The Bath Magazine November 2018

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ISSUE 194 | NOVEMBER 2018 thebathmag.co.uk £3.95 where sold

MADE IN BATH – ARTISAN GIFTS BEAUTIFUL CREATIONS BY THE CITY’S ATELIERS AND DESIGNERS

THE CITY’S BIGGEST MONTHLY GUIDE TO LIFE AND LIVING IN BATH

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Contents November 2018 5 THINGS

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Essential events to look forward to this month

INTERVIEW WITH PRUE

Jessica Hope goes on a magical mystery food history tour

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Melissa Blease talks to Prue Leith ahead of her visit to Bath

CLASSICS AT CLANDAR

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34 38

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BEAUTIFUL ADVENT

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WALK IN THE WOODS

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A CURATOR’S LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 From presenting mosaics to fixing leaking roofs, National Trust curator Rupert Goulding explains his role

IN THE GARDEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Must-see exhibitions for November

PETER GABRIEL IN BATH

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Andrew Swift and his dog explore an ancient earthworks

Emma Clegg unravels BRLSI’s history with Betty Suchar

ARTS IN THE CITY

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Crystal Rose sources some indulgent beauty advent calendars

Our guide to the top events happening around the city

KEEPING TRACK OF THE PAST

TRAVEL

Explore the history and culture of the island of Sri Lanka

Jessica Hope picks some highlights from the FilmBath Festival

WHAT’S ON

IT’S DINNER PARTY TIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Melissa Blease offers some advice for hosts and guests

Emma Clegg discovers the lure of tweed, wool and cashmere

A FESTIVAL OF FILM

MINING AND DINING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

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November is the time to take stock of your garden, says Jane Moore

INTERIORS: GO FOR CARAMEL, HONEY

A new exhibition of photographs by Clive Arrowsmith

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Caramel is set to take grey’s crown as king of the neutrals

COVER FEATURE ARTISAN GIFTS

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A selection of handmade treasures from local artists and craftspeople

HOT PROPERTY

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The finest homes to buy or rent

FIRST WORLD WAR CENTENARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Catherine Pitt considers the consequences of the end of the war in Bath

BATH AT WORK

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Neill Menneer’s portrait of recycling operative Anthony Mendy

Even more great content and updates online: thebathmag.co.uk

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ON THE COVER

Ca’ D’Oro, fine wool painted shawl from Carole Waller’s Scaffolding collection, £195.

Photograph by Egle Vasi

Follow us on Instagram @thebathmagazine

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EDITOR’S PICKS A CARAMEL TREND

Spiced Honey is Dulux’s 2019 colour of the year. So if you don’t have a honey or caramel statement in your home, you’re in serious danger of not being in vogue. Going caramel is also a good lead up to all things festive – think cinnamon sticks, star anise, fudge, coffee cake and (dare I say it) a tot of whiskey?

These elements aside, Clair Strong offers some practical tips for all things caramel in the interior on page 104.

from the

EDITOR Editor photograph by Matthew Sterling

L

et’s start with Prue. Disloyal perhaps, but we’ve just about forgiven her for not being Mary Berry and – having in my case refused to watch her first GBBO series on Channel 4 – have been engrossed in the current series. Melissa Blease interviews the lady herself on page 18 before she comes to Topping & Co in Bath to launch her latest book.

This month we’re enthusiastically supporting our local artisans with a four-page gift guide on page 60 with a selection of work from artists and craftspeople from our region. (My virtual living room shelf has already been furnished with Maria Wojdat’s three miniature bowls in yellow, pink and green.) We also investigate what happens behind the scenes at Mallory on page 22, where we discover there is a workshop that has been making jewellery for 120 years.

History hits hard this month with the centenary of the end of the First World War. Catherine Pitt takes a look at how the people of Bath were affected by the postwar years on page 66, from the continuation of rationing to the changing role of women. In terms of cultural history Rupert Goulding has given us a fascinating insight into his role as senior curator at the National Trust on page 98. Based at Dyrham Park, Rupert is working both to revive the interior decoration of the 17th-century house and to find ways of telling its engrossing stories. The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRLSI) in Queen Square is in the history business, too – in fact I recently held the oldest piece in its collection, a four-billion year old piece of meteorite. I interviewed the chair of management Betty Suchar as the organisation celebrates 25 years since its reopening – see page 46.

A new exhibition at the Museum of Bath Architecture opening on 1 December sees a selection of photographs of Peter Gabriel taken by celebrated photographer Clive Arrowsmith 40 years ago in Bath. Not just in Bath, mind you, actually in the Roman Baths, as well as by the abbey and on Solsbury Hill (also the name of Peter Gabriel’s debut solo single) – find out more on page 58.

Films are also on our minds in November as FilmBath arrives (see also right centre and page 34), and we take an indepth look at two of the films coming up at the Little Theatre Cinema on page 36.

Finally, how do you feel about dinner parties? Are they an unparalleled treat or a nightmarish distraction from a quiet night at home with Netflix? Melissa Blease has a few useful tips about etiquette and expectations on page 74. Here’s a sneak preview: hosts, don’t attempt fiddly canapés; guests, don’t take beer.

Enjoy your November in the city.

Emma Clegg Editor

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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FILM BUFFS

There are SO MANY amazing films being shown in the FilmBath festival this month that – as well as a dedicated feature on page 34 – I wanted to highlight a few that stand out.

The Wound (see right) is a beautifully wrought study of clashing models of masculinity (8 November, Odeon, 8.45pm). Summer 1993 is a stunning drama of a childhood ripped apart (6 November, Odeon, 8.30pm). Leaning into the Wind is a beautifully filmed documentary about artist Andy Goldsworthy whose pieces sit between sculpture and performance. Info: filmbath.org.uk A GIFT FOR BATH

We know you will be slavishly buying from our amazing local shops in the lead up to Christmas.

But did you know that you can also support the local economy by buying a Bath gift card as a present? The card can be loaded with as little as £10 or as much as £500 and there are more than 180 participating businesses, including national chains and smaller independents as well as local eateries and those offering hair and beauty treatments. The Bath Gift Card can be purchased online and from sales points in the city such as My Small World in Southgate; bathgiftcard.com

your talents. They for use were made. ❝ Hide notWhat’s a sundial in the shade? ❞ BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706–1790)

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ZEITGEIST

things to do in

November

Go Georgian The Holburne Museum was the Sydney Hotel in the late 1700s, a gateway to the 18th-century pleasure gardens, now Sydney Gardens. Go back in time with A Very Georgian Soirée at the Holburne on 24 November, from 7.30pm, and experience live music, dance and card games in the galleries, sample gin cocktails, pose for a satirical portrait and visit the mystery fortune teller. The night will raise funds for the museum. Optional dress code: Georgian inspired glamour; £35. holburne.org

Remembrance events around the city this month commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Remembrance Sunday falls on 11 November this year, the day of the Armistice in 1918. Events on 11 November include a lone piper playing Battles Over at Bath Abbey at 6am, the Centenary of Armistice Service at Bath Abbey at 10.30am, and the Royal British Legion military parade from the bottom of Milsom Street at 2pm. There is also a talk by Andrew Swift on Bath’s War Memorial: Memory and Meaning on 8 November at 6.30pm at the Museum of Bath Architecture, £8, and the Bath Cantata’s WWI Remembered concert at St Stephen’s Church, Lansdown on 24 November at 7.30pm, £5–15. See also page 66 for our feature on the impact the end of the First World War had on the people of Bath. museumofbatharchitecture.org.uk; bathboxoffice.org.uk

Watch

Get a feel for the misty glens, islands and highlands of Scotland with Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti and Bath Philharmonia at a true St Andrews Day celebration including bagpipes. Nicola Benedetti performs Prokofiev’s elegant Second Violin Concerto, and the evening also includes Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave; Strauss’ early Tone Poems, displaying the orchestra in virtuosic colour; and Maxwell Davies’ An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise, accompanied by bagpipes. £5–35; bathphil.co.uk

© Tokyo Lee Productions

Head north

The Bath Film Festival from 1–11 November has a rallying cry of ‘Love Wins’. All films with an F-Rating category are directed or written by women, totalling 55 per cent of the programme. There are superb films from every corner of the world and there is also a LGBT strand. Films include Rafiki, the Kusama: Infinity first Kenyan film selected for the Cannes Film Festival (6 November, Odeon, 9.10pm); Nancy, the Sundance screenwriting award winner (3 November, Odeon, 8pm); Kusama: Infinity, the remarkable story of a brilliant artist (5 November, Odeon, 6pm); Happy as Lazzaro, a magical allegory of love, loss and compassion (8 November, Odeon, 6pm); and Skate Kitchen, a spiky youth culture drama (9 November, Odeon, 8.20pm). See also our programme highlights on page 32. filmbath.org.uk

Find presents Bath Christmas Market is back this month for 18 days of magic. With more than 180 twinkling chalets spread out across Bath’s picturesque Georgian streets, it’s the perfect place to do a spot of Christmas shopping and soak up the festive atmosphere. From unique homeware to personalised presents, Christmas decorations, handcrafted jewellery and more, you’re guaranteed to find something special for your loved ones. With so many local makers and designers showcasing their artisan gifts, you can tick off everything on your Christmas list all in one place and feel reassured that you’re supporting Bath’s small businesses.

The market runs from Thursday 22 November – Sunday 9 December; bathchristmasmarket.co.uk 10 TheBATHMagazine

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© Bath in Time

Remember

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ist

THE CITY THE BUZZ THE BUZZ MASONIC MYSTERIES In 1816, an apothecary and a wine merchant decided to erect a prestigious Masonic Hall in the spa city of Bath. The mysteries of this, Bath’s first Masonic hall (now the Friends’ Meeting House), have been revealed in the latest book by Bath historian Malcolm Toogood, The Apothecary’s Hall. The book, a factual history of the building in York Street, is the result of six years of painstaking research during which time the author was granted unprecedented access to contemporary documentation, including minutes and correspondence in Masonic archives in Bath and London. The book is published by CepenPark Publishing and is available at £14.95 from local retailer Moorland Road Bookshop.

ECO-FRIENDLY

My BATH

Co-founder of the Bath Postal Museum, Audrey Swindells MBE used to run the Bath Stamp and Coin Shop. Now 90, she still loves to write and has just published her first novel

I live in Bathwick as did my late husband Harold. He loved it and I still do because the house is alongside the canal so I see passing boats, walkers, joggers, cyclists and sometimes horse riders.

We moved to Bath in 1977 when we bought a house in Great Pulteney Street to find a home for the Bath Postal Museum of which we were the joint founders. We knew the area well because we could walk to our shop, the Bath Stamp and Coin Shop, on Pulteney Bridge which we had opened in 1959 – it is now run by our son. We were then living in Saltford where the younger three of our six children had been born. But we had both lived in Bath longer than anywhere else and I still love it.

The view that I am most attached to is the one from my home where I have lived for 28 years. I love looking across the canal and up the hill to St Stephen’s Church – the twinkling lights at night are like fairyland.

My favourite season in Bath is the summer, especially this last one when so many people are around in the evenings and sitting on tables outside with drinks. It is so lively.

I have never been an early riser but I am driven to get up because I always have a list of things to do.

The Bath Christmas Market this year has a sustainable edge as it spreads festive magic across the city with decorations made from recycled single-use plastic. Visit Bath, the organisers of the market, have collaborated with craft designer Christine Leech, who is also creative director of Marie Claire magazine, to create decorations made from empty bottles and plastic bags. Many of the bottles have been supplied by local waste management company MJ Church and leftover plastic bags from some of the supermarkets in the city, including Waitrose. The market runs from 22 November to 9 December. bathchristmasmarket.co.uk

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The first of my three novels, Mitty’s Letter has just been published. It is a trilogy based on an original 1833 love letter from Madras.

My family have also been encouraging me to write about my complex life story.

My late husband Harold was the greatest influence on me because my life completely changed when I married him. I had always been interested in history, but he was so knowledgeable, he broadened every aspect.

