NOTES ON A SMALL CITY

Columnist Richard Wyatt ruminates on physical and digital signage, and whether more information signs to explain our city’s history would be useful

Because of the years I did walking the streets of Bath as a Mayor’s Guide, I happen to know that our beautiful Victoria Park was given the appendage ‘Royal’ because it was the first such public space to be opened in 1830 by Queen Victoria when she was just 11 years old. It’s local folklore that the princess heard someone criticise her ankles as she cut the ribbon, and rightly took offence, and that was the reason why, once crowned, she never came to Bath again.

The opening ceremony is a fact, the body shaming is not, but should information like this be made available to our visitors who hopefully will be returning to stroll through our World Heritage City?

Would it add to their appreciation to read a sign at one end of Great Pulteney Street explaining that it’s the city’s grandest avenue at 1000 feet long and 100 feet wide? And that the Titanic would sit in it with room to spare at either end? Or what about a sign beneath the ancient tree in Abbey Green acknowledging that this giant plane is one of the oldest architecturally planted trees in the world and took root as a tiny sapling back in 1793?

Steam railway fans might enjoy reading an information plaque, if it was attached to the little rather rusty and battered iron bridge that crosses the London-bound rail line in Sydney Gardens. It would say that this is the last pedestrian bridge –designed by that little Victorian engineering giant Isambard Kingdom Brunel –that still spans his Great Western Railway between Bristol and London. The Grade 2* listed cast-iron footbridge was erected in 1840.

But what brought on this train of thought? I had a coffee with my friend Audrey –she is a retired teacher, and when she was an active Mayor’s Guide she was the one who examined me on my test walk when I qualified to wear the badge. We keep in touch, and at our last meeting she was keen to talk about a ‘totem pole’ carved into what looks like a Green Man, which stands in the corner of the city’s Botanic Garden, itself a part of that 57-acre park originally opened 191 years ago by Princess Victoria.

Audrey was walking round the carving looking for information as to what it represented and who had made it. Eventually she noticed a tiny plaque screwed to the pole explaining how the ‘totem’ had been carved by wood sculptor Lee Dickenson, who is still active at his Apple Carving Studio in Dorset. Audrey thought if an A4 sized sign was placed where it could be seen from the footpaths it would attract greater interest, and maybe there are other botanic highlights that would benefit from improved signage.

The work, entitled Man’s Hand in Nature, was sculpted from a Wellingtonia tree that had died naturally after 146 years. Lee explained that he used a chainsaw to create the piece, or rather a series of chainsaws giving different lengths of the cutting bar and power. He took my point about the signage, but said that a much larger one might detract from the work.

These days technology is increasingly taking over the job of providing information. There are already many online image recognition apps offering instant information about the world around us. You can point your smart phone at a plant leaf and an app tells you what it is. Maybe soon we’ll be able to walk around Bath and do the same for every building and physical feature in our World Heritage City. Maybe we can already and I just don’t know?

Many would say that we have enough street furniture getting in our way –from benches and bollards to traffic signage, lamps and litter bins –without more obstacles. Yet while technology may soon be telling us everything we need to know about our environments, it does leave behind those who aren’t so cyber savvy.

Whether you are a young computer whiz-kid or a granny with a guide book, l would suggest that taking one of the walking tours around the city now getting underway again, is fascinating and great family info-tainment. But then I would say that –old Mayor’s Guide habits die hard! n