban Arrow/Family Cargo Whether it’s ferrying the kids to and from school, having a grocery box delivered to your door, or doing the full weekly shop, the Urban Arrow Cargo bike has revolutionised how goods are delivered in many European cities. Faster than vans, the Cargo range can weave through traﬃc, avoid congestion, CAZ charges, park for free and can use cycle lanes to go anywhere in the city. The high performance 250W Bosch motors and clever gearing means moving even heavy goods is eﬀortless, assisting the driver from standstill and climbing Bath’s hills with ease. No matter what you deliver, there are a number of standard Cargo box options according to you needs as well as specialist customisations to transport and deliver products in perfect condition. Prices from £4,169

THE TOWN AND COUNTRY HYBRID:

THE PERFECT ALL-ROUNDER: Haibike Allmtn 3.0

Cube Kathmandu Hybrid Pro 500/625

An all-rounder for any terrain: the AllMtn 3! 160mm travel and a powerful 4th generation Bosch Performance CX motor make for top performance even over challenging terrain. The optional Range Extender will expand your battery capacity by 500Wh to a total of 1.125Wh, raising your eMTB experience to new levels. Different wheel sizes round off the package: 29" wheels at the front offer precise and comfortable rollover behaviour, while the 27.5" wheels at the back give the eMTB perfect traction to master the steepest uphill and downhill slopes. £4,499

THE CITY COMMUTER:

Go Dutch. The Gazelle is one of Holland’s best selling e-bikes. Even if there aren’t too many hills in Amsterdam, the powerful and reliable Bosch Active Plus motor will give you all the extra oomph needed for Bath’s hilly terrain. It’s surprisingly lightweight and the upright frame which is perfect for traﬃc visibility, comes in a number of sizes, and the riding position is highly adjustable so can be adapted to suit a range of riders and riding styles. Comfortable and a great price too... from £2,199

Gazelle Orange C7+ HMB

The Kathmandu Hybrid Pro symbolises the freedom of two-wheeled exploration. Comfortable, versatile and with the power to expand your horizons, its fourth-generation Bosch drive system is just the start. We fitted a Suntour XCR 32 air suspension fork for easy adjustability and greater comfort on rough roads. Then we added a suspension seatpost and an adjustable stem. Shimano's 10-speed Deore transmission provides a huge range and eﬀortless shifting. And, of course, the full complement of accessories and sturdy Integrated Carrier mean you're set up to take any journey in your stride. There are two battery options: 500wh or 625wh. Prices from £2,699

For further information on e-Bikes and to see a selection of current models visit: takechargebikes.co.uk 20 TheBATHMagazine

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THE ART | OF | HOSPITALITY

Hotel panache

Once upon a time you stayed in a hotel where all the bedrooms looked the same. When Ian and Christa Taylor opened their own hotel, they decided to do things differently. Emma Clegg talks to them about the eclectic designs of their boutique hotels and their mantra of ‘luxury for the curious’

an and Christa Taylor have a way with hotels. They are known for buying small hotels and transforming them into upmarket boutique venues full of idiosyncrasies and unusual décor. Their Kaleidoscope Collection of hotels currently encompasses The Bird, Bath and Homewood in Freshford, but they also once owned and restyled The Abbey Hotel in North Parade – under their stewardship it went from holding three AA stars to four and doubled its annual turnover. They also created No 15 Great Pulteney Street from three Georgian terraces which they melded into one splendid hotel styled with immense creativity and visual flair, and then added a spa with a cedar-wood hot tub, Swedish sauna and steam-room. No.15 was named ‘Outstanding New Hotel’ at the Independent Hotel Show in October 2017 and went on to win Gold at the 2018/19 Bath, Bristol and Somerset Tourism Awards in the Large Hotel of the Year category in November 2018. All Ian and Christa’s boutique hotels have power, individuality and character, defined by their creative, uplifting interior décor and contemporary artworks. These are places where experience is uppermost, where details matter, where creative artwork rules, where nothing is conventional or generic. Ian Taylor, who was brought up in Coleraine in Northern Ireland, always knew

he wanted to work in hospitality management and he was 17 when he first started in the hotel business. He did a qualification in hospitality and then went to Switzerland, advised that this was the place with the best hospitality credentials. “The discipline of that was very good,” says Ian. “I was fortunate to be placed as a trainee in a five star hotel in Lucerne. And I saw a whole new world that I never knew existed. Everything in Switzerland is tip top.” After returning and spending two years studying hospitality in Manchester, Ian secured a job as a trainee manager and worked in the corporate world for 17 years. “I worked my way up to managing the Crown Hotel in Cambridge and the Crown Plaza at Heathrow which had 400 bedrooms. That was the point at which we decided we wanted to start doing it for ourselves.” It’s perhaps surprising that someone who displays such idiosyncratic design in every hotel enterprise spent so long in the corporate hospitality world. But Ian’s time at the Crown Plaza was when he started questioning the generic approach: “My latter days at Heathrow were in a corporate hotel where everything had a standard and everything was very modularised. Every room was the same. And I thought, ‘why would you want to do every room the same?’ Right down to buying the same

Ian and Christa Taylor

picture for every bedroom. That seemed very odd to me. I felt that people want a bit more individuality. “We went to stay at 1 Aldwych Hotel in London at that time, which was quite designer led. In fact those two big chairs,” Ian says, gesticulating towards two thronelike chairs with towering backs in the reception area at Homewood, “were at the bar. They revamped the bar a couple of years ago and I picked them up. We tend to shop around in all sorts of places. And it’s grown each year. It gets stronger. In our first hotel in the Cotswolds, The Cotswold House, we did all the bedrooms differently.” Ian and Christa met in London, when Christa was working for Forte Hotels. Ian explains that in terms of their business relationship now, “Christa is the controller and I think outside the box.” That sounds like a match made in heaven. It wasn’t all plain sailing when they embarked on their first hotel project, moving from senior employees in big hotel chains to running their own business. “I thought it was the worst mistake I’d made in my career,” admits Ian. “’What the hell am I doing here?’, I asked myself. ‘I haven’t got a clue what to do when the boiler breaks down.’” The key to settling into their new life was experience, and also connecting with the community. “It took me a year to really adapt. And that was when we started to do our own thing and put our own stamp on things. What also began to change was being part of that community. That’s one thing we got better at – getting out and meeting other people. The big corporate hotels live in their own bubble and stay there. That is one thing we’re very grateful for – all the great friends we have in Bath who support and work closely with us.”

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LEFT: The foyer of Mallingford Mews, the original lodge house at Homewood, recently transformed into a super deluxe 10 bedroom property OPPOSITE: The Mews Hot Tub Suite at Mallingford Mews, featuring hand printed wallpaper and a patio hot tub

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THIS PAGE: A bedroom and bathroom at the Bird, Bath

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framed bird images. The reception bar is elegantly covered with dense china sculpture with a bird theme by mosaic artist Candace Bahouth and dripping chandaliers glimmer in bulbous clusters.

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It’s easy to decorate a room in a beigey neutral – it’s safer to stay neutral. But who wants to be safe?

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Ian and Christa used an interior designer for their first hotel project in the Cotswolds, but Ian always had strong opinions about the visual statements he wanted to create, so they decided that Ian would spearhead and manage the interior design. “It’s not that we were disappointed with interior designers,” says Ian. “It’s just that I always felt that we were bringing so many of the ideas to the table. So it was about what we wanted. It got to a stage where I felt it was unfair on the interior designer because you were paying them a fee.” When planning an interior, Ian thinks in three dimensions, and always has the experience of the room at the heart of his plan. “One of the things I think carefully about is what will it feel like in that space. What are the colours to create that feeling? It’s easy to decorate a room in a beigey neutral and the more colour you use you’re more at risk – it’s safer to stay neutral. But who wants to be safe?” It’s true that the interiors at Homewood and at the Bird, Bath are not shy of colour. We were sitting in the bar at Homewood, painted in a resonant cherry red with two walls decorated with paintings of flowers, some framed and some simply hung on their stretched canvas. It’s a colour that makes you feel warm and enveloped and uplifted all at the same time. Then there’s the reception area at the Bird, Bath. The themes here are birds and blue, and (wickedly) there’s a painting of a smuglooking and rather uncompromising red and black striped cat in the midst of a wall of

Ian and Christa described their No.15 Pulteney Street hotel as having a mantra of ‘luxury for the curious’, and this continues to sum up their upmarket approach to hospitality. Core to the offering is the feeling that each guest should be truly spoiled, from the free larder to the complete Sky package available in each bedroom. Their own art collection runs through all their hotels and they maintain a significant store of furniture, home accessories and artwork waiting to be allocated a position within their hotel portfolio (Ian tells me they have enough for one more hotel project!). “A lot of things sit around for a year or two and then we suddenly think, ‘right we could

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THE ART | OF | HOSPITALITY do that with it’.” They have contacts for every interior requirement, from upholstery to French polishing. “You know who your contacts are and we have a black book of all those we need. And then collectors who contact you if something is coming up. We also do lots of auctions with Proauction, who do all the big luxury hotels.” Much of their artwork is sourced from artists from Bath Spa University and Falmouth School of Art and they also give back by supporting arts events, festivals, exhibitions, charity initiatives and creative networks. “As well as using graduates from local universities and colleges, we have certain artists that we follow, such as Matthew Greenhalf. He was a student at Falmouth and he has recently been sponsored by Lord Salisbury. He will be doing a London exhibition in the next two years. It’s lovely to see young artists like that

grow and to keep in contact with them. It is interesting for us, but we know what we like. I always say with art you are never going to please everybody. The real challenge is how you hang it.” Looking to the future, they still have plenty of plans for Homewood. “We’re thinking about how we might add treehouses to this property here. And add more bedrooms. This is where people are today having an experience that’s different. We’d love to get a kitchen garden going and have our own farm. I do like the idea of having the land and doing creative things with it. Homewood will continue to be developed in that way.” Ian is also working on two houses in Lansdown Crescent, one of which will become their new home. They spent some time there before renovations started, and moved out in January. “Christa has no idea

what is going on. Since we moved out, she has not set foot inside it.” “It is easier for one person to do the décor; if two people get involved it doesn’t work,” says Christa philosophically. I ask Ian if he has any regrets about not training as an artist or an interior designer, as his artistic talents have made such an outstanding difference to the hotels they have created and managed. “I’m very happy with the combination of design and hospitality, because I love the people side of things and I have a great interest in marketing and promoting and selling,” he says. “I couldn’t be a consultant for someone else; I like to see the results of what I do and see where that takes us. So I consider myself very lucky that I can enjoy both.” n kaleidoscopecollection.co.uk

The main lounge adjoining the reception area at the Bird, Bath, with a menacing cat among the collection of framed birds

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PEOPLE | FOUR THINGS

Monserrat Pis Marcos:

Four things

Monserrat Pis Marcos is a curator at the Holburne Museum. She started at the museum just a few days before the first lockdown in April and then kept art lovers entertained with her series of Inside Art features on the Bath Magazine website throughout the spring and summer. Here she selects four things that have personal significance in her life Necklace and earrings This pair of earrings was given to me on 8 March 2007, International Women’s Day. Their traditional design is connected to the Galician regional costume and they were a gift from my mother when I found my first job. The silver star was designed when Santiago de Compostela, my home town, was selected as a European City of Culture in 2001. I love the simplicity and cleverness of the design and the fact that it is a subtle way of carrying my heritage with me. The original necklace was lost almost a decade later. I was devastated when I realised it was gone; I felt as if my city had abandoned me. When I returned home I searched for a replacement, but nobody was selling them any more. At last, we found a leftover one hiding in a small silversmith’s shop and we bought it instantly. It has never left me since. The earrings and the necklace have become my official journey companions whenever I travel between the UK and Spain. A made-up 19th-century etymology for Santiago de Compostela states that the city’s name comes from the Latin Campus Stellae, the Field of Stars. I love the idea of having my own little star guiding me back and reminding me where I come from.

“I love the idea of having my own little star guiding me back and reminding me where I come from”

Nut

Notebook

Photographs

This is the most extraordinary Christmas present I have ever received. When I was a teenager, I said on Christmas Eve that I felt Christmas had lost its magic because I knew what my presents were. When we opened our parcels after dinner there was a small box for me I knew nothing about. It was decorated with the Sargadelos pattern, a brand that specialises in ceramics, and was heavy for its size. When I opened it, a bulky, rusty nut was inside. “What does this mean?”, I thought. Having a screw loose is an idiom that’s also used in Spanish when someone is a bit mad, so was this a subtle hint? I spent the rest of the night confused as my father, who had gone out to the railway line that afternoon and had picked up a big nut lying on the tracks to give his daughter a gift she was not expecting, had the time of his life watching my bewilderment.

I have always loved writing. I wrote my first poem when I was seven and as a child when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I firmly replied ‘A writer!’. I have never given up that dream and always carry a pen and a notebook with me. In 2010 I started writing a story about a girl whose tears turned into birds. She had lost her dance slippers and I had lost a friend. The story quickly acquired a mind of its own and for the next few years it followed me relentlessly. In 2016 the story won one of the most important prizes for children’s literature in my region and was published as an illustrated volume. It was a modest accomplishment, but it made me feel that perhaps I could indeed be a writer one day. To this date, it is one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I adore horses. I often say, jokingly, that I must have been one in a previous life. Perhaps one day I might be able to afford a horse but in the meantime I treasure the photographs of the horses that have been part of my life. The one in the two bottom right images was particularly dear to me. He was called Capricho and he was a cross between a Spanish and an Arabian thoroughbred. He was kind-hearted, generous and quick to react and he was, unofficially, ‘my’ horse. Although he belonged to a family friend, his owner acknowledged that when I rode him Capricho was perkier and seemed happier. He trusted me and I knew I was safe with him, even when we disappeared for 5–6 hours in the countryside, just the two of us, and only returned at sunset. I still miss him. n

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ART CUSHIONS

Hibiscus

Bloom

Heaven’s Glow

Bridgerton

43cm x 43cm . £28

22 designs

55cm x 55cm . £42

The Art Studio . Knight’s Barn . Wellow . Bath BA2 8QE www.emmaroseartworks.com

16 Pierrepont St, Bath BA1 1LA | Tel: 01225 464433 www.kathrynanthony.co.uk

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WHAT’S ON in March Watch Pam the pig have her breakfast every Saturday at Bath City Farm

BATH RUGBY X BATH FITFAM n Throughout March, various times and dates, online Ensuring the community stays active during the colder months, BathFitFam have joined up with Bath Rugby to run fitness classes for all the family. Join their mobility and low impact workouts, circuit classes and HIIT sessions every week. bathfitfam.com VIRTUAL MYSTERY – WHO SLAUGHTERED THE LORD n Throughout March, online Can you crack this perplexing puzzle? Lord Deelaudie, a wealthy business man, has been found dead in his home. He had been hit from behind with a heavy object so the police suspect that it was murder. There was a witness who saw everything that happened. He will give you clues so that you can unravel the mystery, but only if you complete the puzzles that he sets. This virtual murder mystery allows you to play together with friends and family while all in separate locations. Difficulty Fiendish; £10 per team; textquest.co.uk BATH CITY FARM: LIVE ANIMAL FEEDING n Every Saturday, 10.30am, Facebook While the farm is closed to visitors, coordinator Joe Keppie-Bray has been keeping us entertained, livestreaming virtual tours and morning feeds every weekend. Tune in live to Bath City Farm’s Facebook on Saturday mornings and watch Pam the pig enjoy a hearty brunch. Search for Bath City Farm on Facebook.

NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter

The American Museum & Gardens

BRLSI: NASA'S JUNO MISSION TO JUPITER n 5 March, 7.30pm, online Juno, launched in August 2011, is the first spacecraft to fly over Jupiter’s aurora. It’s principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of the planet. The spacecraft has a small public outreach camera which has been taking images of the planet’s beautiful clouds – some for

science, some for art. Join Dr Fran Bagenal, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics University of Colorado, Boulder with BRLSI this month. brlsi.org KAPUNDA NURSERY OPEN DAYS n 7 and 28 March, Kapunda, Southstoke Lane, Bath BA2 5SH Kapunda is a natural two-acre garden with features including a spring display of hellebores, herbaceous beds, potager, fountain and terrace. kapundaplants.co.uk AMERICAN MUSEUM & GARDENS n Reopening on 13 March Just in time for Mother’s Day, the American Museum & Gardens will be reopening their gardens and children’s play area on 13 March. With warmer days on the horizon, enjoy a day out in the fresh air and wonder through the museum’s spectacular grounds. The garden café will also be open for takeaway and visitor toilets will be available to use. Dogs on leads are welcome. All visitors will be asked to follow social distancing and the latest government advice. The museum and exhibition will remain closed but keep an eye on the museum’s website and social media for updates. americanmuseum.org CREATING SPACES 2021 n From 21 March–31 May Rufus Pollard of Malmesbury Abbey House invites you to see its selection of sculptures in the gardens. Work includes figurative and abstract sculpture in wood, ceramic, glass, stone and bronze, all complementing the beautiful gardens with its long vistas, intimate corners, and the riverside walk. In addition, the Belvedere, a wood and glass space looking out on to the valley below, will display wall pieces, hanging sculptures and wood carvings. For opening times see website. cotswoldsculptorsassociation.com abbeyhousegardens.co.uk

PLANNING AHEAD MONKTON COMBE: EASTER REVISION COURSES n 12 – 16 April, online Monkton’s Easter Revision courses will be running online this year, focusing on helping pupils who are studying for their GCSEs or IGCSEs. The courses, designed by Monkton’s experienced teachers, many of whom are themselves GCSE examiners, are there to offer individual guidance, support and assist with any challenges that may arise. Register your interest now at monktoncombeschool.com

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Bath Abbey

Pulteney Bridge

THE FINE ARTIST SHOP thefineartistshop.com; 89 Old Park Rd, Clevedon BS21 7HT A STATEMENT FROM ARTIST TRACEY BOWES I am particularly passionate about Bath, Bristol and Clevedon. I moved to Bath from Clevedon to study for my BA at Sion Hill. My daughter and I became particularly captivated by the textures and the light and dark shadows of the city. The social history of the buildings seem to radiate from them and is very inspiring. My daughter went on to study classical architecture and completed her MSc in Conservation of Historic Buildings in Bath, while I have gone on to paint some of the same buildings she has studied. We both developed a deep and lasting connection with the architectural history.

I use colour and mark-making to express my emotion while painting, so my style is very dependent on the emotions I’m feeling and that my subject generates. I try to celebrate the positive and warm character of the scenes which I paint. My current work is inspired by artists such as Paul Cézanne and Raoul Dufy. I use oil paints for my portraiture work and natural studies. However, my oversized cityscape pieces are created using acrylics as this enables me to layer panels of colours more organically as they dry quickly. I have become very absorbed by the way the light radiates from the buildings. I try not to become too obsessed with details as I believe that photographs can capture those. I am currently working on an uplifting painting of The Circus, with a crisp bright blue spring morning sky contrasting with a warm hug from the honey tones of the Georgian Architecture.

DAVID SIMON CONTEMPORARY davidsimoncontemporary.com; 37 High Street, Castle Cary BA7 7AW MICK LINDBERG: FACES OF HOPE 6 March – 10 April 2021 Celebrating 15 years this March, David Simon Contemporary is pleased to present this refreshing solo exhibition. Mick Lindberg’s second solo exhibition with David Simon Contemporary has been nearly twelve months in the making. Over this period, the world has seen an extraordinary There is a Candle in Your Heart by Mick Lindburg

COMING TO BATH SOON MARY SHELLEY’S HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN n Opening soon In this new thrilling experience you’ll be able to step into the dark world of Mary Shelley and her most infamous creation, Frankenstein, a world first, opening soon in the centre of Bath. Set over four atmospheric floors, there will be ominous music and unsettling soundscapes, aromas, lighting and special effects, electric shocks,

projections, props, unusual artefacts, assorted body parts and vintage items throughout. Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein will deliver a scarily immersive, unnervingly thrilling and visceral experience. Sign up for exclusive news on the website and watch this space to be the first to now when tickets go on sale; houseoffrankenstein.com

time, which has prompted the artist to explore the many ways in which we seek hope. The unique work by this Swedish-born artist depicts narratives in an almost painterly manner, making use of pattern and texture from her archive of vintage and antique fabrics. At the same time, the quality of stitching and intricate layering of materials makes each piece an exquisitely finished accomplishment. The faces that appear in Lindberg’s compositions are engaging and this is an exhibition that will not fail to arouse an emotional response.

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MOTHER’S DAY | 2021

Send Mum some love While some lifting of restrictions is starting to happen, this year’s Mother’s Day (on March 14th) will mostly be celebrated remotely. Dispatch some joy to help make her day one to be cherished.

MADE IN ENGLAND BLANKETS COSY AND SOFT Based in Bath and inspired by the West Country, The Natural Blanket Company’s blankets are impeccably stylish, luxurious and made from 100% natural Merino and pure wool. The company believes in the environmental sustainability of their products, longevity and preserving the heritage and tradition. The Natural Blanket Company’s products are sourced and woven in the British Isles with a strong belief in supporting British manufacturers and artisan producers and with a commitment to quality and value. Prices from £40.00; See the full range at: www.thenaturalblanket.co.uk Instagram: # the_natural_blanket

THE SILVER SHOP OF BATH LOCKET OF LOVE A locket is a perfect gift for Mother’s Day, especially if you pop photos or a lovely message inside it. This classic Oval Sterling Silver locket from The Silver Shop of Bath is a popular keepsake and will be treasured and cherished everyday. Priced at just £33.95 and with free local delivery, you can order online and see many more great gift ideas at: www.thesilvershopofbath.co.uk

ARTISAN HOMEWARE BEAUTIFULLY CRAFTED CERAMICS Artisan Homeware’s new ceramics collection features intricate patterns and elegant forms inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th Century. The Garden Room collection of Bowls, Bakeware, Teaware and Kitchen Accessories is made from premium stoneware hand-decorated in deep blues, cobalt, turquoise and aqua, soft greys and leafy greens. Artisan Homeware is an independent Bristol-based online homewares store sourcing beautiful, high quality artisan-made homewares from around the world. The Ceramika Artystyczna ceramic co-operative in which the Garden Room collection is produced is based in Boleslawiec, Poland. It has a rich 126 year history of innovation and creativity and an enduring commitment to maintaining the highest levels of quality in artisan handiwork. Prices from £5.95 to £71.50. Visit: www.artisanhomeware.co.uk/garden-room

HARVEY NICHOLS HAMPER IT’S ALL ABOUT HER Celebrate the most important woman in your life with the All About Her Hamper available to order from Harvey Nichols. The ultimate treat for Mother’s Day, this extra special selection features luxurious handchosen beauty heroes alongside Whispering Angel rosé and milk chocolates truffles that will really make mum’s day. Set contains: Estee Lauder advanced night repair 30ml, La Mer The Tonic 100ml, 111 Skin rose gold sheet mask, Charlotte Tilbury matte revolution in Pillow Talk, Whispering Angel rosé, Harvey Nichols milk chocolate truffles. £210. Shop this and many more gift ideas at: www. harveynichols.com SPREAD THE FUROSHIKI TREND GIFT WRAP THAT CAN BE RE-USED

EMILY DENNYS CERAMICS Handmade in her home studio in Nightingale Valley Bristol, Emily Dennys makes beautiful porcelain lamps, vases and wall panels, and more. Her designs feature relief work of flowers, grasses, buds, berries and thistles. To Celebrate the wonderful women in our lives, Emily is offering free UK delivery for International Womens’ day and Mother’s Day purchases, just use the discount code: WONDERFULWOMEN when ordering.Prices from £12-£250. Offer runs 8th March-14th March. Visit: www.emilydennysceramics.com and follow her story on Instagram.com/emilydennysceramics

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A more sustainable alternative to wrapping paper, this cloth - adorned with Anthropologie exclusive patterns - offers unique way of gifting presents to loved ones. Furoshiki is a centuries old Japanese tradition using wrapping cloth to cover gifts, transport items, and hold belongings developing clever methods of folding and tying. The resurgence of this ancient craft can be attributed to its eco-friendly characteristics, as is provides a sustainable, reusable, and versatile alternative to gift wrap, plastic bags, and more. The cloths can be re-purposed or re-gifted for years to come. Wrap your Mum’s day gifts and spread the trend. These measure 81cm square and cost £18 each and are just one of the many thoughtful gift ideas from: www. anthropologie.com

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The Downton Abbey Eﬀect

David Ringsell

Art Prints

A contemporary take on classic Bath architecture

DUNCAN CAMPBELL HAS BEEN DEALING IN ANTIQUE SILVER SINCE 1986

Something worth living up to

very time I hear someone mention Downton Abbey I feel a slight guilty pang, because I have to admit that I have never watched the show. From what I gather, I ought to make an effort to catch up. This long running drama has captured the imagination not only of its UK audience, but also many other countries around the world who view it as a fascinating insight into how we organise our mealtimes. I have recently been in correspondence with a Chinese academic (historian) who is writing a book, for the Chinese market about the dining habits and customs of the British people. He is convinced that we all sit around a formal dining table, groaning with elaborate silver entree dishes and candelabra, three times a day. I hate to disabuse him of his illusion, but I have had to tell him that not all of us employ footmen and butlers. The truth is that formal dinners of the sort that feature on Downton require a lot of hard work to put on before you even start thinking about the menu. The decline in this type of elegant formality can, in my view, be directly traced back to 1st July 1916. Not only did that tragic day see the demise of countless domestic staff, but also ended the attitudes of deference that are needed to continue the “upstairs - downstairs” status quo. It is very clear from the order books of the Great British silver manufacturers that output and demand slumped dramatically after the Great War and has continued to do so ever since. Fast forward to the 21st century and most households in the UK now have an automatic dishwasher, leaving the footman in charge of maintaining the shine on the silver redundant. We now have no excuses for sloppy dining habits, I’d therefore like to lead a charge to make our charming Chinese man’s assumptions real. I call for a return to elegance, one silver spoon at a time. n

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MARCH 2021

THeBATHMAgAzine 31

Books mar 21.qxp_Layout 1 26/02/2021 17:32 Page 1

BOOKS

Books by women

Celebrating International Women’s Day on 8 March, Saskia Hayward and Matthew Leigh from Topping and Co. profile six books by women, some touching explicitly on feminist discourse, and all relevant to womanhood and female experience With Real Estate Deborah Levy concludes her ‘living autobiography’ triptych, the first two being Things I Don’t Want to Know and The Cost of Living. This memoir explores how the idea of home is entangled with her identity as a woman. She pulls at the (perhaps uncomfortable) offshoots that emerge – the questions of ownership and property – and writes with characteristic wit and evocative attention to detail. She elevates the everyday, breaking apart the nonevent and revealing the roots beneath, imbuing it with resonance and power. Her charisma and razor-sharp insight ensure she is brilliant company, and cements her place as one of the finest writers of female experience of the current age. Publishes 13 May, Hamish Hamilton, £10.99 International Women’s Day has emerged from the most radical economic and political movements of the past. A Decolonial Feminism, an urgent, evocative manifesto which won an English PEN Award for 2021, sees author and political activist Françoise Vergès demonstrating the vital relevance in continuing such movements amidst the landscape of contemporary discourse. She grapples with issues at the heart of the moment: intersectionality and whiteness, power and sexuality, and the realities of life within capitalism. It is a piece of writing built upon a wealth of knowledge of the history of feminist and anti-racist struggles, into which she situates events as recent as the #MeToo movement and the Women’s Strike. Publishes 20 April, Pluto Press, £12.99 In 1976 Michel Foucault laid out the teasing statement that “tomorrow sex will be good again.” In her book using this quote, Katherine Angel sets out to establish how we can make good on his promise. Pulling from a wide array of sources – science, pornography, popular culture and literary analysis – she argues that it is vital that we unravel and remake our thinking on female sexual desire. A necessary act, as she sees it, in the path towards achieving female autonomy and assisting in the fight against sexual violence. Her provocative disruption of more familiar discussions on sexuality and power challenge many of the assumptions made about desire. Above all, it is a nuanced and compelling exploration of those ever-resonant questions of consent and desire. Verso Books, £10.99 32 TheBATHMagazine

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This One Sky Day, the first new novel from Leone Ross in 22 years, is a kaleidoscopic adventure through the fictional archipelago of Popisho, where every child is born with an innate and unique power. For Xavier Redchoose, this is the ability to flavour food through the palms of his hands. As the Macaenus, the latest in a long line of master chefs, it is his divine obligation to cook each resident in Popisho one perfect meal. A recent widow from an unhappy marriage, he also has to reckon with his grief, his guilt, and an unresolved love. This is much more than the study of one man, however. It’s a sparkling hymn to the vibrancy of community, a meditation on the legacy of colonialism; it explores desire, addiction, empowerment and greed. Publishes 15 April, Faber & Faber, £14.99 How We Are Translated by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson is a novel that you might end up reading in one sitting. The narrator’s voice is gentle and reflective, but always insightful, pithy and compelling. The reader is placed in the space between two people and there is an affecting intimacy to every conversation and scenario. Questions of identity, belonging and the importance of communication are raised within an authentic space, never threatening to eclipse individual humanity. Set largely in a small flat in Edinburgh occupied by Swedish immigrant Kristin and her Brazilianborn Scottish boyfriend Ciarin, much of the novel is centered around Ciaran’s decision to learn Swedish. Reducing it to this, however, is nonsense. From Kristin’s perspective, the book illustrates the cosmic expanse within a person and a relationship. Nothing is airbrushed out, and annoyance often hums under the surface. Contradictory feelings, however, are not always conflicting. This is writing with breathing space, with room for the evershifting spectrum of life. Scribe, £12.99 Luster by Raven Leilani is an impressive debut novel. Impressive because of its insight, its humour, but most of all because of its feeling of authenticity. In the majority of debuts, the seams in the writing can be glimpsed. Sometimes you may feel the author selfconsciously crafting a sentence as you read it. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it is something that reminds you that you are reading something that engages with fabrication. In Luster, we see 23 year old Edie stumbling through life. For large stretches of the novel she undermines herself and repeatedly makes mistakes. She is also compellingly reflective, intelligent and self-deprecating. Most importantly, however, she is never not real. Every wrong decision she makes, every moment of self deprecation or lack of ability to react positively just serves to enhance her vivid humanity. There are no seams to be found. Picador, £12.99 n During lockdown, books can be ordered from the website or at the shop door; toppingbooks.co.uk

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MARCH 2021

THeBATHMAgAzine 33

Strata Mar 3pp.qxp_Layout 1 24/02/2021 11:19 Page 1

CITY | GEOLOGY

Image of William Smith © University of Oxford, Museum of Natural History

Strata man

William Smith,‘the father of geology’ and one of England’s great unsung heroes, developed his observations into a national geographical map that even today supports mineral prospecting and land improvement. Smith’s observation that certain fossils were unique to particular strata and that those strata always occurred in the same sequence, enabled him, and now all geologists, to plot the location, succession and dip of sedimentary rocks. A new book, Strata, showcases Smith’s revolutionary work. Here is an excerpt from the Apprentice chapter, written by Peter Wigley, revealing Smith’s thoughts on the order of the strata and showing his maps of Bath NATURAL ORDER OF THE STRATA

n 1799 Smith, now a journeyman, was having to earn a rather mundane living advising on slippage, subsidence and later on land drainage, but he also had time for more contemplative matters. Since his arrival in Somerset he had been developing the concept of an order of the strata, initially in relation to the coals and coal measures in the Mearns Colliery and later on observing the sequence of strata he encountered along the line of the Somersetshire Coal Canal. Phillips noted that Smith had developed a general law that the ‘same strata were found always in the same order of superposition and contained the same peculiar fossils’ (Phillips, 1844, p. 28). The Rev. Benjamin Richardson (1758–1832), a collector of fossils and a friend of Smith, was apparently ‘astonished and incredulous’ at this assertion, and together with another friend, the Rev. Joseph Townsend (1739–1816), they determined to make field examinations to test it. Needless to say, their investigations confirmed Smith’s hypothesis. Later in 1799, after the three dined together, it was proposed that Smith should dictate a table of the strata according to their order of succession, starting with the Chalk, and number them in a continuous sequence down to the coal. Townsend penned the list and Richardson provided the names of the fossils. Thus, the first Table of Strata was completed; each member of the triumvirate took a copy and it seems that others were widely distributed. Over subsequent years Smith refined the table.