We enjoyed the same music, plays and books and we were in business together.

When I was younger I wanted to be an actress. When I was 20, I played the lead in No No Nanette in an amateur production and appeared in many plays. I was offered a place

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at LAMDA in London but what we called ‘Doodlebugs’ (these were essentially bombs with wings) were falling and my father would not allow me to go.

I have an eclectic taste in books. I’m currently reading Love Again by Doris Lessing and What Came Before He Shot Her by Elizabeth George. I also love Victorian classics.

When it comes to drinks, I like a drop of wine with food. I love café latte and rooibos tea.

I also like a light lunch at the Blue Quail Deli on Bridge Street.

My great loves are my family – I have six offspring and 11 grandchildren who had lunch sailing on the canal with me on my 90th birthday last May. I have also invested almost 40 years in The Postal Museum and have written for most of my life.

Receiving the MBE at Buckingham Palace in 2010 was a tremendous honour – it was awarded in recognition of my voluntary work for the Bath Postal Museum.

I would like to be able to persuade people that everyone on this planet matters and that if you go back far enough we are all linked in some way.

One of my favourite quotes is by Leo Tolstoy: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, no-one thinks of changing themselves.”

They still call me The Boss at the museum, but it is not true. I do still help out and I have a good memory because we opened in 1979 and I am the only initial trustee still alive. Our visitors who venture down the stairs enjoy discovering the vital importance of communication and how deeply it affected us in the past since they know how much it affects us today. n Mitty’s Letter by Audrey Swindells, published by Avoncliff Editions, is available from the Bath Postal Museum shop, 27 Northgate Street, Bath; bathpostalmuseum.org.uk

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Follow us on Twitter @thebathmagazine

See more online thebathmag.co.uk

Contact us: Publisher Email:

Steve Miklos steve@thebathmagazine.co.uk

Editor Tel: Email:

Emma Clegg 01225 424592 emma@thebathmagazine.co.uk

Financial Director Email:

Jane Miklos jane@thebathmagazine.co.uk

Production Manager Email:

Jeff Osborne production@thebathmagazine.co.uk

Health & Beauty Editor Email:

Crystal Rose crystal@thebathmagazine.co.uk

Assistant Editor Email:

Jessica Hope jessica@thebathmagazine.co.uk

Contact the Advertising Sales team tel: 01225 424499 Advertising Sales Email:

Liz Grey liz@thebathmagazine.co.uk

Advertising Sales Email:

Jake Horwood jake@thebathmagazine.co.uk

The Bath Magazine and The Bristol Magazine are published by MC Publishing Ltd. The Bath Magazine is distributed free every month to more than 20,000 homes and businesses throughout Bath and the surrounding area. We also have special distribution units in the following city centre stores and coffee shops

2 Princes Buildings, George Street, Bath BA1 2ED Telephone: 01225 424499. Fax: 01225 426677 www.thebathmag.co.uk Š MC Publishing Ltd 2018

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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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THE REALLY USEFUL PEOPLE Our roving reporter visits the Bath establishments which make everyday life a little easier

ENGAGEMENT AND WEDDING RINGS HANDMADE BESPOKE JEWELLERY REPAIRS AND REMODELLING Bespoke Diamond rings by Jody Cory

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I was in a modern shopping centre in Spain recently, wondering as I drifted upwards on the escalator, when Bath is going to get a Zara, as every other city in the world seems to have one, when I spotted something unusual between H&M and a supermarket. It was a brightly lit booth with rows of shelves piled high with folded clothes and staffed by two women at sewing machines. There were people milling around in the tiny shop and a few more queuing. Clearly the inhabitants of Malaga make the most of this tailoring and alteration service. This got me thinking about Bath’s really useful shops, the ones that you go into town specifically to find something that you can’t get elsewhere.

We moan about the demise of shops in the city centre, but if you know where to look there are still any number of traditional businesses providing practical services which make our lives run more smoothly. About this time of year I usually join the customers queuing in Timpson in Union Passage to get my favourite winter boots re-heeled to give them a new lease of life. On one occasion a couple of years ago, one of the guys working there glued the sole of my shoe together for me, so saving me from a rain-soaked foot, and kindly refused to charge me. He must have thought I looked literally down on my uppers, to use the old cobblers’ jargon.

I am also a big fan of City Tailors, which operates from first floor premises on Milsom Street, where the seamstresses and tailors can expertly repair a much-worn coat, shorten the arms on a jacket, or take up the hems on a new too-long pair of trousers. It’s brilliant for people like me who got no further than making a pencil case in school sewing classes.

I remember taking a day’s holiday from work as we had a vacuum cleaner crisis at home – carpets knee-deep in dust and ‘people’ coming – so I drove to a well known out-of-town store, where I found a new vacuum cleaner on a stand. ‘Great,’ I thought, ‘I’ll take it.’ But I wasn’t allowed to buy that cleaner as I was firmly told that it was for display purposes only and not for sale. In a rage, I drove back to Bath and popped in to Coopers in Walcot Street where the helpful staff found me the very cleaner I was looking for and even carried it down the street to my car.

You want loose spices so you don’t have to buy them by the jar?

Harvest the wholefood shop in Walcot Street has been ahead of the packaging game for years. It also lets its customers weigh and bag their own porridge oats, rice etc so you don’t have to buy more than you need, or take home pointless packaging. Those knowledgable chaps at Bartlett & Sons butchers in Green Street will not only cut you just the piece of meat you want, they’ll even remind you how long to cook a piece of roast beef if you’ve lost your kitchen confidence (as I heard them do last Christmas when a grateful woman confessed it was so long since she had last done a roast she’d forgotten).

For all those odd household items like picture hooks or screws, my go-to destination is M&K Hardware in the Guildhall Market. And if you remember to take those just-read bestseller paperbacks with you, the Paperbacks stall will often buy good quality second-hand books.

Back on Walcot Street try the Yellow Shop for non-corporate birthday cards with irreverent messages.

When my oldest nephew was three he went through a phase of solemnly parading through his parents’ kitchen with a tea towel on his head, clutching flowers ripped from the garden. He had attended a wedding, where he was profoundly affected by the sight of the bride with her veil and bouquet and declared his ambition to be a bride himself. Back then shops like Toys R Us didn’t really cater for this type of fancy dress, but I am sure if I visited My Small World in Southgate today with such a request, they’d be able to find me a costume for a small boy with individual taste and big dreams. That’s what the really useful shops of Bath can do for their customers, and long may they continue to do so. n

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BAKING UP A STORM

If experience is the seasoning that’s crucial to food-world longevity, Prue Leith is the undisputed leader of the pedigree pack, Melissa Blease chats to The Great British Bake Off judge ahead of her appearance in Bath

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FOOD | INTERVIEW

and educational initiatives while maintaining non-executive status on various boards including British Rail, British Transport Hotels and Whitbread PLC. But in 1993, she decided to follow a major career path diversion.

“I stopped writing cookbooks because I wanted to write novels,” she says. “So I gave it all up – the cookery school, the restaurant, the catering company, the cookbooks and columns – and resigned from all the boards, apart from selected charities. That was that; I stayed at home and wrote seven novels and my autobiography, Relish.” But as we all know, Prue’s ‘life in food’ story doesn’t end there.

❝

My husband says I’ve made more cakes for him in the last year than I have in the eight years we’ve been together!

❝

P

rue Leith was appointed an OBE in 1989, a CBE 21 years later and is the recipient of 13 honorary degrees of fellowship from UK universities. She’s written 12 cookery books, seven novels, an autobiography and countless columns; she founded both a Michelin-starred restaurant and a School of Food and Wine... and she’s been a judge on BBC Two’s Great British Menu for 12 years. And yet the woman who has recently been introduced to a whole new generation as the expert cook claims that, prior to her most recent TV success, she could walk down the street unnoticed.

“Hardly anybody who became a Great British Bake Off fan when the series first began would ever have heard of me, because a lot of that fan base weren’t even alive when I wrote my last book,” says Prue, talking to us ahead of her forthcoming visit to Bath to promote her first new book in 25 years. “It’s only people of a certain, erm, vintage who’d ever heard of me before I took over from Mary Berry!”

Born in South Africa in 1940, Prue relocated to Paris in her late teens and attended the Sorbonne. “I got into food when I was living in France because it’s difficult not to,” she recalls.

In 1960, she enrolled at the prestigious Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London where, to supplement her student budget, she developed a sideline catering for private dinner parties – and a chance encounter with a butler who worked for a firm of stockbrokers proved to be a pivotal landmark in her early career. “I was living in my little mews house and making lunches and dinners for private parties. But as I did all the shopping, cooking, serving and washing up on my own, I could only really do one dinner a day. But the company just wanted cold buffets delivered ready-to-eat; I could feed a lot of people fairly easily, some days preparing the company buffet while working on a hot supper for another job – that made a huge difference to my little business.” But that business didn’t stay little for long.

“Being responsible for the food served on the Orient Express was another big leap forward,” says Prue. “I got the job after the owner of the Orient Express asked me to cook a trial lunch for him. The meal had to be served on the Pullman train in the half hour gap between Victoria and Folkestone.

I decided to do a summery green pea soup followed by cold beef and interesting salads, but I wanted to make it suitably memorable, so I created little croutons in the shape of steam trains, floated them on top of the soup and made little puffs of smoke from blobs of cream. My little trains were apparently enchanting enough to get me the job! I owe a great deal to those croutons.”

Prue developed her businesses including party and event catering company Leith’s Good Food, Leith’s School of Food and Wine and her Notting Hill restaurant, chairing and founding all manner of charitable institutions

In 2006, Prue was “lured back into the food world” by good friends Oliver Peyton and Matthew Fort – the other two-thirds of the exacting Great British Menu judging triumvirate. “The Great British Menu chefs reinvigorated me – I’d find myself writing down what I’d eaten at a judging round, or asking for a recipe, or trying to reproduce what the chefs had created at home. But it was The Great British Bake Off that really inspired me to write another cookbook. I found myself getting so involved with 12 amazing bakers, each of whom are so imaginative, and sweet, and clever; I get to know them all very, very well indeed, and I often take their recipes home with me – my husband says I’ve made more cakes for him in the last year than I have in the eight years we’ve been together!”

Prue’s new book is for cooks of all levels and experience, guaranteeing that “nothing is over-complicated, many recipes are fairly easy to make, and most of them focus on fast and fresh.” So in many ways, we’re on classic Prue Leith cookery book territory? “In a way, yes.

But food has changed so much since I first started writing about it,” she says. “It’s so much more interesting now than it was even 20 years ago, and we can easily find ingredients that I used to struggle to get hold of. If I mentioned avocado, broccoli or even a green pepper when I first started writing for the Daily Mail in the early 1970s, I’d get indignant letters from people saying they’d never heard of such things. Today, we can buy things like sumac and za’atar and balsamic glaze in almost any large supermarket. How we cook has changed too because people haven’t got the time to do the classic, two-day consommé kind of cooking anymore – they want something they can put together in half an hour. And people are much more aware of healthy eating

– because of that, I considered updating my recipe for Tarte Normande for this book. But I thought no, the glory of a Tarte Normande comes from the amount of butter there is in the pastry, the amount of cream in the filling, and the sweet apricot jam on top – the result is an utterly divine mouthful. So I put it in just as it was in one of my very first books.” And as Prue is fond of telling the Bake Off bakers, it’s definitely worth the calories.

On a less extravagant theme Prue says that her polenta cake is the recipe she’s most likely to turn to again and again. “It’s simple, delicious, gluten-free and perfect served with crème fraîche at the end of a dinner party or just enjoyed with a nice cup of tea.”

Prue talks of her own food hero (“I’ve known Jamie Oliver since his Naked Chef days; he’s an absolutely lovely boy. I call him Saint Jamie because his heart’s in the right place and he’s done so much for food education”), chefs she most admires (former GBM winner Tommy Banks), and her favourite restaurant (the historic Bentley’s Oyster Bar and Grill in London’s Mayfair.)

