Readers of the Bath Echo Weekly Newsletter will know that over the past few weeks we have created the A to Z of Bath in the Past using pictures from the Akeman Press Archive. With the agreement of the Editor of the Bath Echo, we will now upload that alphabet to the Akeman Chronicles over the coming days. To begin, here is our offering for the letter A.
A is for Avon Street.
The first picture turned up while riffling through a box of unidentified postcards at a postcard fair. The street could have been just about anywhere, but the hill in the background was unmistakable. This is an unusual image of Avon Street, decorated, we believe, for the coronation of George V in 1911. The area was notorious for being one of the roughest neighbourhoods in Bath, but here are the residents dressed in their Sunday best – the little girls in their best bibs and tuckers and some of the small boys wearing sailor suits and hats – ready for the photographer. A closer look reveals signs of poverty. Some of the children are wearing hand-me-downs which are too large for them, while the boy on the extreme right of the front row is in a suit that he grew out of some time ago. Yet despite its poverty and its reputation, it had a strong sense of community, which shines through in this picture.
A is for Assembly Rooms
By the early twentieth century, Bath’s once glittering Assembly Rooms were almost as down at heel as Avon Street. Their glory days long over, they were being used as a cinema. In World War I, they had even been used as an aircraft factory. In1931, however, Ernest Cook, heir to the Thomas Cook travel fortune, stepped in to save them. Seven years late they reopened, giving a much needed boost of Regency elegance to the dingy, soot-blackened city. In 1942, however, a German bomb reduced them to a smouldering ruin – this photograph shows them the day afterwards. Thanks to John Wood the Younger’s insistence on high quality construction, large parts of the building still stood, though the interior was wrecked. Here, soldiers can be seen rescuing a Bath Chair – one of the few items to survive. Post-war, there was much discussion about what to do with them. It was even suggested that the ruins be cleared away and a block of flats built there. Fortunately, the owners, the National Trust, insisted the Assembly Rooms were restored, to continue to serve once again as a gathering place for future generations.