secure a job for him in Russia, so perhaps Smith was not too distressed by this lack of acknowledgment. Smith might have been comfortable with the unacknowledged distribution of his ideas but his other steadfast friend, Benjamin Richardson, was not. In May 1801 he wrote Smith a somewhat enigmatic letter with a veiled warning that perhaps Townsend might be considering publishing Smith’s work for his own benefit. Richardson urged Smith speedily to commit his ideas to print, advising him that he needed to do much more work on the Chalk before doing so. This fired Smith into action and on 1 June 1801 he published his Prospectus for a work entitled: Accurate Delineations and Descriptions of the Natural Order of the Various Strata that are Found in Different Parts of England and Wales: with Practical Observations Thereon. It set out a plan for a spectacularly ambitious project, including a sequential description of all the strata, together with a coloured map showing them, as well as a section. Smith extolled the virtues of the work at great length, with its potential benefits to agriculture, mining and a whole list of other trades and professions. While he recognized that ‘the complete history of all the minutiae of Strata would be an endless labour’, he said that if the

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Map © University of Oxford, Museum of Natural History

Smith had coloured the map geologically, showing the Oolitic limestone, Red Ground and Lias

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It does not seem to have taken long for word of Smith’s discoveries to get around. Richard Warner in his The History of Bath (1801, p. 394) gives a general view of the strata of Bath and refers his readers to ‘a more scientific and particular account of them … written expressly on the subject by the very ingenious Mr. Smith of Midford, near Bath, which, we understand, will shortly be given to the world’. He then goes on to describe a number of strata from the Forest Marble, Oolite, Fuller’s Earth, another Oolite, Lyas (Lias) and Coal. Later, in 1811, in his A New Guide through Bath he has a section entitled ‘Fossilogical Phoenomena’ (p. 174), noting that ‘this little memoir was drawn up not so much for the information of the scientific, as for the gratification of the curious and the amusement of the idle’. Notwithstanding, he then described in some detail an almost complete succession of strata down to the coal, which he undoubtedly plagiarized from the original table the three men drew up. To his credit, Warner was a good friend of Smith and indeed later tried to 34 TheBATHMagazine

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OPPOSITE, AND KEY ABOVE: A section from Smith’s 1815 geological map, including North Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and part of the Bristol Channel. Smith’s technicolour markings make visible a rich variety of strata, from the moss green that indicates Chalk to the bright yellow of Upper Oolite and the peachy pink of Red Marl. The succession of strata in the area and the common regional fossil specimens associated with each. Fossils printed by W. Arding, London, 1816

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CITY | GEOLOGY

BELOW: William Smith’s early manuscript map of the Bath district from around 1800 shows the outline of the Oolitic Limestone with the colour yellow

Area around Bath c.1799 © University of Oxford Museum of Natural History

prospectus were well received and supported, he intended to continue the task and would complete the book by November 1802. Unfortunately, his magnum opus was not to be published as a complete work, for his publisher, John Debrett (1753–1822), went bankrupt. It was clear, however, that Smith already had a grand vision of how the strata should be depicted on geological maps, as cross sections and in a descriptive table of strata. His idea may have been clear, but the resources needed to complete such a task would have overwhelmed even the stout-hearted. In the prospectus, Smith quotes from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man, a poem describing the natural order that God has decreed for man: ‘All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee’, which ends ‘One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.’ MAPPING IN CIRCLES Smith’s first geological map still exists in the library of the Geological Society of London. It was among a number of items donated by him when the Society’s first Wollaston Medal was awarded to him in 1831. The original map is almost illegible because of fading and discoloured varnish, but over the years a number of facsimiles have been made. First impressions are that it seems a little odd: the base map is circular with Bath in the centre together with the surrounding countryside in five radiating 1-mile circles at a scale of 1½ inches to a mile. The base map was published by Taylor & Meyler in 1799, and numerous copies, including pirated ones, were sold to visitors to the city. Smith had coloured the map geologically, showing the Oolitic limestone, Red Ground and Lias. Although simple, the depiction of the geology is fairly accurate, and for the first time Smith’s use of graded tints for outcrops is evident. A second circular map, probably from around 1800 and like the first poorly legible and also torn, on closer inspection reveals a lot more geological detail. Smith has now clearly differentiated the Upper Oolite limestone from the Inferior Oolite limestone. Furthermore, when this map is compared with the fossil localities from Richard Warner’s 1811 ‘Fossilogical Map of the Country Five Miles around Bath’, a more detailed pattern of the geology emerges. There can be little doubt that the fossil locations shown on Warner’s map were from Smith. This, combined with the detail on the circular Bath map, provides an accurate reflection of Smith’s understanding of the geology at that time. LOST SOMERSETSHIRE Somerset was the county which, geologically, Smith knew best. As a continuation of his circular Bath maps, it was recorded (Phillips, 1844 p. 27) that he geologically coloured at least part of the county on a 1 inch to 1 mile map, Day and Masters’ County Survey of 1782. Smith also mentioned the map in a letter (dated 26 June 1805) to Richard Crawshay (1739–1810), a South Wales ironmaster. He relates how, at the Woburn Sheep Shearing, he met the Duke of Clarence (later King William IV) and ‘happened to have my large map of Somersetshire with me, which I have lately completed, as a specimen of what may be done upon all the county maps in the kingdom.’ There is no record of what the future ‘Sailor King’ thought of Smith’s map. Smith went on to make many excellent county maps, including for Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, both adjacent to Somerset, but sadly the original Somerset map itself has never been found. It is possible that it could have perished in a fire at his engraver’s works in 1820, or that it was seized by bailiffs when Smith was in debt. This could have been the end of the story for the map, but for what appears to have been a slipshod, but fortuitous, mistake on the part of John Cary’s sons, George and John. Shortly after the fire, John Cary retired and his sons took over his business. It was during their tenure that they continued to publish A New Map of Somersetshire divided into hundreds, exhibiting its roads, Rivers, Parks &c, a series dating back to the first decade of the nineteenth 36 TheBATHMagazine

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century. For a number of reissued copies dated to between 1821 and 1831 the brothers appear to have inadvertently used an existing copper plate on which the line work for another map was engraved. The geological lines seem to suggest that this may be a preliminary version, albeit very incomplete, of Smith’s long-lost map of the county. An 1829 version of one of these maps from the Hugh Torrens Collection was digitally scanned at a high resolution. Then, with the aid of modern image processing, all hand-colouring of the hundreds, roads and other boundaries was removed and the resulting map loaded into a GIS (Geographic Information System). The map was spatially adjusted to fit both with Smith’s 1815 map and also modern geological data sources. The original line work was digitized and geologically interpreted in order to re-create, as far as possible, Smith’s original map. It was most important to honour all of Smith’s geological lines, but at the same time not to over-interpret them based on modern knowledge. In some parts of the map it is easy to see what Smith wanted, especially when overlaid on the 1815 map; in other areas it is evident that Smith wished to add more detailed geology. When the interpretation was finalized the image was processed to give the outcrops their distinct Smithian appearance using his colours with graded tinting, and legend tablets were added to the finished map. n

Extracted from STRATA: William Smith’s Geological Maps published by Thames & Hudson at £50 For more information about William Smith, these two publications by BRLSI are useful references: • Innovation and Discovery – Bath and the rise of science, £12 This book, with William Smith’s famous map on the cover and a foreword by Sir Patrick Moore, is described in the Notes and Records of The Royal Society as “Richly illustrated and referenced, with a full gazetteer of Bath’s scientists and their local residences, landmarks and connections, it offers an intersection of local and scientific histories …” and brings to light the contribution of Bath “… to the formations of science itself.” • Memoirs of William Smith First published in 1844, this biography outlines William Smith's working life around Bath, and later around Britain.

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FOOD | & | DRINK

Food forward

It’s a year now since our world changed. The social distancing measures enforced by the pandemic have affected every aspect of our lives, and continue to do so, most notably in how we buy our food and the way we eat it. Food producers, retailers and consumers have had to adapt around new methods of food production and supply, faced with restrictions that shook our accepted food freedoms to the core. Hospitality providers and diners suffered similarly, with revenue reduced or eradicated and restaurant diners having to cook themselves or order takeaways. Melissa Blease takes stock and wonders what the future holds

o dine out or not to dine out? That was just one of the questions. Right at the start of the pandemic, confusion around what, how and where could we eat, with whom and when, was underpinned with a very serious problem: how can we shop for food if we can’t go to the shops? For the first time in several generations, people across Britain were faced with the very real prospect of the cupboards literally being bare and were forced to have a total rethink around how much we take demand/supply for granted as shop shelves once permanently laden with bread, pasta and toilet rolls stood empty and panic buying frenzies dominated the headlines. As soon as new ways to stock up on everything we needed slid into place and staying in became the new going out (to work, or anywhere else), many of us cooked, drank, snacked and generally ate more than

ever before, filling space at our dining tables and on our sofas that was once taken by extended family and groups of friends with comfort food and temporarily spirit-lifting drinks. Things could only get better? They did, and then they didn’t, and then they did again... and on and on and on we rolled. So now, coping with another lockdown, what did it all mean, where are we at – and what’s to come?

Family and friends: a recipe for love If there’s one predominant lesson that the pandemic has taught us all, it’s that we shouldn’t, can’t and won’t take our family and friends for granted. Remember how, back in the good old pre-Covid days, we’d often roll our eyes at the prospect of a family Sunday lunch get-together, make throwaway jokes about grin-and-bearing your sister-inlaw’s grim roast chicken, do anything to get out of having to endure a two-hour round

Eating outdoors has become the new way of socialising

trip for a meal to celebrate the 21st birthday of a relative you’ve only met twice and bemoan the cost of attending even your best friend’s wedding before questioning her choice of insisting on a vegan buffet for all? Oh, what we’d all give to have to have such ‘problems’ back on the menu! Because of course, eating together is about far, far more than food. Eating together in a group is an ancient tradition familiar to all, all around the world. From tea and biscuits with grandma and granddad to grand celebratory feasts by way of summer picnics, bank holiday barbecues, weddings, christenings, funerals and more, by sharing food, we share people, culture and the occasion itself, digesting emotional sustenance with every forkful of grub on our plates. When the parties suddenly ended in March 2020, we were left with a huge gap in our lives that no amount of Krispy Kremes or screen time with neither near neighbours nor far-flung friends could fill. Countless psychologists, cultural commentators and trend forecasters predict that, post-Covid, we’ll all put a much higher value on the significance and connotations of get-togethers with family and friends. We’ll also be far more aware of what we don’t need to do in order to make a special occasion memorable; the trend for costly, ostentatious weddings, for example, may become a thing of the past as we’ve been all-too-sharply reminded that the true value of getting together and sharing food (let alone celebrating a special occasion) with the people we love is priceless.

Shopping, reshaped According to the seventh annual Waitrose Food & Drink report (based on OnePoll research of 2000+ consumers of all ages, and not exclusively Waitrose customers), threequarters of all households now do at least some of their food shopping online, up 61%

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from this time last year – and this isn’t a trend that’s set to wane any time soon; now so many more of us are au fait with the stressfree convenience of a doorstep delivery (let alone freedom from the tyranny of endless queues at peak times), why would we choose to shop any other way? But changes to our shopping habits have impacted positively on smaller, independent, local businesses too, as an increased awareness – a form of mindfulness, if you like – of the importance of supporting the traders and suppliers on our doorsteps and the local economy in general has at last become a clear priority. Internet searches for ‘local shops’ are up 179% from pre-pandemic, and footfall in the neighbourhoods and villages away from city centres (alongside home delivery services from local independent shops) has increased by an average of approximately 71% across the UK. This trend has impacted positively on the environment too: a combination of having to give careful consideration to exactly how much food we need for the week ahead coupled with less opportunity to impulse buy food that we didn't really want or need has led to a decrease in food waste.

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We Brits, it seems, will pay close attention to Matt Hancock but totally ignore Jack Frost

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Meanwhile, changes to our usual domestic routine such as having more time for breakfast, eating the leftovers from the previous evening’s meal for lunch and using what would previously have been time spent on the home commute for preparing and eating dinner are good old-fashioned habits that have happily woven themselves back into our thoroughly modern timetables. As has...

Cooking at home has become less time pressurised and more relaxed. Cooking can be fun, we’ve discovered!

The appetite for homebaked goodies in the first lockdown led to a new supermarket shortage: flour

A return to the kitchen Over half of the consumers surveyed for the Waitrose poll and multiple similar studies and questionnaires say that a combination of extra available time and sheer necessity have led them to try new recipes, ingredients and cooking styles, gaining new confidence in their own abilities and revitalising an interest in ‘real’ cooking. Meanwhile, trusted, reliable recipe sites such as BBC Good Food, Delia Online and The Spruce Eats all reported a huge upsurge in hits on recipes for casseroles, soups, bread, puddings and clever ways with leftovers, while viewing figures for the latest Great British Bake Off – filmed in a Covid-secure bubble – hit an all-time high with an average of 10.8m viewers per episode, making it the biggest Channel 4 broadcast since modern records began in 2002. Thinking of applying for GBBO 2021? You’re too late... but 28,000+ would-be contestants made the deadline.

What’s next? All-weather Alfresco feasts From garden grills to tandooris by way of fire pits, pizza ovens and glorious Big Green Eggs,

barbecues are the get-together gift that kept us going throughout the winter months – while paying full regard to tier restrictions. While the latest lockdown and recent plummeting temperatures have taken the edge off our enthusiasm, as soon as the weather improves, it’s likely that the nation will continue to party on outside, sporting stylish all-weather clothing, thermos flasks and thermal underwear (online retailers have seen a massive surge in sales of these) in readiness. We Brits, it seems, will pay close attention to Matt Hancock but totally ignore Jack Frost. Dealing with weighty issues NHS data reveals that two in three Britons have piled on the pounds during various lockdowns, with a third of the population gaining half a stone or more between AprilAugust and one in 20 of the 3,000 people surveyed saying they’d put on so much weight they were “too scared to stand on the scales”. But this year, the slew of ‘new’ diets, weight loss programmes and slimming club memberships that typically dominate the collective consciousness in the first part of the year are targeting not just weight loss, but proper healthy eating with a strong focus on virus-fighting foods and supplements. In/out continues to shake it all about As Covid-19 dominated the 2020 headlines, our attention was drawn away from the UK’s transition towards exiting the EU, but now it’s a done deal. The resulting food price hikes, shortages of fresh food and limited access to produce including imported cheeses, meats and wines that the pundits predicted haven’t quite shaken the domestic market yet, but there may still be trouble ahead. If, however, we take a philosophical approach to the whole situation you could say that, ‘thanks’ to the turbulence we’ve already endured, we’re well prepared for whatever changes the EU divorce settlement eventually brings – and, as was ever the case, shopping local, shopping wisely and taking care of both ourselves and the people around us will see us through turbulent times. n

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City News – mar.qxp_Layout 1 26/02/2021 14:47 Page 1

CITY | NEWS

CITYNEWS NEW ROLES Bigham’s, the fast-growing premium prepared meals business, is recruiting 20 new positions at its Quarry Kitchen, Dulcote, adding to its current 300-strong Somerset team. Last year, Bigham’s sales grew by 20% in three major retailers. There are a range of roles including production positions, which are well-placed for candidates seeking a first career step in the food industry. Recognised as a Great Place to Work™, Bigham’s offers a competitive rewards package, flexible working patterns and a tailored training and development programme for all team members. Since the Quarry Kitchen opened in 2017, Bigham’s has regularly increased employment opportunities within the local area, including apprenticeship placements. Bigham’s has pledged to balance profit with purpose and actively contribute to the enrichment of its neighbouring communities in Somerset and London. bighams.com

HOLIDAY HIDEAWAYS

PROTECTING THE MEADOWS The future of Bathampton Meadows as a green space and wildlife habitat could be secured in a deal with the National Trust under proposals to be considered by Bath & North East Somerset Council. A report states that transferring ownership of the 24-hectare site to the National Trust would ensure more of the land is opened up to the public while being protected in perpetuity for future generations, and improvements in land management would bring environmental benefits. The deal would form part of the council’s Bath River Line project which aims to transform the ten kilometre stretch of the river corridor from Newbridge to the west of Bath to Batheaston to the east. The proposal is aligned with the council’s policy on Community Asset Transfers, the aim of which is to help secure community benefits in line with the council priorities.