Prue’s recently acquired status as style icon comes up too, not least because she wore an eye-catching hand-painted outfit from Bath textile artist Carole Waller for a photoshoot for a recent Good Housekeeping magazine cover: “I love Carole’s work,” says Prue; “I have another of her pieces in my collection too.” But there’s one more question I just can't help asking. “No, I’ve never been the recipient of the Hollywood Handshake!” she laughs.

“He keeps telling me that I should start a trend for the Prue Pat, but really! That sounds so patronising.” n

Prue Leith will be in Bath to talk about her new book Prue: My All-time Favourite Recipes on Wednesday 14 November at 8pm, Christ Church, Julian Road, courtesy of Topping & Co, entry £25 including copy of book; toppingbooks.co.uk/events/bath/ an-evening-with-prue-leith

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JEWELLERY SHOWCASE | MALLORY

CELEBRATING 120 YEARS OF EXCEPTIONAL JEWELLERY

Mallory is renowned as Bath’s destination jewellers. It has a rich heritage and has occupied the same premises for more than 120 years. As well as an emporium of all the major most coveted luxury brands it also boasts one of the largest in-house workshops in the UK, with their skilled goldsmiths who design and create the most exquisite bespoke pieces. We go behind the scenes to visit their workshop

F

rom first sight Mallory of Bath is a tantalising prospect for any lover of the finer things in life.

Ruby red canopies with the golden Mallory logo above the glittering shop window displays at Number One Bridge Street in the heart of Bath discreetly hint at the luxury and treasures within.

The majestic emporium of prestigious Swiss timepieces, luxury accessories and fine jewellery which Mallory display, is a veritable feast for the eyes and soul. For jewellery lovers, once you step inside you will find a superlative selection of the finest diamond and gemstone pieces, with something beautiful to suit every taste and budget… and if you can’t quite find what you are looking for, or you have a specific design in mind, then Mallory can create it for you, using their ‘By Design’ service.

Now in its fifth generation, Mallory is one of the country’s oldest family owned and run jewellers, proudly steeped in tradition and heritage, where bespoke in-house jewellery design and craftsmanship remains firmly entwined in its roots.

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Today Mallory boast the largest in-house jewellery design workshop in the South West situated at the top of their Bridge Street premises, where highly skilled goldsmiths spend their days creating the most exquisite pieces.

Using the finest of materials, Mallory can work with you to create a completely unique piece of jewellery which will be designed and handmade for your delectation. You will be involved throughout the commission process, from discussing initial ideas, through to creating your final piece. And if you are in need of a little inspiration, their experts can suggest different styles tailored to your individual taste and price range. As well as personal commissions, Mallory also specialise in remodelling old or inherited pieces of jewellery giving them a new lease of life.

Robert Vander Woerd, Managing Director says: “We have been creating beautiful and inspirational pieces for our customers since 1898. From designing a custom-made engagement ring, to the reworking of inherited heirlooms to suit your personal style, our desire is always to create the

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PERFECT POSITIONING: The finest gemstones require precision craftsmanship

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JEWELLERY SHOWCASE | MALLORY

FROM CONCEPT: a Mallory goldsmith’s work bench...

When it comes to buying loose diamonds quality is of the upmost importance. Each individual diamond selected by Mallory’s diamond buyers is certificated by the GIA (Gemological Institute of America) which is the world’s most recognised and highly regarded independent laboratory for diamond certification, whose grading system has become the international benchmark for the diamond and gemstone industry. The creation of a truly beautiful piece of jewellery often begins with finding that

perfect gemstone and Mallory ensure that they only acquire those of true distinction and quality.

If you would like to find out more about creating the ultimate bespoke piece of jewellery, please contact one of Mallory’s knowledgeable experts.

Mallory 1 – 5 Bridge Street, Bath, BA2 4AP Tel: 01225 788800 mallory-jewellers.com

perfect piece of jewellery according to our customer’s wishes. Every item of Mallory designed jewellery is to the highest standards. By combining traditional artisan techniques with state of the art computer aided design technology, we have the capability to produce incredible pieces.”

Not only does Mallory impose their exacting standards in the design and craftsmanship of their jewellery, they also ensure that only the finest gemstones are used. Sourced from all over the world, each must meet Mallory's rigorous criteria before being selected.

...TO COMPLETION: Left, a CAD image of a halo Tanzanite ring and the finished piece

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Dower and Hall pendants, Sterling Silver and white Topaz. From £85

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RETAIL | INTERVIEW

CLANDAR CLASSICS

Emma Clegg talks to Rianna Pritchard, managing director of Clandar, and discovers the finest quality British tweed, wool and cashmere crafted into classic clothing and accessories that will become wardrobe stalwarts

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or a tummy. It’s the same with the Clandar menswear where the slim cuts look sharp on gentlemen with a smaller 36-inch chest, but streamlined and flattering on gentlemen with a larger 48-inch chest.”

Clandar takes considerable pride in its use of fabric from British mills, and there’s good reason for doing this, Rianna explains: “British mills produce a superior quality of fabric. It comes down to the techniques they use and also the quality of the fibre. Many of the mills we work with were founded over 200 years ago and their techniques and skills have been passed down through the generations. They still employ long, complicated processes that focus on producing the finest finish possible. For example, some British cashmere mills wash their cashmere in spring water and even roll the dried seed heads of a certain flower over the fibres to carefully fluff them up. British cashmere mills also use the highest quality cashmere fibre, combed from the underbelly of the cashmere goat where the longest, softest and finest fibre is found. Only around 5% of the world’s cashmere is of this quality.” So it’s the long, skilled processes and the use of high quality fibres that make British made fabrics so special and desirable.

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British mills produce a superior quality of fabric. It comes down to the techniques they use and also the quality of the fibre

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A

career move from law to fashion is quite a gear change.

As a law student Rianna Pritchard had imagined a life along the lines of LA Law, but found the working week of a lawyer lacking in glamour, intrigue and drama.

“I joined a large, international, corporate law firm after graduating from university and law school and naively thought it was going to be like LA Law or Ally McBeal”, says Rianna. “But of course it’s not and in reality most of the time is spent drafting letters, documents, agreements. It wasn’t for me and I needed a career where I could be creative and able to build something.”

Rianna opened her shop, Clandar, in Cheap Street in 2012. This is a niche fashion house offering the finest British tweed, British wool and British cashmere. The shop designs and tailors all its own tweed ranges, a style that majors on classic British design with a contemporary, flattering twist. Think the polar opposite of mass-manufactured clothes and you have caught the spirit of the operation. “Being an independent, we can’t afford to make 500 of each item,” explains Rianna, “so we’ll make between 30 and 50, but focus on making them to the best of our ability, using the best fabrics and techniques at every stage. The advantage is that it allows our customers to acquire pieces that are exclusive and made in small batches – which makes them extra special.”

The challenge of starting a new business wasn’t an alien concept to Rianna who has been fascinated by business from an early age: “I had grown up in a family business – initially an off-licence and then hotels – and we were always discussing business, which I found exciting and my father took me along to business meetings from a very young age, as he was keen for me to learn. So doing business just seemed a very natural thing, and combining it with creating our own designs and working with wonderful historic British mills and gorgeous fabrics is just a dream come true.”

As well as leading the business side of things, Rianna designs all the tweed ranges.

“I’ve had a lifelong interest in how different cuts and styles work on the body and also colour and pattern. The cut is of paramount importance and is always the starting point.”

She loves to use cuts that flatter and skim the body to enhance the figure: “I want to create pieces that don’t just look good on tall, thin, size 8 models, but look great on ‘real’ people, whether they are a size 8 or 16 and whether they are short, tall, have wide hips

Clandar’s 100% wool scarves are made from merino wool, one of the finest sheep’s wools in the world. It’s also lambswool, which is even softer.

I asked Rianna to explain the process that a new design goes through: “With the latest production of our classic ladies Harris tweed coat, I wanted the collar to be fuller and more voluptuous and wanted a very particular cuff, so I sent sketches to our pattern maker and they turned those ideas into workable patterns.

“With our last House tweed, I sent the British tweed mill sketches of the check pattern I wanted along with the colour profile and then visited the mill to go through the hundreds of coloured yarns they had to make our selection.

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“I wanted a deep, sumptuous navy blue background, but they didn’t have one woven, so it was decided we’d weave navy along the warp and charcoal along the weft, to get the depth of colour. Then for the over check I wanted a very particular shade of duck egg blue, so they set about spinning various shades of blue together to create a new yarn that was just the right tone and shade. It’s a wonderful and very exciting process.”

How much do current fashion trends affect the Clandar designs?. “I regularly visit the high street to see what is current, but as our items are investment pieces they must look wonderful now and also in years to come. So, I ignore fads and passing trends and focus on what is simply pleasing to the eye.”

Even once a design is in production, it can take up to eight months to do one production run. “If we are using one of our house tweeds, we first of all have to get the tweed woven, which means placing the order around six months before we need it. Then we have to order in the lining, order in the buttons, have our Clandar woven labels made and book in a production slot with our tailors.”

If you need a versatile, timeless classic to enhance your wardrobe then head towards Clandar. n Clandar, 15 Cheap Street, Bath; clandar.co.uk

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RETAIL | INTERVIEW

Interior images by TBM; product photography by Clandar

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT AND RIGHT: Merino lambswool scarves; house tweed jacket in navy/charcoal with house tweed jackets in brown hanging on the rail; Clandar classic ladies’ coat in Harris tweed; tweed ties; and house tweed jacket in navy/charcoal

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SPARKLE THIS FESTIVE SEASON

Bring in your cherished items for a well deserved clean and polish with a full check up from our experienced goldsmith. Only £15 per item.

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vintage furniture contemporar y styling

Send a POSTCARD from BATH this Christmas If you have family or friends who love Bath you can send them a little slice of the city this Christmas with our new visitor guide/souvenir publication

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From the publishers of The Bath Magazine, Postcard From Bath draws on 17 years of archive material as well as specially commissioned editorial to produce a lavish visitor guide and companion which covers the best that Bath has to offer from the unique perspective of local writers, expert contributors and those in the know.

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As well as in-depth reading on all of Bath’s main attractions there are history features, conversations with and insights into the lives of local people, culture, food, shopping and where to stay. The autumn/winter issue has everything you need to know about seasonal highlights, events and exhibitions in the coming months.

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Our Scandinavian gift range is perfect for christmas presents and includes the beautiful Taika tableware, Marimekko mugs, bags and gifts, stunning iittala glassware, and fabulous table and tree decorations... and so much more... Oh, and everything ‘Moomin’!

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Prices (including postage) per single copy are: UK - £10.00 Europe - £15.00 World Zone 1 - £20.00 World Zone 2 - £25.00 For more details and to purchase a copy visit our website, postcardmagazine.co.uk or call 01225 424499 to order and pay by phone.

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Olivia Colman as Queen Anne and Rachel Weisz as the Duchess of Marlborough in The Favourite

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION Jessica Hope picks some of the highlights from this year’s FilmBath Festival which is hitting the big screensaround the city from 1–11 November

N

ow in its 28th year, FilmBath Festival has become recognised as the go-to place to see the biggest films of the awards season before they officially hit the big screen. In the past, Oscar-winning films such as Birdman, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The King’s Speech have all been shown to audiences in Bath way before general release.

As a number of this year’s festival line-up are likely to make an appearance in the 2019 awards ceremonies, FilmBath Festival, running from 1–11 November, is the chance to see the blockbusters before anyone else.

Whether it’s an unconventionally funny period drama or a moving exploration of a son’s drug addiction; a true story of 21st century slavery or an amusing take on the fight for universal suffrage in 1970s Switzerland, FilmBath Festival explores a wide range of themes, nationalities and languages. It also challenges the world of film, such as the showing of Rafiki – a film which follows a lesbian relationship in Kenya, where homosexuality is illegal – which recently hit the world’s headlines after director Wanuri Kahiu successfully got the ban on the film lifted so it could be entered into the Oscars.