MaRCh 2021

Clearly PR has kicked off 2021 with a trio of new client wins, new job creation, and a financial pledge to support sustainable and social impact programs. Following a turbulent year for the communications and PR industry, Clearly has seen a sharp rise in demand for its services to a 59% increase in revenue over the last six months. This has led to the creation of four new positions across the business that will bring Clearly’s total headcount in Bath to 14, with one consultant already based in California. Clearly has also launched its first paid internship scheme for university undergraduates in addition to registering for the UK government-funded Kickstart Scheme. Applications for the scheme are still pending and Clearly has pledged to create three new jobs to support 16–24-year-olds who are currently unemployed. This year is set to be the company’s most financially successful in its seven-year history, and on 1 January Clearly introduced its pledge to people and planet. Over the next seven years, 2% of all income will be given to environment and social impact initiatives where the target is to give at least £500,000 to such causes during this period. clearlypr.co.uk

ANIMAL CHARACTERS

With the lifting of restrictions on selfcatering UK holidays from 12 April, many providers are gearing up for a busy season. The chance to blow away the cobwebs and kick back in a cosy seaside hideaway has, until recently, seemed like an impossible dream. Family-owned holiday lettings provider Cornish Horizons, part of the Original Cottages family, which has some of the most desirable holiday homes in many of Cornwall’s coastal and countryside locations are able to fulfil that dream while also giving back to the local communities. With every booking made before the end of March, the company will donate to UK Community Foundations, a national network of local foundations, bringing together people and organisations that want to improve their communities. cornishhorizons.co.uk

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On the EDGE Conservation, the charitable foundation behind a series of virtual influencers for children, has hired Highlight PR for its promotion in 2021, following the agency’s successful launch of the project into the kids’ space in November. The series of humanised animal characters who vlog weekly on YouTube are special; they feature on the list of Evolutionarily Distinct, Globally Endangered (EDGE) species. But unlike tigers and polar bears, most kids have never heard of them. As Vtubers, ‘Lexi the Aye Aye’, ‘Eric the Pangolin’ and ‘Tegan the Kakapo’ have a dual mission: to entertain kids with their human-like lifestyles, whilst voicing their predicament as overlooked endangered species. The consumer PR brief is to introduce Lexi, Eric and Tegan to the primary audience of kids aged 8+, to explain their purpose and bring to life their adventures. To see them in action, visit On the EDGE’s You Tube page. highlightpr.co.uk

BATHWICK TREES Volunteers have helped to plant dozens of new trees on the Bathwick Estate, in Bath. Around 40 trees including ornamental cherry, crab apple, pear, birch and mountain ash were planted in the largest ‘street-tree’ planting project the council has delivered in a single location for decades. For the past 200 years the area has been referred to as ‘leafy Bathwick’, but over the years many trees were lost due to old age and disease. The local Residents Association canvassed for the new trees to replace them, improving the natural environment while respecting the area’s heritage. The project was funded through developer contributions and topped up with a grant of £500 from Councillor Manda Rigby’s Ward Empowerment Fund allocation.

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ocl A C C O U N TA N C Y

141 Englishcombe Lane, Bath BA2 2EL Tel: 01225 445507

www.oclaccountancy.com

Paying your spouse or partner from your company to save tax

If your spouse / partner has no (or low) taxable income, they will be wasting their tax-free allowance and losing state pension rights; paying them from your company might be a benefit. The tax and NI consequences of a business owner paying their spouse a salary is often subject to HMRC enquiry because it can save tax for you and your company, particularly if you are a higher rate tax payer. A spouse on the payroll at £500 per month will have no tax or NI bills to deal with, whilst the company will save corporation tax (CT) equal to 19% of the annual salary. It also means that the spouse salary reduces the need for dividends and consequently saves personal tax for the owner. If HMRC discover that the spouse has been included on the payroll there’s a strong possibility that they will ask questions about the spouse’s role is in the business. HMRC doesn’t seek to stop the salary (and it cannot) but it can disallow the deduction from profits for tax, for any of the salary it believes is not justified by the work carried out. HMRC could even seek to argue that because the spouse provides no services to the company, the salary is actually a gift from – and taxable on - the owner. Even if the salary is over the NI lower earnings threshold, unless it is paid for “gainful employment” it doesn’t count as earnings for NI purposes and won’t qualify for pension credits; not perhaps normally obvious to HMRC but might be spotted if it’s the situation is already being challenged. There is a way however for a spouse to play a genuine role in the business even if they don’t have the skills to be involved with the trade. HMRC won’t object to a salary paid for management services, such as looking after the company’s statutory obligations e.g. dealing with Companies House or your accountants, helping with admin or systems – or you could also make your spouse a nonexecutive director. Being an NED doesn’t have to involve much work but justifies a salary because it involves taking on the legal responsibilities of a director.

For tax saving tips contact us – call Marie Sheldrake, Tom Hulett or Mike Wilcox on 01225 445507

The importance of reviewing your Will

A Will is never high on our list of priorities, after all none of us want to dwell on what would happen if we weren’t around – but if 2020 has shown us anything it’s that life can certainly be unpredictable. An out of date Will can often cause more problems than not having a Will. So, in order to protect your loved ones, it is vital that you regularly review your Will (the suggestion is every five years), however the following reasons may prompt you to revise your Will. You had a family If you have children, it is important to review your Will to ensure that it makes provision for your children in the event of your death. Your financial circumstances have changed If your financial circumstances have improved, this could alter the Inheritance Tax (IHT) liability of your estate. You have married/divorced Marriage automatically revokes your Will and therefore it is essential to update your Will as a newly wed. Although divorce only revokes the clauses relating to your ex-spouse, you should review your Will to ensure that it is still valid to prevent your estate being administered under the laws of intestacy. Changes in the law Tax legislation is constantly changing and therefore it is important to review your Will in line with this. An executor or beneficiary has died If an executor or beneficiary named in your Will has died, it is important to ensure that your Will provides for a replacement executor to act or a substitute beneficiary to inherit. So if your circumstances have changed and you want to ensure that your Will looks after your loved ones after you have gone, please call David Hill or Hannah Welbourn today on 01225 750000 or email david.hill@mogersdrewett.com, hannah.welbourn@mogersdrewett.com to arrange a review.

Call Marie Sheldrake, Tom Hulett or Mike Wilcox on 01225 445507 to arrange a no-obligation meeting

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CITY | BUSINESS

Renewable energy: green for less than brown “It’s not about selling something, it’s about being something,” says Steven Day, co-founder of Pure Planet, the Bath-based green energy company with high ideals and a forward perspective, who offer a zero mark-up on the energy they supply. Emma Clegg asks Steven about the company’s unique approach and uber green culture

rganisations have a habit of constraining, thwarting and suppressing. We wanted to avoid that. We wanted our people to say ‘I like my company, I love going to work, it’s really great and creative and open’.” Steven Day’s stated ideals about the working culture at Bath-based energy company Pure Planet is (appropriately) highly energising. The company is forward thinking, innovative, and it cares – about its staff, as well as about its sustainable energy offering. Pure Planet is Britain’s first fully digital green energy supplier. They are one of the 23

Co-founders Steven Day, Andrew Ralston and Chris Alliott

Three intrepid staﬀ taking a green commute to work

Pure Planet People: staﬀ training often takes place outside in nature'

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companies that are part of the Bath Unlimited brand, a collection of businesses in Bath with future forward practices and world class operations. Pure Planet offers greener, cheaper energy, with 100% renewable electricity and carbon offset gas. Their electricity is drawn from the sun and wind, and it’s cheaper than power that pollutes. All their gas is carbon offset at no additional cost, seeing them investing in sustainable projects all over the world. And they were the very first energy company to offer zero markup on the energy they supply – with the actual cost of the energy directly passed on to their customers. They also have a mission to help Britain to net zero. The company is relatively young, only set up in 2016, but last year it was named the South West’s best company to work for, it came second overall in The Sunday Times’ top 100 small companies list and is a Which? recommended energy provider. In 2020 Pure Planet doubled its staff, doubled its clients and doubled its turnover. Steven, Pure Planet’s co-founder, with friends Chris Alliott and Andrew Ralston, explains the vision and logic behind the setup when none of the founders had expertise in the energy industry. Andrew and Steven both worked for Virgin, and later Orange and EE. “Telecoms at the front end are essentially marketing and customer services organisations with millions of customers, and this has much in common with the energy sector. At the time we were at Virgin, they were in the throes of digitisation. And the service model was changing to be more direct and digital.” “The energy sector has been slow to modernise, probably 20 years behind telecoms. So we had the experience that lent itself well to a market that needed to digitise and modernise. We also had an interest in renewables and sustainability and we’d got to a point in our careers where we wanted to make more of an impact.” They set up with the backing of multinational oil and gas company BP, who own 24% of Pure Planet. While historically BP has played a significant part in global greenhouse gas emissions, it now has a goal to cut them to net zero by 2050 and is increasing its investments in renewables. The opportunity that they saw stemmed from the fact that companies offering green energy at that time were charging a premium. “Even some of the Big Six energy companies were offering green tariffs, but they were all very expensive. And the fact that green was being marketed as a premium we thought

was the wrong way round. It just does not address climate change, if the thing that you must do is being charged at a more expensive rate.” When they looked into why green energy was offered at a higher rate, they had to probe deeply. “When we spoke to consultants and people in the industry they all said ‘green is more expensive’. And when we asked why and really pushed, people would say, ‘Oh because it is’. And we said ‘Well who said? Where is the rule book that says this?’ And people didn’t really know. “It seemed that because it was morally more worthy it needed to come under a premium package, only bought by aficionados and people wealthy enough to assuage their conscience. Our view was that this was just not the way forward. If being green is the preserve of just a few, we’re never going to get there. So we tried to flip it another way.”

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Every sustainable twist that we put on our activities has a moral to it. It’s a statement.

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“

“Back in 2017, if you chose a green tariff, you’d typically pay 20% more than the average price,” Steven explains. “Pure Planet is around 15-20% cheaper than the prevailing market price. So we’ve won that battle and we’re really proud of that.” “In the early days we used the phrase, ‘Green for less than brown’. We wanted to provide renewables more cheaply than the conventional alternatives. A friend of ours called it a double no-brainer. No-brainer no 1 is that it’s cheaper. No-brainer no 2 is that it’s greener – so why wouldn’t you do that?” Pure Planet’s electricity is 100% renewable – a mixture of 89% wind, 11% sun and some hydro power – and their gas is carbon offset, enabling the balancing out of gas emissions by helping to pay for emission savings in other parts of the world. “In the UK, four in five homes rely on gas for their heating and hot water. And while gas central heating was a real innovation in its time, it’s now an old technology, and we need to transition off it. So in the next couple of decades we’ll all need to swap our gas boilers out.” This will mean the widespread use of heat

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CITY | PRIDE

“It’s a much wider principle than being green – it’s also got to be good ” companies from a people perspective was really impressive. It tried to liberate and to give people authority, autonomy and responsibility. And allow them just to be themselves. And that was quite refreshing. “When we were setting up the company, we called Richard in the first week. We spent a lot of time at the beginning formulating the culture, ethos and practice that we wanted to create. We decided that there wasn’t a rule book. We had this running joke for the first few weeks, “What would Richard Branson do?” and “How can we better that?”. “We’ve tried very hard to create a company that is unique and special,” explains Steven. “There is a sense of trust that has to come through in an organisation. People go to work as adults. If you recognise that the individuals have adult lives and families and they have the vote, why aren’t they treated with that kind of respect and freedom inside the workplace?” This culture has resulted in some special offerings: equal parental leave for men and women, the carbon offsetting of people’s commute to the office, and unlimited holiday.

pumps and electric boilers. But in the meantime what can we do? “The next best thing,” says Steven, “is carbon offsetting. It’s not perfect, a sticking plaster from an environmental point of view. But carbon offsets often come with additional benefits, helping communities to thrive in difficult circumstances. “If you look at a typical bill from a dual fuel home, most of the spend is on gas. Homes using gas generate nearly four tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year. No one was addressing this, so we are working towards it. Carbon offsetting neutralises it and it’s better to do that than not do it at all.” Steven says that one of the upsides of the pandemic is that with more people working at home, there’s been a greater interest in renewable energy. “People have been more conscious of the lights burning and the heat being on, so there’s more interest in going green.” The company also spends time lobbying the government to address why new-builds are still going in with gas boilers. “It’s a few years before this changes, but it’s coming,” says Steven. One of the major carbon offset projects that Pure Planet are involved with is planting and protecting trees in the Peruvian Amazon, and it has smaller investments such as wind farms in North Africa and Morocco and supports the clean energy transition in the Philippines. All these projects come with UN Standards, set up after the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and designed to help areas that can protect and preserve forestry. So each project has a value in terms of how much carbon offsetting it will achieve. Pure Planet has a secret weapon, a People Director, Richard Roberts, who Steven worked with at Virgin. “He was in a large way responsible for the culture that had been created at Virgin Mobile. We as employees loved working there – it was a great place to be. The way the company tried to run its THEBATHMAG.CO.UK THEBATHMAG.CO.UK| NOVEMbEr 2010 | jaNuary 2020

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“Our holiday provision goes back to reasons of trust. And to avoid people having to bunk off if they need to take a child to the doctor. If they have used their holiday up and want to take a week or two to recharge, that’s also fine. What happens in reality is that people value the freedom but it’s not abused.” The sustainability ethos is all-pervasive – company cars are electric, and they have an electric bike scheme. Three members of staff recently did a shared carbon-free commute to the office in a canoe, arriving at 9am for a celebratory breakfast with the whole office. If they have guests, vegan food is served. “Every sustainable twist that we put on our activities has a moral to it. It’s a statement. And it makes a big difference to how people perceive the organisation.”It’s not about selling something; it’s about being something. So we are constantly questioning ourselves. Striving every day to offer a service to the public. So it’s a much wider principle than being green – it’s also got to be good.” purepla.net; bathunlimited.org

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PROMOTED CONTENT

Survey reveals: broadband is number one cause of family arguments

new survey of 2,000 parents commissioned by Bathbased full fibre broadband provider Truespeed, reveals that three quarters of families have argued over broadband as they battle to work from home while ensuring their children attend online classes.

According to the survey conducted by OnePoll, two-thirds (67%) of parents say they need fast broadband connectivity because they work from home, but only around a third (36 per cent) have a highly reliable home broadband connection. And almost half (46 per cent) experience broadband problems at least once a week. Some of the biggest online frustrations were video calls shuddering, freezing or even dropping out entirely. These problems have been experienced by 24 per cent of respondents, while 16 per cent have even struggled to get their broadband to cooperate when sending an email. Today reliable home broadband is seen as a crucial part of modern life. A huge 92 per cent of respondents claiming they would be ‘lost’ without, which firmly cements how crucial this modern-day utility is for everyday life. Against this backdrop, it’s unsurprising that a fifth of parents have faced arguments after asking their children to stop using the broadband to free up enough bandwidth for them to attend a work video call. Or that four in 10 families now have more rows about internet use than about what to watch on TV. This highlights the imperative need for broadband infrastructures that can cope with modern day demands. Particularly as home working is set to be here for the long run, the need to move away from part-copper networks that produce unreliable connectivity is more urgent than ever. The typical household now juggles nine connected devices at once. So multiple devices being used at the same time and subsequently clogging up the broadband was found to be the top gripe (23 per cent). In conjunction with this, others have rowed because someone

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tried to download a big file, making the internet slow for everyone else (13 per cent). Evan Wienburg, CEO of Truespeed, said: “Struggling with substandard broadband is a big challenge for parents up and down the country juggling working from home with their kids’ online schooling. Everyone wants a piece of the broadband action so it’s hardly surprising that unreliable connectivity and bandwidth issues are causing family rows. Our survey underlines the urgent need for working from home parents to be able to choose an ultra-fast, ultrareliable full fibre broadband service that can handle whatever their family throws at it.” Truespeed is focused on connecting communities in cities, towns and rural areas in the south west that have been ignored by national broadband providers. Having recently announced plans to roll out its brand-new network in Bath, the ultrafast era is right on the historic city’s doorstep. Providing futureproof, gigabit capable connectivity to homes and businesses that have previously been stymied by poor broadband, Truespeed is catapulting Bath into the digital fast lane. Truespeed has already connected over 200 communities, is continuing its network roll out in the historic city of Wells alongside it’s much anticipated network build in Bath and its surrounding areas. By building a brand new 10 gigabit-capable full fibre broadband infrastructure and providing a dedicated fibre-optic line to every household, Truespeed guarantees lightning quick connectivity and cast-iron reliability, even at peak times. True to its community-first ethos, Truespeed also offers primary schools and community hubs passed by its network free ultrafast broadband for life. To date, over 100 schools and community hubs have signed up. To discover more and place your order for ultrafast broadband, simply visit truespeed.com

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EDUCATION

The importance of the arts

“Without an emphasis on our arts subjects, we deny students the chance to develop this inherent creativity,” says Jonnie Bridges, Head of Academic Music at Downside School. Here Jonnie explains why Downside is making STEAM the new STEM attached to them; creative subjects are for a certain ‘type’ of person who may not be very successful in maths or may not enjoy the sciences (try telling this to Einstein or Heisenberg who were accomplished violinists and pianists, respectively). The point here is that we are pigeon-holing ourselves as ‘one or the other’ which is surely wrong. In an ideal world, equal emphasis is put on all aspects of STEAM subjects; the analytical, the logical and the creative so that one individual can achieve in all areas. The individual who understands exponentials and logarithms but is also willing to take on the lead role of Macbeth is probably one who has a great memory, a logical mind and is brave enough to perform on-stage to a critical audience of their parents and peers. I think these skills are commendable.