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being directed by and/or written by women, therefore supporting women in the film industry and addressing the issues around gender imbalance in this sector. And there’s plenty of brilliant F-rated films at this year’s festival, that’s for sure. Here’s just a few of the festival’s highlights…

THE FAVOURITE n Thursday 1 November, 8pm, Odeon Described as a ‘punk Restoration romp’, Olivia Colman is the middle-aged Queen Anne, burdened by a weight problem, gout, depression and grief. Her favourite at court is the ambitious Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), but when Sarah’s cousin (Emma Stone) appears on the scene, the two vie for the queen’s affections.

But this isn’t any period drama – expect plenty of bad language and ridiculous behaviour in this outrageous comedy.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE n Friday 2 November, 8.45pm, Odeon Set in the rural hinterland of Colombia, Birds of Passage traces the beginnings of the drug trade via a remote indigenous community where a young man is trying to raise the bride price for the woman he wants to marry. This is a ‘a south-of-the-border drug epic like you’ve never seen before’ according to magazine Variety.

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BEAUTIFUL BOY n Sunday 4 November, 9pm, Odeon Is there anything you wouldn’t do for your child? What if they were a drug addict? This is the desperate question facing David Sheff (Steve Carell), whose son Nic (Timothée Chalamet) is hopelessly hooked on crystal meth. Based on real-life memoirs, this is an extraordinary story of the importance and impotence of love.

RBG n Saturday 3 November, 6pm, Odeon A documentary exploring the life of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has become an unexpected cultural icon: inspiring, selfeffacing – and she still works out every day at the age of 85.

KUSAMA: INFINITY n Monday 5 November, 6pm, Odeon This superb documentary explores the fascinating life of artist Yayoi Kusama, who has collaborated with Fleetwood Mac and Peter Gabriel, and chosen to live in a mental institution since 1977. Director Heather Lenz’s argument is that – paradoxically – Kusama is one of the most influential yet underrated artists in the world.

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FILM | FESTIVAL

Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Denise Gough and Keira Knightley in Colette

COLETTE n Monday 5 November, 6pm, Odeon Born in rural France in 1873, SidonieGabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) moves to Paris with her new husband, where her Claudine novels – semi-autobiographical and risqué, drawing on her own affairs with women – sell like hot cakes. Dominic West plays her manipulative husband, Willy, in one of his best film performances, and publishes the works under his name.

Followed by a Q&A with producers Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley.

THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING n Tuesday 6 November, 6pm, Odeon When Mila Turajlic was growing up in Belgrade, there were doors in the family apartment that were always locked and never spoken of. The truth inspired her to make this documentary, based around a series of conversations with her mother, Srbijanka – a college professor and political activist, instrumental within the student protests that helped bring down Miloševic.

HALF THE PICTURE n Tuesday 6 November, 6pm, Chapel Arts Centre How many female directors have won an Oscar? How many have been nominated?

Why even talk about female directors – as though it’s a gender-specific job? Half the Picture examines the grotesque bias against women in the world’s most powerful creative industry. F-Rating founder Holly Tarquini will speak with the director Amy Adrion following the screening.

A WOMAN CAPTURED n Tuesday 6 November, 9pm, Chapel Arts Centre In 21st-century Europe, a woman is kept as a slave by an arrogant, middle-class Hungarian family. For a decade they have forced her to work at the house and at a factory; the mental and physical abuse is constant and brutal. Surprisingly, the family allowed filmmaker Bernadett Tuza-Ritter to come and stay, thus enabling her to record everything that goes on – and form a bond with the enslaved woman.

Carey Mulligan in Wildlife

RAFIKI n Tuesday 6 November, 9.10pm, Odeon This wonderful Kenyan film has recently come to wider public attention with director Wanuri Kahiu fighting to get a ban lifted so that it can be entered as Kenya’s Oscar contender. The film was banned because it has two female characters who love each other – and currently homosexuality is illegal in Kenya. Far from being suppressed, the film should be celebrated for being tender, loving and playful. It delivers an exhilarating enchantment that contrasts with the absolutist morality found where religion is allowed to dictate what people may or may not feel.

U – JULY 22 n Wednesday 7 November, 8pm, Odeon The film follows Kaja (Andrea Berntzen), a young woman caught up in the 2011 Utøya shooting. Once the attack begins, Poppe’s camera remains with her throughout, in a single 72-minute take, as she desperately looks for her sister. Technically brilliant and ‘a moving testimony’ (Screen International) to the victims and survivors, the film received a ten-minute standing ovation at its Berlin premiere.

THE DIVINE ORDER n Wednesday 7 November, 9pm, Odeon The fight for universal suffrage is a recent one for the Swiss – until 1971, women still could not vote in federal elections; fully equal voting rights were adopted only in 1990. Petra Volpe’s comedy charts the beginning of the struggle, as initially placid housewife Nora (Marie Leuenberger) starts to question the status quo and rallies the women of her village to demand their rights as human beings.

FUNNY COW n Thursday 8 November, 7.30pm, Pound Arts Centre, Corsham It’s hard enough being a stand-up comedian trying to make your way in northern clubs in

the 1970s. It’s a whole lot harder if you’re a woman. Maxine Peake plays a woman determined to make a go of it in front of unsympathetic punters, using her background as source material.

THE WOUND n Thursday 8 November, 8.45pm, Odeon In South Africa, Xhosa teenagers mark the transition into manhood with ritual group circumcision; they remain in a closed group away from the world until the wound heals.

Xolani (Nakhane Touré) returns to the ceremony every year, ostensibly to supervise the initiates – but more importantly, it is the only time he spends with his secret lover. In the prison-like, hypermasculine atmosphere, homosexuality is taboo.

WILDLIFE n Friday 9 November, 8pm, Odeon Paul Dano’s beautiful directing debut in a film based on the novel by Richard Ford. Set in 1960 in smalltown Montana, Wildlife studies the disintegration of a family through the eyes of teenager Joe. When his deadbeat father (Jake Gyllenhaal) leaves town on a job, his longfrustrated mother breaks loose, played

by Carey Mulligan in ‘one of the best roles and best performances of her career’ according to The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw.

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE n Saturday 10 November, 6.30pm, Odeon Adam Driver is Toby – a vain advertising director trying to film in Spain. An encounter with a delusional old man (Jonathan Pryce) he once cast as Don Quixote years ago sets the pair on a path of surreal adventures across the country, with Driver unwillingly playing Sancho Panza to Pryce’s Quixote. n FilmBath Festival takes place from 1–11 November. For the full programme, visit filmbath.org.uk

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CINEMA | HIGHLIGHTS

TAKE TWO: FILMS

Here are two films coming up at the Little Theatre Cinema. Focusing on a principal character or creator, Emma Clegg evaluates each film’s contribution to the screen world

John Masefield: The Box of Delights Each new decade brings its own brand of children’s adventure story. But John Masefield’s book The Box of Delights, first published in 1935, represents the foundation stone of the 20th-century genre. Just two years after the release of King Kong, special effects were already in early development, but Masefield would have had no concept of his novel’s on-screen action potential.

In fact the story has a sorcerer, a fantasy world of magic, talking animals, a totem box that needs protecting, shape-shifting and portal time travel, and this was well before C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising and the more modern phenomenon of Harry Potter. This showing is of the BBC’s 1984 adaptation of The Box of Delights, a six-part children’s series that saw the use of early special effects using innovative colour

Alfred Molena: Red “There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend... One day the black will swallow the red.” Visualise a Rothko painting, and the metaphor hits hard. The intensity of the colours in Rothko’s resonating canvases was indeed equally matched by the passion of his art theories. In his later years in the late 1950s, when this play is set, the artist felt a growing sense of personal seclusion and was fearful of being misunderstood.

Written by John Logan, Red was first produced by the Donmar Warehouse,

separation overlays, Quantel technology and the combination of real actors and hand-drawn animation – plus it was the most expensive children’s series the BBC had made. While now dated looking (think Tom Baker’s 1980s Dr Who) to those accustomed to today’s slick CGI, the effects were then wondrous to young, imaginative

minds and the series was widely acclaimed for its special effects. Stars Devin Stanfield as Kay and Patrick Troughton as the Punch and Judy Man (who was himself the second Dr Who) are memorable in a dramatic production that cleverly combines nostalgic Victorian Christmas charm and hide-behindyour-hands scary. Quite literally, it’s magical.

London in 2009, and won six Tony Awards including Best Play. This recent production, the play’s first UK revival, ran at Wyndham’s Theatre, London finishing in July this year, with Michael Grandage once again as artistic director and Alfred Molina reprising his critically acclaimed performance as Rothko.

This film of the production tells the story of Rothko’s creation of a definitive work for New York’s Four Season’s Restaurant with the help of his young assistant, played by Alfred Enoch.

The stage is Rothko’s studio. Red dominates the canvas and the atmosphere – it represents anger, passion, pain, blood, destruction and purity, too. If you learn one

thing about this abstract expressionist painter, it is that his pulsating rectangular shapes and mesmerizing colour interactions were the antithesis of spontaneous.

Molina portrays a heavy, commanding, force of nature in his Rothko, with an unwillingness to compromise the transcendental vision of his art. With the help of his assistant, the artist creates a series of canvases for the restaurant, searing symphonies of colour that remind the connected viewer of destruction and mortality. However, faced with the restaurant itself, and its careless diners chatting inanely as they devour their food, Rothko is furious. It is as if he is rejecting the world that his art sits within. Challenged by his assistant Ken, “Not every painting has to rip your guts out and expose your soul!”, we see an artist’s intense self-absorption and start questioning his own reality. n

SHOWING TIMES The Box of Delights (U) Saturday 1 December, 2.30pm MGC Presents: Red Wednesday 7 November, 8.30pm Little Theatre Cinema, St Michael’s Place; picturehouses.com/cinema/The_Little

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WHAT’S ON in November Bath On Ice in Royal Victoria Park

New Purple Celebration: The music of Prince at Komedia

Christmas shopping at Highgrove

LIVE CULTURAL SCREENINGS n Throughout November, The Little Theatre Cinema, St Michael’s Place, Bath You don’t always need to travel to the top theatres to see the latest big play or opera these days as many are now being screened in cinemas for one-off, special live performances. This month at The Little there’s a range of showings to whet the cultural taste buds, including Royal Shakespeare Company’s Troilus and Cressida, the National Theatre’s The Madness of George III, and the sparkling The King And I from The London Palladium.

Go online to see the full programme; picturehouses.com/cinema/The_Little

KATHERINE BENNETT OBE n 1 November, 6pm, The Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel, Beau Street, Bath In the final talk of the Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel’s Phenomenal Women lecture series, senior vice-president at Airbus, Katherine Bennett OBE, will reflect on her 13 years working for the company, where she is responsible for 10,000 staff at the European Airframer’s sites at Filton Bristol and Broughton North Wales. £15, includes prosecco and canapés; thegainsboroughbathspa.co.uk NEW PURPLE CELEBRATION: THE MUSIC OF PRINCE n 2 November, 7.30pm, Komedia, Bath A musical tribute extravaganza celebrating the music, life and legacy of Prince. Hear the hits of one of the most loved artists of all time including Little Red Corvette, Purple Rain, Kiss, I Wanna Be Your Lover and many more. £19.50/£22.50; komedia.co.uk BERKELEY ENSEMBLE n 3 November, 7.30pm, Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon 38 TheBATHMagazine

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This leading ensemble celebrates ten years with an expansive programme including Schubert’s Octet. £18/free for under 25s; wiltshiremusic.org.uk THE ARTS SOCIETY BATH: THE CHAIR – 2,000 YEARS OF SITTING DOWN n 5 November, 1.30pm, The Assembly Rooms, Bath Antiques Roadshow specialist Marc Allum takes a fascinating look at the humble chair and investigates how an object tasked with such a simple purpose has been reinvented by some of the greatest minds in history.

Visitors welcome, £10 on the door, no booking required; bathdfas.com THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN MORALITY n 6 November, 7.30pm, BRLSI, Queen Square, Bath Dr Diana Fleischman from Portsmouth University analyses how human morality has developed over thousands of years, and how this has impacted on present-day conceptions of morality in relation to ideas of human and animal suffering. £4/£2; brlsi.org JUNIPER AND JAZZ n 8 November, 7pm, Great Western Wine, Wells Road, Bath A unique evening of cool jazz and delicious gins. With more than 150 gins to choose from in the shop, you’ll get to sample a selection, all while listening to smooth live music. In support of Wiltshire Music Centre’s 20th anniversary appeal. £20; greatwesternwine.co.uk TRANSGLOBAL UNDERGROUND n 9 November, 7.30pm, Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon Asian rhythms and lyrics with club grooves abound in this 25-year reunion tour of cult 90s favourites. Featuring the vocals of Tuup, and music from original members, enjoy this unique fusion experience. £17/£8.50; wiltshiremusic.org.uk

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TRIONIUM BATH HILLY HALF AND ULTRA-10K n 11 November, 11.05am, Bath Racecourse Following a two-minute silence and the National Anthem to mark Remembrance Day, The Bath Hilly Half and the Ultra-10k tough off-road running races will begin.

Expect a country course with stiles, hills, tussocks, rough tracks, more hills, and fantastic views. Bathavon Rotary Club, in collaboration with Trionium, will be raising funds for Bath Young Carers and Dorothy House Hospice; trionium.com THE WAR IS OVER… n 11 November, 1.30–4pm, St Bart’s Church, Church Square, Corsham The Corsham Commemorates group brings their work in marking the centenary of the First World War to a close with a re-creation of the Thanksgiving Service which includes the re-dedication of the town’s original, wooden war memorial, and an exhibition celebrating the achievements of 24 of Corsham’s Women of World War One. Plus displays explaining how Corsham went above and beyond during 1914–18, and how the war impacted on the town. The exhibition at the Town Hall runs from 1.30–4pm, with the church service at 2pm.

AN EVENING WITH PRUE LEITH n 14 November, 8pm, Christ Church, Julian Road, Bath The Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith talks about her incredible career in the food industry and publishing her first cookbook in 25 years. See also page 18 for our interview with her. £7/£25; toppingbooks.co.uk THE GREAT HOUSE CHRISTMAS PARTY n 15 November, 5.30–8pm, Kilver Court, Shepton Mallet Eat, drink and make merry at Kilver Court’s Great House Christmas Party. Be dazzled by the wonderful selections of hand picked decorations, gifts and delicious Christmas

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food, and be ready for an evening of entertainment and hilarity at this unique shopping experience; kilvercourt.com BEN FOGLE ON CLIMBING EVEREST n 15 November, 8pm, Christ Church, Julian Road, Bath Modern-day adventurer and broadcaster Ben Fogle talks about his latest amazing feat – climbing Everest for the British Red Cross.

Hear about his thrilling expedition and listen to him talk about his memoir Up. £20/£7; toppingbooks.co.uk BATH ON ICE n 16 November – 6 January, opening hours vary, Royal Victoria Park, Bath Get your skates on – it’s time to take to the ice as the skating rink returns for the winter, and this time it’s nearly 40% bigger! For those who need a little help, there will be penguins and seal skate aids available. Tickets: £11/£10. A bar will be serving up hot chocolate, mulled wine, pizzas and lots more when you’re in need of refreshment. You can also head next door to the adventure golf course for a spot of glow in the dark mini golf; bathonice.com THE VINTAGE BAZAAR n 17 November, 9am–3pm, The Corn Exchange, Devizes Explore the beautiful gifts, elegant decorations and fabulous vintage party dresses on offer at this vintage event. With stallholders chosen for their unique stock, sourced from the UK and from French brocantes, this is the perfect place to find handmade presents, antiques, toys, fashion, fabrics and jewellery. £2 admission. Follow on Instragram: @thevintagebazaarevents; thevintagebazaar.blogspot.com PERRY HARRIS: 20 YEARS OF ART, WORK EXHIBITION n 17–18 November, 10am–4pm, Sophie Cameron Centre, Royal High School Bath, Lansdown Road, Bath An exhibition of paintings, cartoons and sketches by Perry Harris, talented artist and illustrator and long-standing member of the Royal High School’s Estates Team, based on how his two worlds of art and work combine. Free entry; perryharris.eventbrite.co.uk WIDCOMBE CRAFT FAIR WEEKEND n 17 November, 10.30am–5pm, and 18 November, 11am–4pm, Widcombe Social Club, Bath Around 40 artists and artisans will present their work including ceramics, jewellery, textiles, paintings, prints, cards, candles, mosaics, glasswork and more. A great opportunity to solve your Christmas present shopping by finding unique and special items.

Free entry; widcombecraftfair.com

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING AT HIGHGROVE n 17 November – 16 December, opening times vary, The Royal Gardens at Highgrove, Doughton, Gloucestershire Christmas shopping doesn’t get better than this at The Prince of Wales’ Highgrove. Stocked with unique gift ideas including decorations and stationery, to seasonal food and drink, home accessories and luxury clothing, you’ll find everything you need for the perfect Christmas. There are three unique experiences to choose from including morning shopping with a complimentary Mimosa, afternoon shopping with Champagne and lunch, and a festive cream tea option.

Pre-booked tickets only; highgrovegardens.com

SKERRYVORE n 17 November, 7.30pm, Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon Skerryvore create a unique fusion of folk, traditional, rock and Americana. Twice winners of Scotland’s Traditional Music ‘Live Act of the Year’ Award, Skerryvore have been on a meteoric journey that has taken them from the remote Isle of Tiree to the world stage. £18/£9; wiltshiremusic.org.uk Continued page 40

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WHAT’S | ON

Enjoy gin and live jazz at Great Western Wine

Jenni Murray will be speaking at St Michael’s Church

FAMILY PORTRAIT SESSIONS n 18 November and 2 December, 9.45am–3.15pm, Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath For beautiful photographs of you and your children, book a 45-minute photo session with Roz Collins Photography on these photography days. An opportunity to capture some natural images in a beautiful location and at no initial cost to you. Roz’s normal session fee is waived for the Portrait Days but booking is essential; rozcollins.co.uk/portrait-days BATH GUILDHALL CHRISTMAS MARKET n 22 November – 9 December, from 10am, The Guildhall Market, High Street, Bath While Bath Guildhall Market offers everything you need all under one roof throughout the year, at Christmas things really step up. Extending out of the building next to the Market Café, large, heated marquees appear in the car park to host an array of fabulous seasonal gifts. There’s also a licensed seated bar serving locally brewed Abbey Ales, beers, wines, hot mulled wine and hot speciality Italian foods, as well as live entertainment throughout the day. Enter from Orange Grove, Pulteney Bridge and the High Street; bathguildhallmarket.co.uk WERA HOBHOUSE MP LECTURE ON WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE 100 n 23 November, 6.30pm, Elim Church, Charlotte Street, Bath To mark the centenary of the Parliament Qualification of Women Act 1918, allowing women to be elected into the House of Commons, Bath’s first female MP, Wera Hobhouse, will speak about the journey towards equality of representation and the challenges ahead. Tickets £7, online or on the door, 50% off for B&NES Discovery Card holders; no1royalcrescent.org.uk CHRISTMAS AT AVON VALLEY n 24 November – 24 December, 9am–12pm, Avon Valley Adventure and Wildlife Park, Pixash Lane, Bath Road, Keynsham Whether you wish to be taken on an immersive, magical journey to the North

Pole with Evergreen the Elf to meet Father Christmas, enjoy a tea party with Father Christmas and friends, or simply want to get into the festive spirit, there are plenty of activities and fun to be had at Avon Valley this season. Experience ticket prices vary, book online in advance; avonvalley.co.uk KES CHRISTMAS FAIR n 24 November, 10am–2pm, King Edward’s School Sports Hall, North Road, Bath There will be lots of festive goodies on offer at KES’ annual Christmas fair including food, jewellery, home furnishings, ceramics, candles, art and many more. There will also be a Secret Santa stall, a chocolate tombola, adopt a teddy, a human fruit machine and a variety of Christmas crafts; kesbath.com MUSEUM SHOP SUNDAY n 25 November, 10am–6pm, Roman Baths Shop, Stall Street, Bath Head to the Roman Baths Shop for some fun festive shopping, where Roman characters Rusonia and Peregrinus will entertain you with their lives here in Aquae Sulis. Plus sample some goods made by local artisans such as heady honey mead and botanical beauty creams; romanbaths.co.uk/shop

JENNI MURRAY n 26 November, 8pm, St Michael’s Church, Broad Street, Bath Presenter of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Jenni Murray celebrates great women from around the world in this talk – rescuing some from historical obscurity and shining a new light on familiar names in her book A History of the World in 21 Women. £16.99/£8; toppingbooks.co.uk

MR AND MRS CLARK AND PERCY n 28 November, 1pm, Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath Holburne director Chris Stephens will discuss the visiting masterpiece Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy by Hockney in relation to the artist’s career and its position in the history of portraiture. £7; holburne.org

Get festive with a wreath making workshop at The Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel

SIR CHRIS BONINGTON: LIFE AND TIMES n 28 November, doors 6.30pm, starts 8pm, Komedia, Bath Sir Chris Bonington is Britain’s best-known mountaineer and one of the most successful expedition leaders in history. He began climbing aged 16 and has undertaken 19 Himalayan expeditions, including four to Everest. Hear him talk about his 60 years spent tackling the mountains, and see the original images and raw footage from his trips. 14+. £20; komedia.co.uk WINTER FESTIVAL WREATH-MAKING WORKSHOP n 29 November, 10am–1pm, The Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel, Beau Street, Bath Join award-winning florist Passion for a festive floral workshop. Learn how to create a wonderful festive wreath for your home this winter. £85, includes materials, refreshments and two course lunch; thegainsboroughbathspa.co.uk BONBON CABARET: CHRISTMAS SPECIAL n 29 November, doors 7.30pm, Widcombe Social Club, Bath Bonbon Cabaret is back for a Christmas Special, following the grand switch-on of Widcombe’s Christmas tree lights. The line up features a tour de force from Damian Williams as Tommy Cooper, music and singsongs with Kirsty Newton, deadpan stand-up from David James, and the ineffable Widcombe Radio Players. Dress code: White Christmas. Prize for the best creation. £15/£12; bathcomedy.com LATE NIGHT CHRISTMAS SHOPPING n 30 November, 9.30am–8pm, Kilver Court, Shepton Mallet With so much to explore at Kilver Court, take advantage of this late night opening to give you a bit more time to explore all the designer brands on offer, and find that perfect gift this festive season. And don’t miss the Christmas room, where you’ll discover unique gifts, decorations and tempting treats; kilvercourt.com Continued page 42

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Museum Shop Sunday at the Roman Baths Shop

Emily Maguire will be performing at St James Wine Vaults

Sir Chris Bonington will be speaking at Komedia

HOLBURNE UP LATE n 30 November, 5–9pm, Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath Experience the museum free of charge after hours, and immerse yourself in an eclectic programme of pop-up talks, art demos, installations, performances, DJ-sets and cocktails; holburne.org

BATH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA n 2 December, 3pm, Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon A programme of winter-themed music for all the family including Vivaldi’s Winter from The Four Seasons, Humperdinck’s Prelude to Hansel and Gretel, and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite No 1. £15/£8; wiltshiremusic.org.uk

BATH PHILHARMONIA AND NICOLA BENEDETTI n 30 November, 7.30pm, The Forum, Bath Head north for the misty glens, islands and highlands of Scotland with violinist Nicola Benedetti at a true St Andrew’s Day celebration. The programme features Mendelssohn’s Overture to The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave), Strauss’ Macbeth, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2, and Maxwell Davies’s An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise. £5–£35; bathphil.co.uk

THE ARTS SOCIETY BATH: THE ORIGINS OF OUR ENGLISH CHRISTMAS n 3 December, 1.30pm, Assembly Rooms, Bennett Street, Bath This seasonal lecture by Roger Askew will highlight how the English Christmas stretches back through European history, combining the pagan traditions of the Roman and Scandinavian winter festivals.