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The arts have an incredibly important role to play in a student’s education and shouldn’t be overlooked as ‘additional’ or ‘extra-curricular’

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or many years, STEM subjects have been valued above others by some institutions; teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics are how we will produce topquality learners who have minds capable of innovating and leading business and industry to new horizons. There is no doubt that, taught effectively, these subjects are hugely important to young people across the globe, as the critical thinking and analytical skills required to succeed in today’s society are promoted within. These ‘hard’ skills make a learned and logicalminded individual, but let’s not forget about the ‘soft’ skills required in many walks of life. Soft skills are deemed to be those which aren’t measurable through common means of testing; team work, etiquette, communicating, listening and analysing are a few examples of soft skills which are increasingly important in the modern world. This is where the arts contribute. ‘STEAM’ is the new STEM and STEAM means a well-rounded individual; someone who can analyse, create, listen, interpret and problem-solve within the context of a team. These are the qualities that make a highly admired and desirable person. In recent years, there has been pressure on school leaders to reduce the amount of curriculum time for creative subjects, resulting in the side-lining of softer skilled subjects such as music, art and drama. Creative subjects have also had a stigma

Pablo Picasso had it spot-on when he said “all children are born artists”. The problem comes when we teach the art out of them. Without an emphasis on our arts subjects, we deny students the chance to develop this inherent creativity. Einstein once said “the true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination”. Now, whether we agree with this or not, one cannot ignore that we have numerous intelligences, but perhaps there isn’t the time to discuss Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences… Putting aside for one moment that music is one of the oldest taught subjects, the arts have an incredibly important role to play in a student’s education and shouldn’t be overlooked as ‘additional’ or ‘extracurricular’. A painter or a pianist who has finely trained motor skills could make a stable-handed electronic engineer; a director or an actor could have the oracy skills to make a fine barrister; a creative writer could make the imaginative problem-solver for any company. For each of these examples, one requires knowledge provided from our STEM subjects and the skills which are promoted in the arts subjects in greater quantities than anywhere else. In order to be successful, musicians must have discipline in practice, resilience in performance (particularly if it doesn’t go as planned!) and be encouraged to reflect on their own work regularly. Successful conductors are possibly the most analytical of musicians as they must spend hours analysing a score to understand the composer’s intentions, realise the harmonic and rhythmic elements, be able to communicate this to a room of 100+ musicians with confidence and authority and be able to count to (at least) four! Not for the faint of heart… An education without music, dance, drama, physical education and design is an education which strips young people of the chance to become more developed individuals – in an age which is all about individuality, we cannot afford to let this happen. If you are looking for a forward-thinking day and boarding school for girls and boys aged 11-18, Downside is located just 25 minutes from the World Heritage City of Bath in rural Somerset. The School’s next Virtual Open Day is on Saturday 15th May, or you can book a Virtual Visit on the day to suit you. To find out more please contact the Admissions Team: admissions@downside.co.uk / +44 (0)1761 235103 / www.downside.co.uk

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HEALTH

Perspectives on positivity

Lockdown has taken its toll on us all. So once things have opened up again, will we emerge from the experience emotionally intact? Will we be able to leave the trials of the year that’s gone behind? Heidi Rearden and Viv Kenchington provide some practical ideas about moving forward positively Heidi Rearden, Reiki consultant How do you keep hope when isolation and anxiety have been shared experiences in most of our lives? Will these feelings go away with the promise of lockdown easing? Hope can sound flippant if not held in one’s heart and really thought of as a way of raising our emotional life state. But how to achieve this in daily life? It is tough and now that we are seeing the sunshine, hope’s faint glimmer is starting to shine brighter. There is a great way that I have come across that creates hope through gratitude. Gratitude can be the doorway out of many negative feelings. I was introduced to the idea of keeping a ‘golden notebook’ by a good friend at the end of last year’s lockdown. Jotting down little (or big) ‘wins’ from the day brings gratitude flooding in. Nothing is too small to celebrate. Ringing that friend you have been meaning to call, posting that card to cheer someone up or just getting out of your pyjamas, for an hour or two anyway. Reaching out to others is a way to bring hope to you and to the person you’re connecting with. Sharing experiences creates bonds of friendship which brighten the days and can bring appreciation into daily life. Having reiki sessions can also bring in hope to life. The balance reiki brings to mind and body enabling the body’s healing systems can bring about optimism. This optimism can spread to the outward environment and others may notice this difference in your life, giving them the opportunity to tap into the same positivity. The Buddhist concept of ‘winter always turns to spring’ brings with it hope, optimism and gratitude. Here’s to a hope-filled spring with gratitude and supportive friendships for everyone. • heidireiki.com

Viv Kenchington, hypnotherapist What it is that drives positivity or feelings of hopefulness? I think it has a lot to do with perspective, and thinking differently to change your perspective. It’s easy to fall into the same patterns day-in-day-out. Wake up the same way, eat the same breakfast, work the same way, eat the same dinners, go to sleep. While it’s great to have structure and good habits in your life, you can’t grow and improve your life if you don’t think differently about your routine. The best way to change the way you think is to change your perspective. This allows for growth and for new ideas and thoughts to enter your mind.

Tips for Changing Your Perspective • Consider others’ perspective. It may seem like a simple idea, but putting yourself in other people’s shoes could help you find a new way of looking at situations. How one person experiences something can be completely different to your experience, so take into account other perspectives to gain a fuller picture. • Think of the bigger picture. Leading on from the previous point, it’s easy to get lost in the little details. However, thinking of the bigger picture can help you gain clarity and may relieve some stress along the way. Think about how your actions and behaviour could change the bigger picture. • Communicate effectively. “The meaning of your communication is the response you get” – this forms part of the philosophy of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), where communication is key. When you are not getting the correct response, think about the way you are phrasing questions. It’s your responsibility to get your meaning across in the way that it’s intended. Rephrasing questions can sometimes mean a much more harmonious household, classroom or workplace. • Write down your negative thoughts. As a solution-focused hypnotherapist, the emphasis is on the positives, but it’s useful to think about your list of negatives, focus on these thoughts, and think about how they affect your mood. Negative thoughts can cloud our judgement and our perspective, and so realising the affects these thoughts have can help to give them less power. Now write out a positive list and feel the difference. That second list will bring up feelings of excitement, confidence and determination. • Help others. Helping those less fortunate than you can put your struggles into perspective. While your worries are not invalidated because others have it worse, it can help to make you feel positive. • Change your routine, even for a day. This can give you insight into how you can actively change your life. Walk the dog down a different route, try a new restaurant, message old friends. Do things you wouldn’t normally do; the results might surprise you! Perspective can make all the difference How you perceive yourself, others, and the world around you can have a huge impact on your thoughts, emotions, and outlook. You can choose to take a negative perspective which in turn will reflect on your mood, or you can pivot your perspective and see what positive things life has to offer. n • hypnotherapyandhealth.co.uk

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‘I loved the excitement of learning something that could not just change my life but that of others’ Annie Breen, CNM Nutritional Therapy Graduate

wanted to find more purpose in my life and embark on a career that got me excited! I was attracted to the depth and detail that the CNM course went into and the fact I could fit it around my full-time job. For 10 years prior to embarking on my Nutritional Therapy journey, I worked as a Support Worker in many different remits, roles and locations throughout the UK including family support, domestic abuse, complex needs, substance misuse, mental health, homelessness and anti-social behaviour. Helping people in some incredibly challenging situations took me to a point where I wanted to know more. I’d played a role in and witnessed people change their external environment – housing, relationships and jobs, but this only got them so far. How could I help break the cycle of suffering and support them to take back agency of themselves, their health and their life? This is what led me towards Nutritional Therapy: I wanted to help people change from inside out

so that they could feel empowered and thrive, not merely survive. I’m also someone who teaches what I most need to learn, so this was very much a personal adventure. I wanted to understand how I could improve my own health and that of my family. I found the CNM course to be thorough, scientific and empowering. I loved the course content – how cutting edge it is in terms of research as well as being rooted in ancient wisdom; the lecturers; the group and my fellow classmates; the excitement of learning something that could not just change my life but that of others; embarking on a new career. I don’t really describe what I do as a career, it is part of my identity. Our health is our wealth and having this invaluable insight has changed my life in every way. Nutritional therapy IS now my life, in so many ways. It has enabled me to get clear on my values and what’s important. It has allowed me to meet some truly awesome people in an everevolving network. It has equipped me with some of the most up-to-date, cutting-edge science and enabled me to not just help myself, but my loved ones. My daughter already has a pretty good understanding about the microbiome. And now and again I catch my husband parroting nutrition advice. I think the big one for me is how it’s played a huge role in me becoming the person and mum I am today. I feel happy, healthy and empowered and that’s a beautiful thing to be able to model to my daughter. Since graduating I practise as a full-time Nutritional Therapist, I’m Edinburgh-based but work online. My direction became really clear after I had my little girl in 2016. Motherhood led me on a whole new personal and professional growth adventure. I now help exhausted, depleted mums reclaim their

energy so they can feel healthy and whole and step into their power. The combination of my coaching experience, my CNM Nutritional Therapy qualification and my motherhood journey to date has really enabled me to walk in the shoes of mothers and help them get to the root cause of their symptoms (exhaustion, anxiety, overwhelm, brain fog, digestive issues). My ‘Healthy Tum, Happy Mum’ programme is focused on helping mums rebalance and transform from inside out. I like to describe it as science v. magic. I’m a huge fan of functional testing which was something I had the privilege to learn under the experienced eye of the CNM lecturers. What I love about practising is the connection with my clients, the excitement of sharing this life-changing information, being part of their journey, the coaching element and witnessing the lasting transformation.

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Sticks and stones in Bushey Norwood Waterlogged fields and quagmires are always an issue when walking at this time of year, and now there’s social distancing to manage too. Andrew Swift suggests a walk in Bushey Norwood that deals with all three

oming up with ideas for walks at this time of year can be tricky. Fields are waterlogged, tracks turned to quagmires and, on some of the wooded slopes around Bath, the going can be treacherous. This year the customary hazards have been joined by a host of new ones. The need for social distancing has made narrow paths between walls or hedges problematic, while the non-availability of most other forms of exercise – allied to the need to stay local – means that paths around the city have seen far more footfall than ever before. Although it won’t be like this for ever, for the moment, it’s still a question of staying local and staying safe. So, while this month’s walk may not seem that adventurous, it still has a good deal going for it, as well as several surprises. It’s also largely flat and – apart from a few well-churned patches near gates – not too muddy, while wide paths and open spaces mean that keeping your distance shouldn’t be a problem. To get to the starting point, drive up Bathwick or Widcombe Hill, and, when you reach the main turning for the university, turn left. After 250m, turn right, following a sign for Claverton and the American Museum. Parking (with a two-hour limit) is on the lefthand side of the road, and, although space can be tight, there is usually somewhere to pull in (ST777641; BA2 7AZ). 56 THeBATHMagazine

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Having parked, carry on along the road, and, just past the Cats’ and Dogs’ Home, turn left through a gateway and follow the broad track straight ahead. Until the university was established in 1965, this area was undeveloped, with fields stretching in every direction, and in the 18th century was the site of Bath’s first racecourse. One field that has survived is Bushey Norwood, which lies beyond the wall on your right. After 850m, after the track rises to go through a gap into the golf course, turn left alongside a wall following the ramparts of Bathampton Camp, a large Iron Age hilltop fort or enclosure (ST775648). After 200m, when you come to a bridleway sign, bear right along a gravel track. When you come to the gates of the reservoir, turn left and then right alongside the fence. When the fence ends, follow the bridleway sign as the track bears slightly right, passing a trig point column on the left. On the far side of the golf course, as the track starts dropping steeply away, bear left (ST775653). The scrub on your right lies on the line of the camp’s northern ramparts, and, although there is little in the way of views for the first 150m or so, once you get past a muddy patch they open up, with the caterpillar of trees on Freezing Hill on the northern horizon. Eventually, scrub gives way to a dry-stone wall and the views open up westward. Follow

the wall as it curves south and, when it ends, carry on the same direction past a stand of trees. When you reach the south-west corner of the camp, with the buildings of the university ahead, turn left alongside the wall (ST771648). After 500m you pass the gap you came through earlier. Here, you have a choice. If you carry on alongside the wall, there is a short, steep and rocky downhill section at the south-east corner – not especially tricky, but it does need to be taken with care. If you’d rather avoid it, go through the gap, retrace your steps along the track and after 300m go through a gate on the left. After emerging from the trees, bear right to follow a broad grassy track towards the far south-east corner of the field – and skip the next three paragraphs. If you decide to carry on, turn right after negotiating the rocky track at the end and go through a kissing gate into Bushey Norwood. Turn right alongside the ramparts – which seem particularly impressive, due to them having been used for quarrying – and after 100m, when you come to a muddy track leading up to a fence on the right, look to your left where you should be able to make out two broad grassy tracks heading south. One curves towards the east side of the field; the other towards the west, and, if you look along it, you will notice that it is raised above the level of the surrounding ground.

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THE | WALK

Stones at Bushey Norwood

Take the track heading south west, and, after passing a single tree on your left and a small group of trees on your right, continue past a single tree on the right and two trees together on the left, before stopping to survey the ground to your left. The rectangular outline of what appears to a walled enclosure, with a tangle of bramble and holly at its southern end, is identified on an early 20thcentury OS map as the remains of a building (ST777 6481). When Colonel HD Skrine, the owner of the field, excavated it in 1888, he was struck by its resemblance to dwellings in the Iron Age settlement at Chysauster in

Cornwall. More recently, doubt has been cast on his conclusions, although the truth is only likely to be established by a full-scale archaeological dig. As you carry on, there is evidence of raised areas and causewayed paths all around, although how many of them date from the Bronze or Iron Age is something yet to be determined. After another 200m, as you pass a gate in the wall on your right, take a broad grassy path bearing left towards the south-east corner of the field. As you head towards a large copse, look across to see a large stone sticking out of the ground. This is the celebrated standing stone of Bushey Norwood, and, as you look around, you will realise that it is not alone. As well as single stones, there are several impressive piles, some with trees growing out of them. Theories as to their origin vary. Some say they were markers for the racecourse, some that they were 19th-century follies. At one time, it was thought they were the remains of prehistoric Woodsalthough on Cotswoldthat Edge stone circles or avenues, and, idea has been largely discredited, perhaps it’s best to keep an open mind and head for the gate at the end of the field. Once through it, carry on with the wall on your left, following it as it curves around the field. As you approach the south-east corner – just past a ruined building on the other side of the wall – you will notice that grass gives way to concrete. This dates from when an

Fact file n Distance: 3 miles n Level of challenge: Mostly level apart from one rough downhill section (optional) n Map: OS Explorer 155

underground reservoir was constructed here in the 19th century, but it also stands on the site of an ancient road – possibly Roman or even earlier – which ran from Bath down to a ford on the Avon. It was rerouted further south when Claverton Manor was built, but an avenue of trees, stretching westward across the field, survived until the mid-20th century. Sadly, no trace of it survives. Carry on round the field, go through the gate in the far corner, head across to a path lined with woodchips, turn left and after 100m you will come to the gate you came though earlier. n More on the stones of Bushey Norwood and Claverton Down can be found in Andrew Swift’s Country Walks from Bath, published by Akeman Press; akemanpress.com.

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Setting the tone

This year Pantone’s colourful conversation point was a divisive duo promoting solar shades and soft, muted grey. The most influential and longstanding of colour forecasters, Pantone tend to lead the way, but they are not the only ones aiming to capture the colour zeitgeist. Here we introduce a selection of the colours that have been nominated this year and ask our local interiors experts to have their say on how useful these forecasts are.

THIS PAGE: Book Room Green 322 and Sage Green 80, from Little Greene’s Stone palette OPPOSITE, from top: Lunaria fabric from Scion’s new Esala fabric collection and the Deverell Sofa Collection, both from TR Hayes, capturing Pantone’s vision of grey and yellow; and Groove Terracotta Porcelain tiles from Mandarin Stone, who have seen a real desire for strong, more positive colours in interiors this year 58 TheBATHMagazine

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INTERVIEW

e always anticipate with interest the announcement by Pantone of their shade of the year – it provokes some animated, often divided, conversation. This year, it was a double whammy, which garnered some controversy, with the bright and hopeful ‘Illuminating’ (yellow) paired with ‘Ultimate Grey’, expressing a message of positivity supported by fortitude. While their colour choice has the most weight, Pantone don’t have the monopoly on forecasting colours. The Dulux Colour of the Year 2021 is Brave Ground (soft brown), described as bringing a bolstering, balancing feel to any room, a versatile shade that lets other colours shine. Graham & Brown have chosen Epoch (plum), describing it as “proud, regal and luxuriously bold”. Then there is Little Greene’s recent launch of their ‘Stone’ palette, a co-ordinated collection of 36 natural colours. Eleven of the new colours included in the collection have originated from Little Greene’s ongoing colour research across the portfolio of properties in the National Trust’s care, continuing the cataloguing of original colours from key periods of interior design. Readings were taken from paint colours, architectural elements, tapestries and indeed stone itself. In America, Sherwin Williams have opted for Urbane Bronze, a rich golden brown shade with gray undertones, designed to bring a sense of comfort to the home. The neutral colour is part of the Sanctuary palette in the company’s Colormix Forecast, a report that predicts a need for balance in design for the upcoming year. Benjamin Moore, on the other hand, have put their money on the intriguing, balanced, and deeply soothing Aegean Teal. Is this a masterful way of capturing the mood of the moment, or just a convenient marketing opportunity? Our local interiors experts share their tips and insights.

Louisa Morgan, Mandarin Stone We’ve seen a real desire for stronger, more positive colours in interiors this year and that includes yellow. It really is the most happy shade and people need that right now. While we have seen warmer tile shades becoming more popular, grey wall and floor tiles still outsell all other shades. The bathroom is a place to really experiment with colour and we love our stand-out ‘Paintbox Canary’ bathroom where yellow is used successfully over a larger area. We like to include tile colours that are more trend led and these are great for marketing and strong imagery. However not all the more ‘trend led’ colours result in good sales – the more neutral, timeless white and grey tile ranges are the most in demand. Graham and Brown’s Epoch and Benjamin Moore’s Aegean Teal both resonate as colour choices, both shades I’m seeing coming through in interiors. Green has been popular in the last year or so and it offers so many shades, from deep forest tones, to fresh mints. Again pink has been popular in recent years and warmer tones such as peach, orange and burgundy are gradually being used more. I’m a fan of Pantone’s colour choices this year. ‘Illuminating’ and ‘Ultimate Grey’ work equally in contrast and harmony when placed side by side. I see the grey as offering neutral solidarity and the yellow as uplifting and hopeful. The grey offers a neutral, calming base in interiors and allows stronger shades, such as yellow, to really stand out. A single colour alone was never going to really give the true reflection of our current times. • mandarinstone.com

Clair Strong, Clair Strong Design It’s been 21 years since Pantone launched its Colour of the Year as a trendsetting concept and now every paint company has an opinion and a colour that it calls its own. Colour trend forecasting has become a crucial marketing tool for paint manufacturers and announcing a colour of the year is a simple, cost-effective way to get attention. I think they often get it wrong. How many of us painted our homes pale pink and blue when Pantone announced Rose Quartz THEBATHMAG.CO.UK THEBATHMAG.CO.UK| |jAnuARy MARCH 2021 2010

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CITY | INTERIORS

THIS PAGE: Clockwise from top left: Chocolate Colour 124 from Little Greene’s Stone palette; Dulux’s Colour of the Year, Brave Ground; Graham & Brown’s Epoch; and Benjamin Moore’s Aegean Teal OPPOSITE: Loaf’s Squishmeister Sofa colour scheme fits well with the colour vibes surrounding it, with the wall colour reminiscent of Dulux’s Brave Ground; and Dark Brunswick Green 88 from Little Greene’s Stone palette connects us to nature xx TheBATHMagazine

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INTERIORS

and Serenity as the joint Colours of the Year in 2016? I think their choice this year, universally panned on social media, has missed the mark. And Dulux’s grey beige, Brave Ground, isn’t a colour I get many of my clients asking for. It was supposed to be a colour to represent being grounded to Mother Earth and the elements but we needed something more uplifting this year! I look to Instagram to see what the key colours are for the year. I see navy and dark green kitchens, bedrooms painted in Farrow & Ball’s Sulking Room Pink and 1970s colours like soft terracotta and mustard being used in modern ways. I think the paint company Little Greene has nailed it. Their new colour card is called Stone, a palette that’s full of warm neutrals like cream and beige with toning greens, pinks, bronzes and burgundy. They’ve made it easy; just pick a colour from one of the six colour families and they show you which other colours work with it. I see 2021 as a year where we embrace warm neutrals which feel more restful than the Scandi inspired dark greys of recent years. I think we’ll also be seeing a lot of green. It’s synonymous with nature and calming qualities and is everywhere right now. • clairstrong.co.uk

Charlie Marshall, Loaf A few years ago, it was all about neutrals, but I think, now, with sites like Pinterest and Instagram, and plenty of good inspiration out there, it’s easier to get bolder colours right. Pantone’s Illuminating and Ultimate Grey cater for many tastes with the combo working well for many schemes. Our yellow fabrics are already proving a hit and the number of customers choosing them is up by 53%. Yellow shades look especially great with greys in a grown-up scheme, so if you have existing grey pieces, or perhaps grey walls, then why not give your room an update with pops of yellow? To stand the test of time it doesn’t need to be trendy, but it should be stylish. Using

statement colours is a great way to give a fresh take to a classic design but choose what you love; something that’s well made that will still look great in five years’ time. • loaf.com

Richard Hayes, TR Hayes When we heard about the new 2021 Pantone colour, we were a bit surprised; firstly, they have chosen two colours, and secondly, the combination of pale grey and light lemon yellow seems a bit 1980s. Also, grey and mustard or ochre (a better combination in my view) has been big for a few years, and even this has been gradually replaced by moody blues and greens. However, the two colours reflect the grim year of 2020, and contrast this with a colour of hope and happiness. It will be interesting to see if the industry picks up on brighter, more cheerful colours – something we could all do with. As regards keeping up with colour trends, we are in the hands of the manufacturers, but we try to keep fabric options for our sofas and chairs as up-to-date as possible. Some companies are pretty hot on this, such as Ercol who keep a good selection of old favourites, but who also regularly add new fabrics. We love seeing what colours Pantone and others come up with, but have to admit this doesn’t always reflect what we see in the store. With larger items such as sofas, people tend to stick to colours that will last rather than something that may date quickly. Accessories are really where you can be a bit more adventurous. • trhayes.co.uk

John Law, Woodhouse & Law Creative people are ultimately stimulated by the world around them. So, when trends emerge, they tend to be a response to the political, environmental and social conditions at the time. This makes trends generally an effective barometer for the mood of the nation and they tend to be adopted where they resonate with how people feel.

While there are myriad colours of the year from multiple companies, which can feel confusing, they will each relate in some way and it’s important to take notice as professionals. Pantone’s Ultimate Grey and Illuminating were selected to capture the optimism of society during and post-Covid and the steadfast, practical nature that got people through. Equally, Dulux Brave Ground and Little Greene’s Stone collection celebrate much softer neutral tones that will provide a warmer canvas for homes than the grey hues that have been fashionable over the last decade. Contrastingly, Graham and Brown and Benjamin Moore’s colours of the year (Plum and Aegean Teal) are much bolder, richer tones. These colours allow you to inject interest into a scheme, create a sense of fun and make a space unique. Making a space feel individual is an almost universal requirement of our clients, who want a space that tells their story. That said, in our studio, we tend to be influenced by trends and fashion in colour, but we wouldn’t let a trend dictate colour choice. The style and personality of our clients, the levels of light in a property and the use of room would be the most important factors. The pandemic has led us all to spend much more time at home, but our experiences are very different, so the design of our homes, including colour, needs to reflect this. For example, some of our clients’ lives have been frenetic during the pandemic as they have juggled home schooling and careers. This has triggered a desire to create a sophisticated scheme for their home that evokes tranquility and calm. Other clients are looking to make their schemes feel richer, with more texture, pattern and stronger use of colour in a bid to add a sense of fun to their homes. Regardless of personal style, be it for maximalist ‘granny chic’ or a more pared-back look, we feel that the adoption of a much warmer colour palette will be the key trend. Whether that’s as a base canvas as a backdrop for stronger colour, or a scheme that combines multiple warm neutral shades in different textures to create a sense of warmth. • woodhouseandlaw.co.uk

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Clare, of Cloud Nine Create

The fast-paced world of social media and digital comms offers an array of inspiration to keep you en pointe when it comes to the hottest colour palette, and where to apply it, but the balance has shifted from prediction to dictation as the consumer becomes more influential in what is ‘trending’, and what ‘feels’ right, right now. The standard rules still apply, such as from what direction is light entering the space. The obvious change, though, is that now, perhaps more than ever, we require our space to do so much more; our homes need to be a haven, an entertainment space, and offer an educational and working zone. Coupled with that, there is also more of a biophilic sensitivity of bringing the outside in, as we connect more with nature, in the absence of other distractions and in pursuit of life’s simple pleasures and comforts. And the natural world offers the most inspiring colour palette and combinations. Some of our best-known and most loved paint brands bring out their coveted key colours for the year ahead, with an array of suggestions. Their offerings are insightful as they are largely determined by social media artificial intelligence technology, and so it’s what’s currently trending amongst us, the consumer. This may be to do with what is happening in our world, or the world at large. It is said that we are attracted to certain colours because they evoke a feeling or sensation that we require more of in our lives. However, no two homes are the same and no two consumers are the same, so whilst it’s great to checkin with what’s current, it’s important to consider your new colour preference in terms of your overall design scheme. We are demanding more from our space right now. This is reflected well in the 2021 colour ‘predictions’ because we have a mix of earthy browns and stone, along with aegean seas and midday sunlit blue skies, evoking the natural world and our resurgent connection with it. Bold colours are richly pigmented and don’t feel ‘artificial’, reminding us of the bustling cityscapes that we long for. n • cloudninecreate.co.uk

Woodhouse and Law say that a warmer colour palette will be a key interior trend, or a scheme that combines multiple warm neutral shades, such as this one of their schemes

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“ Colour psychology has a huge influence on trends and with the world in turmoil we need to anchor ourselves with organic, earthy, reliable colours at home,” says Annie Sloane. Shown here is Annie Sloan French Linen wallpaint

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Your Space. Redesigned.

We dream in in colour... and black and white.

www.cloudninecreate.co.uk

“We used Mardan following a recommendation from a friend. They moved us in and out of storage and then into our renovated house. I would highly recommend them. The service was super efficient and the guys were quick, polite and courteous. Nothing was too much trouble and all of our possessions arrived safe and sound” Emma Webster, Moon Client

DOMESTIC & COMMERCIAL MOVERS • PACKERS • STORERS • SHIPPERS

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HOMES, INTERIORS & GARDENS | GUIDE 2021

Rooms for improvement

For 12 long months we have spent a little more time at home, appreciating the good things but also dreaming of making improvements. Our S/S 21 guide features all the best trades and services to help spruce up your house and garden. Whether it’s a small decorating touch or a major project that you’ve been putting off, this directory offers a great range of expert services to make all those home, interior and garden ambitions become reality.

KELLY MARIE KITCHEN INTERIORS 8 Pulteney Terrace, Bath BA2 4HJ Tel: 01225 481881 (Mobile: 07796 554466) Web: kellymariekitchens.com Kelly Marie has more than 15 years experience in the kitchen design industry. She has had the pleasure of working on many luxury kitchen projects in the Bath area and now owns her own unique and creative business based on a constant list of word-of-mouth recommendations. Her technical designs with intrinsic creativity allow spaces that are functional yet beautiful. With a vast portfolio of luxury German kitchen projects, Kelly works with each client’s budget, providing personalised attention throughout the design process. Kelly believes that it is all about the little details and her approach combines purposeful variations of colour, textures and finishes. The careful selection of these elements endow the home with a sense of harmony, while reflecting the individual style of the client.

WOODHOUSE & LAW 4 George’s Place, Bathwick Hill, Bath BA2 4EN Tel: 01225 428072 Web: woodhouseandlaw.co.uk Woodhouse and Law is a well-established full service interior and garden design partnership. From the showroom and studio on Bathwick Hill, the company offers every component necessary in the delivery of a project from concept to completion, ensuring the highest quality throughout. The unique service combines the expertise of inhouse interior and garden designers with that of a highly skilled team of local craftsmen and technicians. So, whether your project is residential or commercial, the team at W&L can help with a wide range of services to transform your space. From making up soft furnishings to a full design service and project co-ordination, everything is delivered with exceptional attention to detail. To arrange an initial consultation, get in touch or pop in to meet the team.

BATH RECLAMATION Tel: 07983 556757 Web: bathreclamation.co.uk It was a sad day when Walcot Reclamation and Walcot Architectural Salvage had to move out of Bath, but the good news is that former manager and director, Cary Morgan, is now the owner of Bath Reclamation, based just outside Bath in Newton St Loe. Bath Reclamation stock and source all types of reclaimed materials, with a special focus on building materials such as Bath stone ashlar, paving, flooring, roofing and bricks. All other types of salvaged materials and salvaged items – from windows to sleepers, curbs and resawn pine – are kept in stock when available. A visit to its helpful, new website is a must.

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LUX : PLY Online shop: luxply.co.uk Lux:ply is one of Bath's newest homeware businesses and is fast becoming a destination for design-led furniture in the city. Using reclaimed waste from larger partner manufacturers Lux:ply produces beautiful plywood furniture with massively reduced ecological impact. The collection includes ready-made homeware, limited edition pieces, and a customisable furniture system including a popular range of trestle tables and benches, wallshelves, bookcases and noticeboards. A fully bespoke design and build service is also available for larger freestanding and fitted projects. Head to the Lux:ply website today to shop the collection online or get in touch to visit the city centre Studio-Showroom and discuss your custom or bespoke requirements. Studio and showroom by appointment only, contact: bath@luxply.co.uk

FIAT LUX

GARDEN AFFAIRS

8 Bath Street, Frome BA11 1DH Tel: 01373 473555 Web: fiatlux.co.uk

Trowbridge Garden Centre, 288 Frome Road, Trowbridge BA14 ODT Tel: 01225 774566 Web: gardenaffairs.co.uk

Let there be light... Fiat Lux opened its Frome showroom in 2003, and since then it has been the go-to place to see a huge range of superb lighting, from traditional fittings and shades to the most upto-date trends in contemporary lighting designs. For interior lighting projects there are fixtures and fittings, bulbs, coloured cords and cables in every possible combination, as well as a full display of exterior lighting ideas. Fiat Lux works with leading manufacturers and is an established favourite with property developers, architects, interior designers and all lighting aficionados, professional and domestic. Whatever your style, mood or interior desire, then a trip to Fiat Lux will really light up your ideas.

Create space for home working, hobbies, a growing family or even a new business venture with a cost-effective, versatile, fullyinsulated garden room. Garden Affairs offer a huge range of high quality, sustainable garden buildings and will help you get the design, the installation, the quality and the price spot on. Visit their extensive display centre at Trowbridge Garden Centre in Wiltshire to see garden offices, art and craft studios, teenage dens, granny annexes as well as a range of ‘posh sheds’ and summerhouses.

MANDARIN STONE 15–16 Broad Street, Bath BA1 5LJ Tel: 01225 460033 Web: mandarinstone.com Renowned for its comprehensive natural stone collection, Mandarin Stone has gained quite a reputation for its on-trend and beautifully designed porcelain. Ranging from tiles that cleverly mimic materials such as wood, concrete and marble to striking glazed and patterned tiles, the collection has endless surface design possibilities. Established for over 25 years and with 10 inspirational UK showrooms, it offers dependable specialist knowledge as well as technical expertise. Almost the entire natural stone and porcelain collection is held in stock in the UK, so lead times are short.