This lecture explores in words, images and music the various strands, pagan and religious, that have created this festival. £10 on the door; theartssocietybath.com

EMILY MAGUIRE: MEDITATION MIND n 30 November, 7.30pm, St James Wine Vaults, St James’s Street, Bath To celebrate the launch of her third book Meditation Mind, Bath-based artist Emily Maguire presents an evening of poetry and songs. With a remarkable, inspiring story to tell, she has been featured many times on Radio 2 and Radio 4, and her heartfelt lyrics and expressive vocals have won her fans across the globe. £10; emilymaguire.com

DIAMOND PIN WORKSHOP WITH SPARKLECHILD n 3 December, 6.30–9pm, Spotty Herberts, Queen Street, Bath Meet Kristal, the sparkliest lady we know!

Make your own layered diamond Sparklechild pin at this workshop, £10 per person, includes a glass of something fizzy.

There will be 10% off in the shop all evening, and 10% of takings will be donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital. Email: kate@spottyherberts.com to book.

PLANNING AHEAD...

THE ROAD HOME n 1 December, 7.30pm, St Mary’s Church, Bathwick, Bath On the eve of Advent, A Handful of Singers’ winter concert features music based on the theme of pilgrimage. New director Tomos Watkins’ inaugural programme includes Mendelssohn’s beautiful Psalm 43, Brahms’ powerful Warum ist das Licht gegeben and Rheinberger’s Abendlied. These works are interspersed with Elliot Carter’s Heart Not So Heavy As Mine, plus more. £25/£5; bathboxoffice.org.uk / ahandfulofsingers.org 42 TheBATHMagazine

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THE BATH SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY OPEN DAY n 4 December, 2.15pm, Manvers Street Baptist Church, Bath The Bath Shakespeare Society is a friendly play-reading group and would like to welcome a few new members. The group meets on alternate Tuesday afternoons and will be reading The Winter’s Tale, Henry VI Part 3 and Macbeth in the winter term. Meet the group at this open day, tel 01225 858630 for more information.

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SANTA AND ELF RUN n 9 December, 11am, Bath Spa University, Newton St Loe, Bath Join the festive fun run for all the family and help raise funds for Dorothy House Hospice Care. Choose from 2.5km or 5km, children 0–4 can take part for free, £7.50 for 5–11 years, and it’s £15 for over 12s. All entrants will receive festive attire and refreshments after the run; santaandelfrun.org.uk BATH MINERVA CHOIR: WINTER CONCERT n 15 December 7.30pm, Prior Park Chapel, Ralph Allen Drive, Bath A special candlelit performance of Rachmaninov’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in the beautifully atmospheric Prior Park Chapel. £15/£7.50. Tickets from Bath Box Office; bathboxoffice.org.uk 1984: OVER 40S NIGHT n 21 December, 9pm, Second Bridge, Manvers Street, Bath Nightclub Second Bridge will be transformed into a nostalgic time capsule where it will be open for a 40+(ish) party crowd, playing the greatest hits from the 80s and 90s. Hosted by IV League. Early-bird tickets £4, available via Facebook or online; secondbridge.co.uk THE SNOWMAN AND THE BEAR n 22 December, 3.30pm, The Forum, Bath Take a trip to the North Pole, meet Father Christmas and maybe dance with a snowman or two as Bath Philharmonia performs Howard Blake’s scores live to Raymond Briggs’ amazing animations of The Snowman and The Bear. £22/£14; bathphil.co.uk THE BIG-HEARTED VALENTINE’S BALL n 9 February, 6.30pm, Apex City of Bath Hotel, James Street West, Bath A charity black-tie dinner and ball to raise funds for a fibre-optic laryngoscope to be used for treating heart patients at the NHS Bristol Heart Institute. Includes close-up magic from Peter Baffles, live music and the host is comedian Tank Sherman. £75, includes drinks reception and three course dinner. Main sponsors Bugler Coaches, tel: 01225 44422. n

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MUSIC

THE SONGS YOU SING

Bath Premier Chamber Choir, A Handful of Singers, has a new musical director. Hailed as an exciting young talent, Emma Clegg asks Tomos Watkins what he will bring to the choral repertoire radically connected to everything else; you’d be surprised how often topics as seemingly unrelated as Stanislawski, anatomy and 19th-century European politics can come up in one rehearsal.”

Does a talented choir make the life of the conductor easier? “The joy and the challenge of working with A Handful of Singers is that they’re pretty good – the bit that’s really interesting is what to do with a piece once the notes are all right, and that constantly stretches the conductor.”

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ome people have music in their bones. Tomos Watkins certainly does: “Music has been in the background of my life since I was a nipper – my parents are both musicians, but I can remember clearly the concert that really converted me. It was Bach’s Concerto for Violin and Oboe. The next day my dad gave me The Brandenburg Concertos, and from there it was a slippery slope.” Tomos did have other childhood passions, though: “My very first instrument was the violin, which I quickly abandoned because the lessons were always on Saturday mornings and clashed with Power Rangers.”

Born in Cardiff, Tomos Watkins recently graduated with distinction from his Master’s in Choral Conducting from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Prior to this he was organ scholar of Pembroke College Oxford, where he was responsible for the chapel choir, and musical director of one of Oxford’s leading chamber choirs, The Arcadian Singers. He also led a semiprofessional chamber choir, Plebs Angelica.

Tomos is a talented professional singer and accompanist working with the Welsh National Opera, Channel 4 and the Eton Choral Courses.

Explaining his motivation Tomas says, “The thing about choral conducting that really interests me, as opposed to orchestral conducting, is the interaction of text and music and the fact that singing has a closer connection to the rest of our lives and existences as humans than almost anything else.

“Choirs are fascinating beings – they can represent one narrator, loads of different ones or none at all. Working with choirs is

As a conductor, does Tomos feel part of the music or rather enabling of it? “Both”, he replies, “but on occasions more one than the other. Sometimes conducting is musical logistics, but at other times the music is totally part of you, and usually you’re the only one allowed to dance to it!”

What relevance has choral music to our contemporary age? “Singing speaks to our shared humanity in a way that is unfamiliar and essential against a culture that is consumerist and materialistic,” says Tomas.

“I read recently that 18–24-year-olds are one

Tomos Watkins of the loneliest groups in society, despite their being more technologically connected to society than ever. Singing together is completely vital to human identity, and is a method of connecting with other people in a way that is totally beyond what we can do through a screen.”

The first concert of the 2018/19 season on 1 December, performed at St Mary’s Church, Bathwick at 7.30pm, is a programme of exquisite music based on the theme of pilgrimage. Works by three German composers of the Romantic period, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Rheinberger, are interspersed with repertoire by four twentieth century American composers, Elliot Carter, Samuel Barber and Stephen Paulus. The programme concludes with Randall Thompson’s epic suite Frostiana, one that Tomos didn’t know terribly well when he programmed it, but it has become a real favourite: “Randall Thompson has set seven different poems by Robert Frost and each one has a very particular colour. He’s understood the texts deeply, and the musical outcome is as appealing and melodic as it is rigorous and intellectually satisfying.”

Tomos lives in a village near Cardiff, but is on the move constantly: “One of the nice things about working freelance is that most of the time nobody makes you get up early, but it can be strange going to work when everyone else is sitting down for their evening meal. This variety is what keeps it interesting though – over the summer I was working at St John’s College Cambridge and at Llandaff North Rugby Club on consecutive days.”

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CULTURE | INTERVIEW

SHARING THE KNOWLEDGE

The BRLSI exists to promote science, literature and art. This year the centre is celebrating 25 years since their reopening in 1993. Emma Clegg unravels its history with chair of management Betty Suchar

Photography by Paolo Ferlo

forced in 1932 to move from its building, which was destroyed to make room for a new 20th-century road scheme. It moved to Queen Square, requiring the packing up, transporting and redisplaying of the significant collection.

Just eight years later in 1940, the Queen Square premises were requisitioned by the Admiralty, as many properties were during the Second World War. Once again, the collection had to be moved and rehoused. The Queen Square building became a reference library in 1964, and when the library moved to the Podium in 1993, it freed up the building for the newly active BRLSI.

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four-billion year old piece of meteorite; a plaster cast of a fully articulated specimen of a Plesiosaur from the Mesozoic era; and a firstcentury AD iron brooch from Lansdown.

There’s also a seriously enormous coco de mer seed (the largest seed in the plant world), reptilian teeth from the Upper Triassic; a piece of malachite collected from the Ural mountains; and a bust of Bath resident and teacher Sir Isaac Pitman.

These are all pieces from the collection of Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRLSI), which exists to promote and advance science, literature and art. Housed in the basement of its building in Queen Square, the collection includes an impressive library of more than 10,000 volumes and a museum collection of 150,000 objects catego rised within earth history, natural history, and human history. These sources hold an exceptional range of books and artefacts to intrigue, inspire and help us understand and connect with our past.

The museum collection does not currently have the space for a permanent public display but it is available for research and is used as the extensive source of the BRLSI’s annual summer exhibition – the most recent one being Pacific: Ocean of Islands, which included corals, shells and natural history specimens from the islands.

In the same spirit of keeping the knowledge of science, art and literature alive, the BRLSI also holds a world-class lecture programme of around 150 talks a year. This year alone has seen AI Futures: The Social Impact of Robotics and AI with Professor Alan Winfield; The Kantian Idea of a European Union with Professor Simon Glendinning; Grasshoppers and Crickets with Rob Randall of the Bath Natural History Society; and The English Country House Between the Wars by architectural historian Adrian Tinniswood.

Impressive, wouldn’t you say?

The roots of the BRSLI go back to the society formed by Edmund Rack in 1777.

Already with a vast collection of antiquities, expensive books and geological specimens, the collection was actively developed in the 18th century as Victorian explorers brought back innovative findings from their travels, from ancient fossils and minerals to books with pages documenting plant species.

The fortunes of the organisation were held back in the 20th century by infrastructure development. Once with a purpose-built building in Terrace Walk – a grand building with a museum, exhibition room, library, laboratory and lecture room – the society was

The current chair of management Betty Suchar and her husband Victor were instrumental in bringing the BRLSI programme of events together in the early 1990s. They had moved to Bath in 1984 and opened a bookshop on Walcot Street. Betty says, “One day in 1993, a man called Karl Jaeger came in and said, ‘Do you know they are going to sell the building on Queen Square? And we have to restore it for BRLSI. There is a public meeting – do come.’ ” “My husband was particularly excited about this new creative opportunity. It was like a phoenix rising,” says Betty. “We felt it was an opportunity to get something organised and it was a blank slate. You have got these historic objects, but what to do with them, how to present them and how to talk about them was an unknown.”

To keep the momentum around the organisation up at a time when the building needed refurbishing and the collection organising and cataloguing, the committee decided to have talks, simply meeting in people’s houses. Betty says, “We decided that having talks would give us a role and hopefully attract people who would later be interested in everything we were doing.”

Betty’s husband, Victor, was an enthusiastic champion of getting the top names to Bath to talk. Invited speakers included Enlightenment expert Roy Porter; Sir Martin Rees, then Astronomer Royal; and subsequently Louis Hodgkins who

talked about Nelson’s visits to Bath and Hermione Lee, professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford.

Persuading people to come and lecture at BRLSI, so crucial in those days, has become easier: “Now they love to come, because they know they are in good company. A lot of them enjoy it because they are not talking solely to academics. This level of engagement is more important to everybody nowadays,” says Betty. “It’s about people wanting to be stimulated in later life. That was the original thought behind the organisation, too. People were travelling in the 19th century and they wanted to share what they had done and what they had seen. In our century, what can we share? Enthusiasm. We want to provide a place for interaction and stimulation.”

BRLSI also houses a science programme aimed at the young people of Bath. Young BRLSI provides a wide variety of fun and engaging activities in the areas of science, technology and mathematics.

The BRLSI is celebrating its 25th anniversary of the re-opening this year. So what are their plans for the future? “We want to be doing more with our collections than we used to do,” says Betty. “The question is what does somebody who wants to create a museum have to think about? Because what interested a museum goer of 100 years ago was quite different. It is a challenge – do you put a permanent museum in here or do you have a changing one, or do you have one where there is something going on?”

BRLSI has just five key members of staff, including inspirational curator and collection manager Matt Williams, and depend on the work of volunteers who contribute many hours to help the smooth running of the organisation. BRLSI relies on much of their building to generate income and the hope, moving ahead, is to achieve a steady income and pledge more of the space to showing the collection. “We are investigating how to do this and we welcome ideas of how people think the life in Bath would be enriched by the collections,” says Betty.

As BRLSI celebrates its 25th anniversary of the re-opening, the team take the spirit with which their founding fathers set up their initial home, determined to make sure it is relevant for the 21st century. n Forthcoming lectures at the BRLSI include Have Theodolite, Will Travel: Mapping Africa’s Magnificent Landscape (8 November, 7.30pm) and Fashion, Faith & Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe (26 November, 7.30pm) BRSLI, 16–18 Queen Square, Bath; brlsi.org

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Discover your favourite Gins this Christmas Over 150 available in our Bath shop

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The Framing Workshop has been trading as an independent family run business on Walcot Street for over 28 years. We treasure you, our client, and spend time helping you to ďŹ nd the best way to display and protect your cherished objects, artworks and memorabilia. Creativity and respect for each artwork are core to what we do.

Every picture tells a story. Come and share yours.

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ART | EXHIBITIONS

NEW SHADES OF WINTER

The nights may be getting darker, but there’s plenty of colour and texture to be found at the city’s galleries this month NICK CUDWORTH GALLERY

Through The Looking Glass

by Nick Cudworth

London Street, top of Walcot Street, closed on Mondays Tel: 01225 445221, web: nickcudworth.com Throughout November The November exhibition at Nick Cudworth’s gallery is a collection of original paintings and giclée prints. The prints are available in a variety of sizes and alternative framing can be arranged. Having owned and worked in his own gallery at the top of Walcot Street for many years Nick is also able to offer prints that have a wide variety of subjects including a variety of views of Bath and surrounding areas. He will often observe and paint night images including local shops in Walcot Street. The Mirror Shop is a favourite especially when darkness comes and all within is lit up.

GRAY M.C.A 5 Margaret’s Buildings, Bath Open: Wednesday – Saturday, 10am – 4pm, Monday and Tuesday by appointment Tel: 01225 422117 Web: graymca.com

MUSEUM OF EAST ASIAN ART Bennett Street, Bath Open: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am–5pm; Sunday, 12–5pm Web: meaa.org.uk THE QUEST FOR WELLNESS Until 12 November The theme of wellness permeates this city based on its origins as a Roman spa town. In this exhibition, artist Zhang Yanzi explores common frailties and shared humanity, investigating the nature and meaning of wellness in China, its history, and its modern counterpoints from a Chinese perspective. Works on display include Excess, a silk robe covered in pill capsules which portrays pills as a kind of physical and psychological armour in the modern world; Inhalation, a Chinese painting on analgesic plasters that explores the ability of beautiful objects to provide humans with psychological comfort; and Pure Land, an ink painting of Buddha’s portrait in the ancient Chinese Buddhist mural style that alludes to the concept of well-being from a spiritual angle.

The Breathable, 2016, ink and cinnabar on gauze

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DRAWING ON STYLE Until 30 November Gray M.C.A is the UK’s leading authority on original fashion illustration and artist textiles from the 20th century including René Gruau and Kenneth Paul Block. The gallery has established a reputation worldwide for uncovering rare and dynamic fashion illustration and textiles from private international collections, estates and archives. Its annual Drawing on Style exhibitions during London and New York fashion weeks enable international collectors to source the finest examples of fashion illustration by the most respected and sought-after artists. Drawing on Style 2017 was selected by Cunard to preview on its Transatlantic Fashion Week crossing on board the Flagship Queen Mary 2 prior to opening in Tribeca, New York during New York Fashion Week.

BEAUX ARTS York Street, Bath. Open: Monday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm Tel: 01225 464850, web: beauxartsbath.co.uk WINTER EXHIBITION 19 November – Christmas Beaux Arts welcomes back one of its most popular exhibitors, 2015 British wildlife artist of the year Nick Mackman. Her work adorns the collections of Chris Packham, David Shepherd, John Cleese, Eshaness, Beaufort by Dawnne McGeachy Dame Judi Dench, among many others, and she has been commissioned by British Airways and the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. Her sculptures this year include a family group of elephants and a pack of African wild dogs. Ceramics on display will also include the beautiful porcelain works of Chris Keenan. The gallery will also be exhibiting a mixed group of painters and sculptors, among these Anna Gillespie, Beth Carter, Ruth Stage and Dawnne McGeachy.

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ART | EXHIBITIONS

DAVID SIMON CONTEMPORARY

By Chance by Iryna Yermolova

3 – 4 Bartlett Street, Bath Open: Monday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm, closed Wednesday and Sunday Tel: 01225 460189, web: davidsimoncontemporary.com ALICE MUMFORD RWA 2 – 30 November After being awarded The David Simon Contemporary Award at The Royal West of England Academy’s Annual Open Exhibition last year, a solo exhibition of some 20 new paintings by Alice Mumford has been created for this show. An admirer of Bonnard, Matisse and Winifred Nicholson, Mumford particularly takes advantage of the light in Cornwall, where she is based, and is known for her competence in interpreting this through her favoured still lifes and interior subjects.

AXLE ARTS Leighton Road, Weston, Bath Open: Monday to Saturday, 10am–5pm by appointment Tel: 01225 461230, web: axlearts.com IRYNA YERMOLOVA 29 October – 17 November Figurative painter Iryna Yermolova explores the notion of feminine beauty with a vibrant palette and a confident use of line. She paints with a bold yet sensitive touch, and her striking use of colour is often complemented by dramatic lighting.

Yermolova’s popular figurative and still life studies have been exhibited at the annual ROI exhibition every year for the past six years.

WINTER SHOW 22 November – 9 December Axle Arts’ Winter Show 2018 opens with a selection of artists showing traditionally smaller artworks, perfect for giving as presents, alongside larger statement pieces. The exhibition will be installed at two locations this year – the studio at Leighton Road and at Tasburgh House Hotel on Warminster Road (open 10am–5pm). There will be three open weekends at Leighton Road for clients to drop in; 24/25 Nov, 1/2 Dec, 8/9 Dec. Exhibiting artists include Derek Balmer PPRWA, Rick Kirby, Moira Huntly RWA RSMA RI PPPS, Lynne Cartlidge RCA and Frans Wesselman RE.

Warm Early Summer Polgrean

by Alice Mumford

EMMA ROSE Upstairs at 78 Walcot Street, Bath. Open: Monday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm Tel: 07885 235915 or 01225 424424 Web: emmaroseartworks.com Throughout November Celebrating autumn and the onset of winter, Emma Rose invites you to see her paintings, limited edition giclée prints and cards.

November’s exhibition is built around the highlight painting The Fall (see right). A large proportion of her work echoes the land, sea, sky and the elements. Her unique work is a mix of Indian inks and acrylics, often using gold/copper/silver leaf. She is happy to talk through any commission ideas, now a mainstay of her work.

THE HOLBURNE MUSEUM Great Pulteney Street, Bath. Open: Daily, 10am – 5pm (11am Sundays) Tel: 01225 388569, web: holburne.org GAINSBOROUGH AND THE THEATRE Until Sunday 20 January 2019 Bringing together some of Gainsborough’s finest portraits of leading actors, musicians, playwrights, designers, dancers and critics of the 1760s–80s, this exhibition will explore themes of celebrity, naturalism, performance and friendship. Gainsborough and the Theatre will include 37 objects, including 15 oil portraits by Gainsborough, works on paper (including satires, views of theatres and playbills) and ephemera from public and private collections across the UK. A significant aspect of the exhibition is devoted to the locations and theatres with which Gainsborough was linked, from Bath’s own Orchard Street Theatre to the London theatre synonymous with Garrick, Drury Lane. ➲

Marie Jean Augustin Vestris by Thomas Gainsborough, c1781-2, Tate, London, 2017

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ART | EXHIBITIONS

items are from the Ellis family archive, which was given to the gallery and Bath Record Office in 2016. £4.50, free for Discovery Card holders.

VICTORIA ART GALLERY

By Pulteney Bridge Open daily, 10.30am – 5pm Tel: 01225 477233, web: victoriagal.org.uk MAKING ART MATTER, 1931–85: CLIFFORD AND ROSEMARY ELLIS Until 25 November Husband and wife team Clifford and Rosemary Ellis designed bold, colourful posters and book jackets for clients including London Transport, Shell and Collins.

Clifford is also remembered as the founder and principal of Bath Academy of Art. Rosemary taught alongside him, together with artists including Gillian Ayres, Peter Lanyon and William Scott, whose works feature in this exhibition. This is the first show to profile the couple’s joint artistic work, spanning more than 50 years, much of it reflecting their love of nature. Their valuable artistic record of the Bath Blitz forms part of the display. Many of these

ADELA BRETON: TRAVELS WITH A PAINTBRUSH Until 25 November In 1887 Adela Breton set off from her Bath home, eager to see the world after spending decades as a dutiful daughter nursing ageing parents. Over the next 25 years Breton explored the world and became an expert on Mexican archaeology. She documented her travels around Europe, the Americas and Japan in a series of beautiful watercolours.

After her death these works were donated to the gallery, with the collection documenting the life and travels of this most fascinating of women. Free entry.

Right, Dancing frog, ink and gouache 1937, by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis

Maeve Brennan’s Listening in the Dark

MODERN ARTBUYER Sylvan Lodge, 1 Cliffe Drive, Limpley Stoke, Bath Web: modernartbuyer.com OPEN HOUSE POP-UP GALLERY 24 – 25 November, 10am–5.30pm Modern ArtBuyer is opening its doors again for an Open House Popup Gallery featuring a selection of works by artists including Bonnie and Clyde, Maria Rivans, Jane Emberson, Mark Jessett, Plum Neasmith, Paul Minott, Paul Bennett and Jonathan Barber, among many others. In addition there will be a selection of jewellery and contemporary, elegant solid wood furniture, hand-made by local designer makers Charlie Caffyn and Agnieszka Cook.

THE EDGE The Edge, University of Bath, Claverton Down Open: Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 5pm Tel: 01225 386777 Web: edgearts.org UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES Until 15 December An exhibition of two film works which reflect the complex, entangled nature of contemporary experience in a time where world events are so volatile and turbulent that it’s hard to predict what might happen next. View Maeve Brennan’s Listening in the Dark and Imran Perretta’s 15 days, both artists are recipients of the fifth edition of the Jerwood/FVU Awards. Free admission.

Egrets over Water

by Nancy Taplin

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Work on display by Jane Emberson and Paul Minott

GALLERY NINE 9b Margaret’s Buildings, Bath. Open: Monday to Saturday, 10am – 5pm Tel: 01225 319197, web: gallerynine.co.uk PAINTINGS, CERAMICS AND JEWELLERY 2 November – 31 December

A new exhibition featuring a colourful and creative range of paintings, ceramics and jewellery. Robina Jack makes earthenware pots which she decorates in coloured slips and transparent glazes. Her work is driven by pattern and coloured animals, plants and coastal motifs and finished with a patterned border. Nancy Rose Taplin’s delicate paintings of birds on antique books and papers evoke both transience and timelessness, while James Dodds’ paintings and prints are inspired by boat building. Jeweller Elizabeth Chamberlain works with silver, gold, semi precious beads and precious gemstones, and her jewellery is inspired by organic texture and form, whereas Cornelius Van Dop creates wonderful boxes and brooches from sheet metal, silver, gold, nickel, copper, and bronze. Potter David Wright uses reclaimed wood and clay to make boxes, bottles and bowls, and Sarah Jenkins’ ceramic work is inspired by the changing light and weather, as well as her connection to the landscape.