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EMMA ROSE Tel: 07885 235 915 Web: emmaroseartworks.com emmaroseartworks@gmail.com Are you looking for the finishing touch to your room? Or are you contemplating a starting point, from which all colours will flow? Commissioning a painting will bring all the elements together. This could be either a statement piece and focal point, or something to blend in with existing tones and textures. Artist Emma has extensive knowledge of creating and placing her artwork in a variety of locations in house and home - along with office, show-homes, holiday rentals and hotels. She can provide origial paintings, limited edition giclée prints, canvas giclée prints and cushions of her artwork. Feted for being affordable and fun, she offers a personal service - tailoring meetings to exactly what the client needs. Get in touch for a free quotation.

AHM INSTALLATIONS

HOUSE OF RADIATORS

Showrooms in Wellington and Yeovil; Tel: 0800 731649 Web: ahminstallations.co.uk

22 Wellsway, Bear Flat, Bath BA2 2AA Tel: 01225 424199 Web: houseofradiators.co.uk

For 20 years, AHM Installations have paved the way for mobility in the home, helping both the elderly and people with additional needs to feel safer in the bathroom. AHM Installations can provide wet rooms, walk in showers, walk in baths, automatic toilets, raised toilets, grab rails and shower stools. The AHM team pride themselves on the delivering a professional service by Sales Surveyors and fitters who are very experienced in dealing with the most complex of bathing requirements. All share a common knowledge and expertise in dealing with the most vulnerable of people and show great empathy which is much appreciated by customers. Every customer receives a free bathroom survey and a no obligation quotation, as well as free advice on available government grants. AHM Installations are a member of BHTA (British Health Care Trades Association) and Check a Trade as trusted trades people. AHM Installations have showrooms in Lincoln, Kent, Leicester and Somerset.

House of Radiators sells traditional and designer radiators that can be off-the-shelf sizes/finishes or bespoke sizes and colours. This popular, family-run business opened its Bear Flat showroom in 2011 and not only sells to Bath areas but throughout the UK and overseas. Following a recent re-fit, there are over 100 radiators on display and due to increasing popularity the traditional cast iron and column radiator range has expanded. With over 45 years experience in the heating and radiator industry they offer a friendly and high level of customer service. This is key in helping customers choose the right radiator for their home that will not only look amazing but will heat their room and do its job. Because the team work with 20 of the leading manufacturers and distributors in the radiator industry, there’s always something to suit all budgets and styles. Locally the company offers a free, at-home consultation where they’ll measure up and work out the correct heat requirements and size up radiators accordingly.

HOMEFRONT INTERIORS 10 Margaret’s Buildings, Bath BA1 2LP Tel: 01225 571711 Web: homefrontinteriors.co.uk The eclectic Homefront Interiors has an ever-changing selection of homewares, gifts and cards. This little independent store may be small, but it has a wide range and a regularly updated stock of new and vintage homewares and follows a simple ethos of sustainability. This could mean recycled materials, Fairtrade origins, small-scale production or simply showing a little love and care to vintage finds. It is the clever mix of vintage and contemporary alongside an ever-growing selection of handmade pieces from local artists, including textiles, ceramics, jewellery, art prints and cards, that makes Homefront such a great destination. Ideal for gifts and unique finds for your own home.

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NEWMAN’S JOINERY

SCHMIDT BATH

3 Broadway Court, Miles Street, Bath BA2 4HX Tel: 01225 318378, Web: newmansjoinery.co.uk

1 Park Road, Bath BA1 3EE Tel: 01225 337276 Web: schmidt-bath.com

In April 2015, Roland Newman took over the thriving Hulin & Hudson joinery firm following the retirement of Mike Hulin. Based in Widcombe, the joinery shop was a well-established local business providing highquality joinery for houses in Bath and the surrounding areas. Chris, the foreman, worked with Mike for almost 20 years and continues to run the workshop, so the wealth of experience and local knowledge has been retained. The company deals with everything from timber windows, staircases, doors and frames to alcove cupboards, panelling, timber conservatories and shop façades and they have a specialist knowledge in listed buildings. Contact Newmans for a free, no-obligation initial visit to discuss your requirements.

Providing bespoke made-to-measure solutions in Bath for over 30 years, the Schmidt Bath team, headed up by Leroy McKenzie, can transform every room of your home. Specialising in kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms, Schmidt Bath, formerly Interior Harmony, has highly skilled in-house installers headed up by Colin Bevan, and can now offer complete renovation projects including extensions. The growing design team based at Park Road in Bath can help you create your dream kitchen, advising on the best layouts and appliances from brands including Neff, Siemens and Miele. If you’re looking to upgrade your kitchen, revamp your bedroom or design the perfect home office, give the team a call to book your free quotation.

AVONVALE CARPETS

BONITI

37 Kingsmead Street, Bath BA1 2AA Tel: 01225 427057 Web: avonvalecarpets.co.uk

Dunsdon Barn, West Littleton, Wiltshire SN14 8JA Tel: 01225 892200 Web: boniti.com

The choice of flooring is vital in transforming any room and the range of options can sometimes overwhelm. Luckily Avonvale Carpets is on hand to assist. It has served homeowners and businesses throughout the city of Bath and Wiltshire for 48 years, providing an excellent choice of flooring, indepth expertise and perfect fitting. An independent, family-run business, Avonvale Carpets only works with trusted, local, professionally trained fitters, and deals directly with major manufacturers. The extensive selection of quality flooring is second to none: woollens, naturals, eco-friendly alternatives, vinyls, hard flooring and tailor-made options, too. You will be amazed at the variety on offer in the shop, found just off Kingsmead Square.

Run by Giles and Simon Lunt, Boniti is a high-quality interiors (and exteriors) business. The showroom is a destination for all types of natural stone, porcelain and timber flooring as well as decorative tiles, stoneware, Kadai firebowls, and the highly desirable Everhot range cookers and stoves. For large and small projects, the Boniti team are masters of their profession and it shows in every detail. The showroom is easily reached from J18 of the M4.

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URSELL POOLS & WELLNESS 476 Bath Road, Saltford, BS31 3DJ Tel: 01225 874874 Web: ursell.com Originally founded in 1988, Ursell Pools & Wellness has established itself at the forefront of the UK pool and wellness industry. With over 30 years of experience delivering pool and wellness solutions, Ursell have the unique ability to manage your project in-house from design and planning right through to completion, ensuring unrivalled consistency and quality. The company works on a wide range of projects from domestic, DIY style pool builds to delivering luxury high end commercial facilities. If you're looking to install a pool or spa in your garden, hotel, school or health club, the expert team has all the skills, tools and expertise you need.

THE BATH FRAMER 14–15 Walcot Buildings, London Road, Bath BA1 6AD Tel: 01225 920210 Web: thebathpictureframer.co.uk

ANNA DESIGN BESPOKE FABRIC COMMISSIONS Tel: 01373 473122 / 07779 951691 Web: anna-design.uk

The Bath Framer, owned by Kelly, is a friendly boutique picture framers that has a beautifully quirky front of house and an amazing naturally lit workshop. Both are a joy to work in and to visit for customers wanting to see how frames are created. Since opening, the business has gone from strength to strength, building a client list of local residents and businesses based in Bath, Bristol and beyond. A bespoke framing service, tailored to suit all individuals’ needs runs alongside a gorgeous selection of cards, gift wrap and stationery.

Anna Fraenkel has been fulfilling textile commissions since she was 17 and for the last decade has been working with national interior design company Jayne Clayton. She specialises in textiles for the home and events. Whether you’re looking to transform a village hall into a beautiful wedding venue, want something really unusual, or simply need some curtains, blinds or cushions for your home, Anna will visit, advise and bring your ideas to life.

BATH KITCHEN COMPANY 7–9 North Parade Buildings, Bath BA1 1NS Tel: 01225 312003 Web: bathkitchencompany.co.uk Established in 1990, Bath Kitchen Company is a well-regarded family business based in Bath. With vast experience, the company takes pride in its close attention to detail and its understanding of what each client requires. Whatever an individual client’s tastes, the team will find a bespoke kitchen that strikes a perfect balance between aesthetic and practical requirements. Consequently every kitchen is unique, beautifully designed and perfectly functional. Handmade using premium materials and to the highest standards, a beautiful kitchen can be carefully crafted to make the most of available space, existing features and the latest technology. Whether designing for Bath’s oldest private homes or cutting-edge city apartments, the principle is the same – Bath Kitchen Company will create a place that enhances your lifestyle.

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MARMALADE HOUSE

ETONS OF BATH

Tel: 01225 445855 Web: themarmaladehouse.co.uk

Tel: 01225 639002 Web: etonsofbath.com

Marmalade House is an award-winning, professional furniture painting and design company, based in Bath. It specialises in French and Gustavian finishes that include the layering of colours, distressed paintwork and lime-washing as well as gilding, colour-washing for ageing and waxing services. The focus is all about colour and style and how that fits into a customer’s home. The team of trained interior designers also offer a design and styling service that brings together the client’s style and aspirations for change. For those who prefer to do everything themselves, the company also offers popular training courses on how to paint furniture to professional standards, and the use of colour within your home. Run by Vanessa, Marmalade House is an established, friendly company that has its clients’ interests at heart, whatever changes they would like to make, and at whatever scale.

Etons of Bath is the UK’s only specialist interior design practice focused on refurbishing and renovating Georgian and period homes. Their team of 12 interior designers and project managers can help you plan, design and deliver classically inspired interiors that add value, turn heads and improve the use of space. From their studio and showroom in Walcot Street, the team covers projects of all shapes and sizes from large country homes to townhouses, boutique hotels to luxury apartments combining creative flair and project management skills with a passionate and friendly team.

JOEL BUGG FURNITURE & SPACES Tel: 01225 583520 / 07779 236242 Web: joelbugg.co.uk

ARCHITECT YOUR HOME

Joel Bugg Furniture & Spaces designs and creates elegant, bespoke fitted furniture and interiors, which are architecturally thought through to seamlessly fit and suit your property. Joel and his team offer a fully managed service from initial space planning and concept designs, using teams of skilled cabinet makers in their manufacture through to final installation. They will also recommend, source and provide lighting, flooring and other finishing touches as required. Their expertise spans all interiors from kitchens and bathrooms to libraries and boot rooms, and as well as working directly with clients they work collaboratively with architects and interior designers to deliver a truly tailored solution.

Tel: 0800 849 8505 Web: architect-yourhome.com Architect Your Home’s service kicks off with an initial design consultation – this is where your project starts. The consultation will include an in-depth discussion to fully establish your requirements and aspirations. You will also be provided with sketch drawings of a properly considered and collaborative design proposal. The practical implications of your design will be explained in detail and you will be equipped with the necessary tools so that you can move your project forward confidently to the next stage. You will also receive advice on issues with planning permission, listed building consents and structures. At the end of the session you will have an agreed proposal and recommendations on the next steps and how to move the project forward.

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TR HAYES 15–18 London Street, Walcot, Bath BA1 5BX Tel: 01225 465757 Web: trhayes.co.uk TR Hayes has been selling furniture in Bath for over 100 years and has a reputation for good quality and good service. The large store features many well-respected brands, with an amazing array of furniture of all types on display – sofas and chairs, dining and living room furniture, beds and mattresses (including Hypnos, Vispring and Tempur). Styles range from classic to contemporary, with ranges to suit all budgets. There are also highly respected carpet and curtain departments. Carpets and wooden flooring can be fitted, made-to-measure curtains and blinds provided, and advice on poles and accessories is available. With friendly and knowledgeable staff to help guide you, and excellent aftersales care, you can rely on TR Hayes.

THE FINE ARTIST SHOP 89 Old Park Rd, Clevedon BS21 7HT Tel: 07446919331 Web: thefineartistshop.com

CATRIONA ARCHER Tel: 07823 884945 Web: catrionaarcher.com Catriona Archer believes that interior design should be accessible to all, which is why providing inspiring and practical working solutions is at the heart of what she does. Catriona starts by making the most of your existing items, storage and space. This is a wonderfully quick and inexpensive way to refresh and update your interior before discussing and sourcing any further additions you may require. So, if you are looking for a complete design and styling experience from start to finish, or simply an introductory half/full day consultation to spring-board or fine-tune your existing ideas, then contact Catriona to discuss what works best for you.

When you have spent time carefully choosing and creating an interior environment which you identify with, it is important that your artworks connect with it. This can be achieved through colour, texture, size or theme. Tracey Bowes from The Fine Artist Shop recognises how difficult it can be to find the perfect artwork to suit your chosen interior. So she is there to help. Tracey believes in using traditional and professional painting techniques to create contemporary paintings for your home. Her archival Giclée prints can be adapted to colour match your current aesthetic or size requirements. Tracey also provides a commission service to help you decide upon a theme or a technique for your feature pieces. She will then create bespoke artwork that compliments your style and communicates to your personal audience.

KINDLE STOVES Glenavon Farm, 331 Bath Road, Saltford BS31 3TJ Tel: 01225 874422 Web: kindlestoves.co.uk At the heart of your home should be the perfect stove. Kindle Stoves is a local specialist in clean burning, Eco Design Ready stoves approved for burning wood in Bath, with a wood-burner to suit every home and every style. The team stock the super-efficient Woodwarm, Contura and Rais models as well as many more, offering a full installation service – from fireplace alterations, to slate hearths and stone fireplaces. The lovely showroom, situated just outside Keynsham, has one of the largest displays of wood-burners in the South West and is open seven days a week. Pop in for advice and brochures or to book a home survey. Seasoned logs, gas fires, and the Big Green Egg outdoor cooker are also available.

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CLOUD NINE CREATE Tel: +44 (0) 1985 844601 Web: cloudninecreate.co.uk info@cloudninecreate.co.uk One of the most rewarding activities we engage in is the creation of our space. The objects we choose reflect who we are. Creating our space can be a demanding process. It requires us to find our way to objects and interiors that can convey our identities. And the small things matter. The experience and imagination of the team at Cloud Nine Create can help bring your vision to life. The elements of interior design including decoration, furniture selection and placement, lighting, fabrics and textiles, artwork curation and accessories. Practical advice on bathroom and kitchen designs. They can also help with your outdoor space too. Even just a few hours can make a big difference to the direction your project takes, as well as the outcome.

BATH CARPETS AND FLOORING 4 Kingsmead Street, Bath BA1 2AA Tel: 01225 471888 Web: carpetsandflooringbath.co.uk Supplying and fitting flooring throughout the South West since 2004. Bath Carpets and Flooring (BCF) offers a wide selection of carpets, all made from a variety of different materials including wool, polypropylene, nylon and sisals. With the combined experience of more than 90 years, the team’s extensive knowledge and expertise puts you at ease as they match your needs with the perfect flooring solution. BCF pride themselves on only giving impartial advice and hassle-free measuring and estimating, so there will never be any sales pressure or confusion. As the city’s largest Karndean flooring specialist, BCF’s luxury vinyl tile showroom will give you the freedom to create impressive floors, where the only limit is imagination. With showrooms over two floors offering an even greater selection of homely carpets, vinyl’s, LVT’s and modern rugs. Commercial flooring from all leading manufacturers is available through Bath Contract Flooring Ltd. So if it’s flooring for your home or your business BCF have got it covered.

COOPERS STORES 13–15 Walcot Street, Bath BA1 5BN Tel: 01225 311811 Web: coopers-stores.com Coopers is a highly acclaimed and award winning appliance retailer with over 70 years of continuous trading. With a large showroom in the centre of Bath, you can see a fantastic display of kitchen appliances including range cookers, refrigeration, laundry, dishwashing and built-in appliances. Coopers has a dedicated, expert team always on hand to help choose the right product for you. They aim to be competitively priced with other high street players and online sellers too. They can deliver throughout the South West and offer flexible delivery slots to fit with a customer’s needs. They have also established links with a great team of expert installers to offer a complete advise, buy, deliver, and install service. This is independent retailing at its best – values driven and a superb customer service – which is a real tonic to the spiritless online experience and for many years running, a popular entry in our ‘Best of Bath’ list.

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HEIDI REIKI BALANCING ENERGY AND FENG SHUI Tel: 07776 255875 Web: heidireiki.com What people have said.: “We really appreciate the work Heidi did for us; energy clearing the space after we had moved into our new clinic in London. Heidi is lovely, and has a very professional and healing nature. We had been recommended by a friend and are so glad we did. Heidi gave us reiki sessions individually with specific advice for each of us to feel as good as possible. Our clinic space feels so clear and peaceful now thanks to Heidi’s extensive and thorough work on the area! Heidi also gives you a thorough report explaining everything she did and what she found, which she also talks through with you, giving you tips to enhance the energy in the area. It honestly all made such a difference and our clinic has been thriving ever since! Thanks again for all your work Heidi and we look forward to our next session in the future. Highly recommend to everyone.” Chiropractic Alchemy, London. “Heidi came and transformed my home and me. Through her amazing ability of using Feng Shui and reiki. My home now feels lighter, brighter and homelier. I now enjoy putting the key in my door at the end of day. Heidi’s aftercare was a real surprise and a gave me lots of reassurance. Thank you” Home owner - Bath A peaceful place to live and work: Major life changes, such as a new job, a new relationship, a new home, or an illness are all times when you and your home could benefit from energy clearing. Does something feel 'out of kilter' or not ‘quite right’ in your living space? Sometimes energy flows need to be restored in places where there has been emotional upset, also other environmental factors can disrupt the flow of energy to a space. Moving through grief and other obstacles, with healing, can bring a sense of wellbeing to you and your home – Heidi’s process can help support to resolve these challenges and bring calm to you and your surroundings. And it’s not just at these times either; for the general health of your home, a yearly process of energy clearing can be beneficial. In addition to Feng Shui, Heidi will offer Reiki to those living/working there, to help achieve a peaceful, relaxing, calm feeling for you and the space itself. If your home or work place would benefit from some balancing, contact Heidi for an informal chat and more information. Remote sessions are also available.

TRUESPEED BROADBAND SERVICE PROVIDER Tel: 01225 300370 Web: truespeed.com Bath based Truespeed is full fibre broadband provider delivering ultrafast connectivity to homes and businesses in the South West’s hardest to reach cities and rural areas. Truespeed is building a brand-new infrastructure delivering 10 gigabit-capable full fibre broadband directly into premises delivering the very best high-performance, highly reliable connection truly future-proofed connectivity. With a range of ultrafast packages available, Truespeed is making full fibre broadband more accessible than ever before. Powered by its community focused ethos, Truespeed proudly connects schools and community hubs passed by its network to free broadband for life.

MARDAN REMOVALS AND STORAGE Tel: 01225 313233 / 07899 847857 Web:mardanremovals.co.uk Mardan work with both home and business owners directly and all work is of the highest standard, reliability being paramount. The team are highly experienced in moving fine arts and antiques giving you the confidence that your most prized possessions will be moved safely and carefully. All your effects will be packed to European standards. Mardan offer a full packing service and all packing materials are free of charge with every move. The company also provides secure storage hire in Bath with around-the-clock access and CCTV security and with flexible rental periods and storage size at competitive rates. Whatever your reason for needing storage, if you’re looking to store all your household goods or just a couple of items, look no further. Mardan Removals can take the stress away and arrange it all for you in Bath.

The Bath Magazine Homes, Interiors & Gardens Guide can also be found on our website: thebathmag.co.uk

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“It takes over three years to create a new cross and to see the plants come into flower for the first time is so exciting,” says Juliet Davis

Hellebore passion

As many of us look forward to watching the endless supply of showy blooms blossom in the warm summer months, Juliet Davis explains how we can, in fact, bring fresh hues to our gardens even during the dark days of winter...

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At a time of year when the frost deters most gardeners, the flower buds of the Lenten rose are pushing their way through the soil

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hank goodness for gardening! Since March 2020, we have all faced a very challenging time which has severely limited our daily lives and brought much stress. We have all had to find ways to distract ourselves, and gardening has for some truly filled the role of bringing fresh joy and a sense of wellbeing into our lives. Whether it be the challenges of producing plants and vegetables from seed, clearing and designing an area of the garden to freshly plant up or making more effort with window boxes and pots, gardening has become an opportunity for bonding with family and friends. My own journey started as a youngster in Scotland when I followed my grandfather around his garden. He was a lupin grower and I still remember his colourful beds of lupins, which grow particularly well in the wetter climate of the north. But it was not until we swapped houses with my parents-in-law, who live on the edge of Bath, that I was able to create a garden and develop my gardening skills. Eventually with the family growing up, I could devote more time to propagating plants and fell in love with the bewitching charm of Lenten roses. At a time of year when the frost and winter chill deter most gardeners from venturing forth into their gardens, the flower buds of the Lenten rose (Helleborus x hybridus) are pushing their way through the soil to reveal exquisite blooms of clear whites, yellows, peaches, and pinks through to the rich colours of rouge, plum and black in forms of single, double and anemonecentred flowers. Spots, stripes and blotches add character and excitement to these new crosses. Hellebores are herbaceous perennials and part of the genus Ranunculaceae, the buttercup family. There are approximately 20 species, of which two are native to Britain. Helleborus viridis and

Helleborus foetidus, known as the ‘stinking hellebore’ – only stinking if the leaves are crushed, which is a favourite of mine. The small pale green bell flowers hang above the dark green divided leaves and, in particular, ‘Wester Flisk’ with its deep red stems is a fine addition to a garden, and although not long lived, will gently seed around. The last few years has seen extensive breeding using Helleborus niger crossed with other species but they have not claimed my heart. The original Lenten species came from the northern parts of Greece and Turkey, growing in inaccessible mountain reaches, in the woodland or shaded habitats among the shrub. These plants were dull in colour compared to today’s plants as more than half a century ago, Helen Ballard and Elizabeth Strangman collected seed and began to hybridise from their stock. Since then, the onward breeding by dedicated nurserymen and women cross-pollinating their most beautiful specimens, has resulted in the exciting development of these plants, which give such joy through the winter months. And I was to become one of them. In 2003, having fallen in love with these Hellebores, I decided to

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GARDENING

try my hand at propagating. It takes over three years to create a new cross and to see the plants come into flower for the first time is so exciting. My first plants came into flower in 2007 and I have come a long way since then producing some very original stunning hellebores, which are all very hardy and flower for three months from January to April depending on the winter weather. No longer are they shy, with faces that greet you sideways. Lenten Roses do like to grow in semi-shady beds, somewhere where they won’t be baked by summer sunshine. Plant them in an area of the garden where they can be enjoyed together with other spring flowers such as snowdrops, aconites, cyclamen coum, baby iris and early narcissus. Together with winter flowering shrubs in the background, the scene can be magical. It is important to buy your Hellebores in the spring when they are in flower, for each plant has its own individual character and style. Lenten roses are hungry feeders and should be planted in good soil enriched with well-rotted compost and a general fertiliser such as Vitax Q4. These are long lived plants, so plant them three feet apart and together with being well fed, they will reward you with many flowers. Hellebores grow well in pots but be generous with the size of pot. I cut off the spent flower stems in May before the plants shed their seed to avoid inferior seedlings. Hellebores are prone to leaf spot so remove the season’s leaves in November and dispose of them without composting. The new leaves will follow the flowering stems. With a family to look after, my garden has given me the opportunity to be creative in my own way, and I enjoy sharing all my hard work. n

Hellebores allow you to produce magical scenes in your winter garden

Kapunda Plants Nursery specialise in Lenten Hellebores. Southstoke Lane, Bath BA2 5SH; kapundaplants.co.uk Please check website for updated information and to sign up to mailing list. Open on 7 and 28 March and by appointment to garden clubs and societies, and for plant enquiries.

Create space with a garden room GARDEN OFFICES • LOG CABINS • STUDIOS • SUMMERHOUSES POSH SHEDS • TIMBER GARAGES • OUTDOOR LIVING SPACES

01225 774566 • www.gardenaffairs.co.uk Visit our Display Centre at Trowbridge Garden Centre 288 Frome Road, BA14 0DT THEBATHMAG.CO.UK

march 2021

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the directory Home Care

Electricians

Health, Beauty & Wellbeing

to advertise in this section call 01225 424 499 House & Home

Email: annadesign@btinternet.com

ONEMAGAZINEONECITYONEMONTH Jewellery

Nigel Dando WE BUY Gold, Silver & Platinum in any form or condition.

Nigel Dando 11 Pulteney Bridge, Bath BA2 4AY Tel/Fax: 01225 464013 www.nigeldando.co.uk

Holiday Rental

60+ luxury properties for lets 2 nights to 5 months Holidays – For business – Friends & family – Temporary accommodation during renovation/relocation

IS AVAILABLE TO PICK UP FOR FREE AT

Contact: 01225 482 225 alexa@bathholidayrentals.com www.bathholidayrentals.com Providing 4 & 5 star self-catering properties since 2006

76 THEBATHMAGAZINE

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IssuE 217

CENTRAL

Cobb Farr PIF.qxp_PIF Full Page 01/03/2021 11:00 Page 1

PROPERTY | HOMEPAGE

his spectacular first floor apartment is set within the grounds of a stunning country property with the benefit of its own private garden, garaging and parking. The rooms are of wonderful proportions, flooded with light; in particular the distinctive drawing room with three sets of windows overlooking the surrounding grounds, hills and valley beyond. In addition, there is a large kitchen breakfast room, separate dining room and three good sized bedrooms, all of which provide a light and airy feel throughout the property. Approached via a substantial outer reception hall, the inner hall with its very attractive oak staircase leads up to the first floor where the apartment itself is as large as many houses. The accommodation has the advantage of being spread over one level, enjoying increased light and views over the beautiful grounds in which Warleigh Manor is set. Unusually for a first-floor apartment, No 4 has the advantage of its own private garden, with lawns, an orchard, vegetable garden and summerhouse, all overlooking the Limpley Stoke Valley and the River Avon below. The gardens, along with woodland belonging to No 4, total just under an acre. Within the gated estate, it includes a private garage and 2 parking spaces, with potential for an electric vehicle charging point. This property offers an elegant and secure style of living in a discreet community, combining the benefits of being on the edge of Bath in beautiful countryside, set within stunning maintained grounds. This is a very special property and to fully appreciate it a viewing is recommended by the sole agents Cobb Farr.

Warleigh Manor • 3 bedrooms • Stunning drawing room • Private garden • Wonderful light and views • 2 private parking spaces and single garage • Extensive sensitively curated communal grounds • Lovely semi-rural location close to Bath city centre

OIEO £1,100,000

Cobb Farr, 35 Brock Street, The Circus, Bath. Tel: 01225 333332

THEBATHMAG.CO.UK

MARCH 2021

THeBATHMAgAzine 77

Cobb Farr January.qxp_Layout 1 25/02/2021 16:42 Page 1

Ashley, Bradford on Avon

Englishcombe Village, Bath

Richmond Place, Bath

Walcot, Bath

Thingley, Corsham

Larkhall, Bath

L SO

01225 333332 | 01225 866111

Cobb Farr January.qxp_Layout 1 25/02/2021 16:43 Page 2

Trafalgar Road, Bath £835,000

An attractive 4 bedroom Grade II listed Georgian townhouse with stylish accommodation arranged over 4 floors, a beautiful garden and located conveniently within easy reach of Bath city centre and a stone’s throw from excellent local amenities. • 4 double bedrooms, 3 reception rooms • At home office

• Family bathroom and wet room

• Open plan well fitted kitchen and dining room • Beautiful gardens

01225 333332 | 01225 866111

Andrews Edit Col - March 21.qxp_Layout 1 01/03/2021 10:35 Page 1

The Andrews Property Column increased. Property demand is up 13% from this time last year and sales agreed up 8%. This increased demand for property has led to the increase in property prices. The average property price in Bath is now £367, 736 which is 4% higher than this time last year, and 28% higher than five years ago. Whether you’re thinking of moving soon, or just want to know a bit more about the market and how we’re continuing to work within guidelines then contact one of the five Bath branches to see how we can support you in your property move, or book a valuation on our website, andrewsonline.co.uk. If you’re unsure on what the right thing to do for your situation is then why not speak to one of our local experts in branch or arrange a call with a mortgage adviser?

The property market remains open?

Sources: Dataloft. For further information, updates and advice on the current property market contact one of the four Andrews’ offices in Bath: Andrewsonline.co.uk

e know this hasn’t been the start to 2021 that many hoped for, and it can feel like an uncertain time in the world, let alone in the property market. However, it’s certainly not all doom and gloom and there are some really positive stories coming from the property market this year. We know how important buying, selling, letting or renting a property is, and there are just somethings that can’t stop even during lockdown. That is why we are continuing and improving how to safely provide you with all our services whenever you need us. Our teams across Andrews in sales, lettings, mortgages and insurance protection are available online, on the phone, via virtual viewings and, if necessary in person with the appropriate precautions. The property market has luckily been largely unaffected by the nationwide lockdown and there are plenty of people moving during this period of time. So far this year the demand for property has actually

Bailbrook Lane, Bath A stunning development of two individual contemporary luxury homes set in a beautifully mature setting with magnificent views.

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MaRCh 2021

issue 217

Dylan MacDonald of Andrews presents a brief video on how covid safe viewings are conducted

Winkworth fp March.qxp_Layout 1 26/02/2021 15:07 Page 1

winkworth.co.uk/bath for every step... SALES

DANIEL STREET, BATHWICK £270,000 Leasehold

GLADSTONE ROAD, COMBE DOWN £500,000 Freehold

CLEVELAND BRIDGE, BATH £550,000 Leasehold

1 bedroom top floor flat in popular location.

Semi detached 3 bedroom bungalow on quiet no through road.

Unique period townhouse on the River Avon.

1 reception room | Separate kitchen | 1 bedroom with ensuite | Separate w/c

1 reception room | Kitchen | 2 bedrooms | 2 bathroom | Garden

SION HILL, LANSDOWN £475,000 Leasehold

FORESTER LANE, BATHWICK £650,000 Freehold

ELIZABETH PARADE, BATH £895,000 Leasehold

Newly refurbished apartment with parking and garden.

Victoria 3 bedroom house on quiet lane in Bathwick.

Beautifully designed townhouse on Bath Riverside.

Contact our Sales team on 01225 829000 bath@winkworth.co.uk Matthew Leonard

Lucy McIlroy

Director

For Letting Properties contact our Lettings team on 01225 829000 bath@winkworth.co.uk Denise Latham

WINKWORTH BATH bath@winkworth.co.uk 13 Argyle Street, Bath, Somerset BA2 4BQ Follow us on

Lettings Manager

Central

Andrewsonline.co.uk

Pierrepont Street, BA1 £495,000

01225 809 571

This beautiful city centre apartment is awash with period charm. Recently updated by the current owners and presented in excellent order. The apartment has a private entrance and also allows holiday/short term lets should you wish. Offering over 1400 square feet with entrance hall, entrance lobby, kitchen dining room, reception room, study, two double bedrooms and two shower rooms. Offered with vacant possession. Energy Efficiency Rating: D

central@andrewsonline.co.uk

To view more properties and other services available visit Andrewsonline.co.uk

Camden

Andrewsonline.co.uk

Hill View Road, Larkall, BA1 £375,000

This well-presented family home comprises entrance hall, through lounge/diner that features a bay window with beautiful views over the valley. There is kitchen with a door which takes you to the rear garden. On the first floor are two double bedrooms, one with lovely views, a second with views over the garden, a third single bedroom and a bathroom. Externally, is a pathway with steps leading up to the front of the house. To the rear, is a landscaped garden which benefits from far reaching views to little Solsbury Hill. Energy Efficiency Rating: D

01225 809 868 camden@andrewsonline.co.uk

To view more properties and other services available visit Andrewsonline.co.uk

Newbridge Andrewsonline.co.uk

Weston, Bath, BA1 £799,995

A fantastic opportunity to purchase a characterful, detached, Georgian property is Weston Village, Bath. Originally built in the 17th century, this property was altered in the Georgian period, it still has many original Georgian features throughout creating a charming and characterful farm house. Set on a quiet lane in a secluded location, the property sits in the centre of it’s grounds with garden wrapping around the front and sides. Energy Efficiency Rating: TBC

01225 809 685 newbridge@andrewsonline.co.uk

To view more properties and other services available visit Andrewsonline.co.uk

Bear Flat

Andrewsonline.co.uk

Shakespeare Ave, BA2 £675,000

A well presented three bedroom Edwardian family home in Poets Corner Bear Flat. This Edwardian terraced property offers well presented accommodation and a south facing garden that has a suntrap patio that leads to the lawn with gated access to the rear. Energy Efficiency Rating: E

01225 805 680 bearflat@andrewsonline.co.uk

To view more properties and other services available visit Andrewsonline.co.uk

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