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nick cudworth gallery

Bathwick Hill Blues - Oil on canvas

NOVEMBER EXHIBITION 1 – 30 November An exhibition of paintings and prints by Nick that reflect his interest in a variety of subjects including portraits, still life and Landscape

5 London Street (top end of Walcot Street), Bath BA1 5BU tel 01225 445221 / 07968 047639 gallery@nickcudworth.com www.nickcudworth.com

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2018/19 Lecture Series

‘The Origins of our English Christmas’ Exploring in words, images and music the various strands, pagan and religious that have created this magical festival.

Lecturer: Roger Askew at

1.30pm on Monday 3rd December 2018 in The Assembly Rooms, Bennett Street Bath

Visitors welcome £10 at the door (No Booking required)

www.theartssocietybath.com Celebrating 50 years of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies

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EXHIBITION

BATH REFLECTIONS

Photographer Clive Arrowsmith came to Bath 40 years ago to take pictures of Peter Gabriel. Never publicly exhibited, you can now see them at the Museum of Bath Architecture, says Emma Clegg

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I wish I’d taken more photographs of him [Peter] getting out of the Roman Baths in the soaking wet suit

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n 1978 Clive Arrowsmith photographed Peter Gabriel in Bath.

One of the photographs showed Gabriel in the Roman Baths wearing a suit and tie, and floating on the surface of the water was a tray with soup bowl and spoon, a cup and saucer and a lit candle. The most surprising thing was that the Roman Baths had given Peter Gabriel permission to clamber into the hot baths.

You see, the off-the-wall, in-the-water concept was all part of a typical Arrowsmith approach to his particular genre of portrait photography – question the framework, do the unexpected, play with ideas and create a visual spectacle and an image that imprints itself in your memory.

Arrowsmith recollects the shoot: “Peter said ‘What about the Roman Baths?’ and I said ‘it would be great to shoot you in the Roman Baths early in the morning, with a tray and soup bowl’. And it evolved from that conversation. We didn’t know if we would get permission, but amazingly we did and it was nerve-wracking with all the equipment, electricity and water with a boom light suspended over the water. Peter was really stoic about it all and never complained about anything – he was exceptional in the effort he made. I wish I’d taken more photographs of him getting out of the Roman Baths in the soaking wet suit.”

The photographs – which also included images of Gabriel on Solsbury Hill (the title of a classic Gabriel track released in 1977) and across the river from the abbey – have not before been published or exhibited. But from 1 December they will be on display at the Museum of Bath Architecture.

Gabriel had recently left the band Genesis to start a solo career when these images were shot. Arrowsmith had first photographed Peter Gabriel for Vogue in the early 1970s when he was still with Genesis. The Bath shoot came about after Gabriel called Arrowsmith and asked him to come to Bath.

It was their second shoot together and pursues a more surrealistic and intimate vision than their first, which was more bound up in the progressive rock pageantry of Genesis. The exhibition will show images from both shoots.

There will be other images in the exhibition from Clive’s extensive body of work, with subjects including The Dalai Lama, David Bowie, Sir Paul McCartney,

George Harrison, Mick Ronson and Kate Bush. And there will be images that Arrowsmith has recently taken of the locations he shot 40 years ago, including the Roman Baths.

“I look back on it,” says Clive, “as Peter and I just being at the beginning of our careers. When I was doing it, I was striving to get something very graphic and interesting. It evolved as we were doing it. I had loads of preconceptions when I came to Bath and I hate to use the word ‘mystical’, but the shoot took on a life of its own. The beauty of the scenery, the architecture and the abbey, the reflections in the water, everything just came together. So I look back at the dynamic energy we both had, the fact that we really gave it everything, until we were both beautifully exhausted at the end of the day. It was all shot on film so we only had a few polaroids, but I knew I’d captured something special because Peter gave it everything.”

Looking back on his portraits over a career of more than 50 years, you see again and again how Clive has the almost visionary ability to create fresh, edgy, resonance in his portraits. He originally trained as a fine artist at Kingston College of Art, and says that this, combined with the fact that he worked independently as a photographer from the beginning, has had a big influence on his uninhibited style.

“Because I was never a photographic assistant and am entirely self-taught, when I started I really wanted to have ‘a style’ of my own. With my art school background in painting and drawing, I just evolved photographically frame by frame.

“With no formal photographic training, I didn’t know what you were supposed to do and that was an advantage in a way. I took lots of risks and evolved lighting styles that other people now use a lot, but people thought they were crazy at the time. I

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genuinely didn’t know they were risks. I just always retained the painter’s view and a love of dramatic Renaissance-style light, the light of Caravaggio and Leonardo. I was also influenced by the cinematic art particularly films by Akira Kurosawa and Orson Welles (The Third Man) the influence of which you can see in the Peter Gabriel shoot, but also throughout my career.”

The subjects of Clive’s shoots always seem very comfortable in their own skin and within his often-radical photographic interpretation. How does he coax his subjects into a pose that works? “With fashion and beauty,” Clive explains, “I plan everything before the shoot: the model, the casting, hair, make up, styling and so on.

With portraits I become a cabaret for the sitter, I engage them in conversations that animate and interest them about subjects they love. I talk about comedies, about their children and family, things like that, to get them involved in the shoot. The sitter is not just a target – they are all of it.

“Of course if I have the time with them I like to gain that kind of rapport, but many times I have had to just rely on lighting and on observing their characteristics in a short space of time. Once you start shooting, it then becomes intuitive. However, in my experience if you don’t have everything in place before you start shooting, it’s doomed to failure.”

Alongside the exhibition there will be a programme of events and talks by Clive Arrowsmith, which will take place at No.15 Great Pulteney Street Hotel. There will also be a studio photography workshop and Clive will be running a special live photo-booth where museum visitors can have their portrait taken by one of today’s most influential portrait photographers (booking in advance for this is advised). n Peter Gabriel Reflections: Iconic Photographs in Bath by Clive Arrowsmith, 1 December – 3 February. Museum of Bath Architecture, The Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapel, The Paragon, Bath; museumofbatharchitecture.org.uk

OPPOSITE: clockwise from top left, photographs of Peter Gabriel by Clive Arrowsmith taken by Bath Abbey, on Solsbury Hill, in the Roman Baths, and a shot of the Roman Baths taken in the same period

by Arrowsmith

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HANDMADE | GIFT GUIDE

ARTISAN GIFTS There are a multitude of artisans beavering away in our region making original, handcrafted pieces.

This is all work inspired by the commitment of individual artists to a certain creative technique – printmaking, textiles, leatherwork, jewellery, glass-blowing and ceramics

Frame/Void rings by Carol Hunt, oxidised silver, concrete and rough diamonds, £168, Waller & Wood, 4 Abbey Green, Bath wallerandwood.co.uk

Christmas is Coming, giclée print by Emma Rose, unframed mounted print (32 x 32cm) £40; framed and mounted print (70 x 70cm), £285, 78 Walcot Street, Bath emmaroseartworks.com

The Unicorn linocut by artist James Nunn, unframed, £80 jamesnunn.co.uk

Cuff by Annie Beardsley, made from hand-dyed anodised aluminium, £45, Waller & Wood, 4 Abbey Green, Bath wallerandwood.co.uk

Santolina cushions in handwoven merino lambswool

by Katherine Fraser, £85, 74 Walcot Street, Bath katherinefraser.co.uk

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Stoneware bowl by Kate Marshall, £75 Email: marshall.kate7@gmail.com

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HANDMADE | GIFT GUIDE Long line circle and rectangle pendant

by Elizabeth Chubb, £80, Waller & Wood, 4 Abbey Green, Bath wallerandwood.co.uk; elizabethchubb.etsy.com

Mermaid Plate

by Morag Macinnes, £80, Gallery Nine, 8–9 Margaret’s Buildings, Bath galleryninebath.com

Large disc bead necklace by Clare Lloyd, £70, WHY Gallery, 3 Stony Street, Frome

Trailing snake scales earrings, oxidized silver and enamel by Eily O’Connell. One of a kind, £520

colour-designs.co.uk

eilyoconnell.com

Untitled, by Maggie Simonsen, acrylic on board, 40 x 18cm, £70, Email: maggiesimonsen@me.com

Hand-thrown flecked stoneware mug by Libby Ballard, 9.5cm high, £22 libbyballard.co.uk

Painted silk scarf by Carole Waller, from a collection starting at £45, Waller & Wood, 4 Abbey Green, Bath

Portrait leather wallet by Robert Christopher, £180 robertchristopherleather.com

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HANDMADE | GIFT GUIDE

Copper and oak lamp by Colin Smith, £99, Verve Living, 15 Walcot Buildings, London Road, Bath

Set of three tiny vessels by Maria Wojdat in yellow, pink and green, £120 per set mariawojdat.com

verveliving.uk

Stoneware pot decorated with oxides by Clare Hubble, £25 ceramics@clarehubble.com; clarehubble.com

Wire cow by Bridget Baker, £28 Email: bridgetjbaker@gmail.com

Ceramic strawberry poison arrow frog on a leaf by Andy Rhodes, 10 x 14cm, £45 Email: andy@andrewrhodes.me.uk

Large blue flared bowl by Paul Philip, £1200, Gallery Nine, 8–9 Margaret’s Buildings, Bath galleryninebath.com

Light purple art glass vase by Bath Aqua Glass, £130, 14 Cheap Street/15 Abbey Churchyard, Bath bathaquaglass.com

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Magician automata piece

by Vicky Sander, £45 Tel: 01225 469533

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HANDMADE | GIFT GUIDE

Pop Hoops in sterling silver and resin by Su Trindle, £70, Waller & Wood, 4 Abbey Green, Bath wallerandwood.co.uk

Bridge, sculpted stoneware by Gary Wood, one of a series from £100, Waller & Wood, 4 Abbey Green, Bath garywoodceramics.co.uk Handmade felt bag by textile artist Joanna Wright, £125 Email: jojowright@postmaster.co.uk

Necklace, gold-plated sterling silver by Dilek Koroglu, £150, Icarus Silver Jewellery, 27 Broad Street, Bath icarusjewellery.com

Statement semi-circle necklace with silver tubing detail by Fern Robinson, resin, silver, crayon and cord, £95, Waller & Wood, 4 Abbey Green, Bath

Acid Yellow Bowl by Andrew Temple Smith, £98, Gallery Nine, 8–9 Margaret's Buildings, Bath galleryninebath.com

wallerandwood.co.uk

Cup earrings by Tina Engell, set with semi-precious stones, silver £160 or 18ct yellow gold, £850, 29 Ainslie’s Belvedere, Bath

Red Boy giclée print of artwork by Robert Highton, £79 mounted, unframed; £139 mounted and framed robhightonart.com

tinaengell.com

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he Victorian Gothic estate of Tyntesfield, near Bristol, has been in the care of conservation charity the National Trust since 2002. It was once home to the Gibbs family, who lived on the estate from 1844 to 2001. Lawrences’ proximity to this wonderful house means that the name Gibbs is well known to their specialists. So, imagine his delight when Neil Grenyer, Lawrences’ furniture specialist, noticed that one of the items he was cataloguing had an original label from 1926 indicating that Antony Hubert Gibbs was the maker.

“The objects we had been given to sell came from the Gibbs family, but I had not realised that they had also been MADE by a Gibbs” he commented.

Antony Hubert and his father before him, also called Antony, had been very accomplished ornamental wood turners and by a fortunate coincidence, Tyntesfield has recently acquired the original Holtzappfel lathe used by both father and son.

“We couldn’t believe our luck that so soon after taking delivery of the lathe, we now had the chance to acquire some of the items made on it,” explained Susan Hayward, Curator at Tyntesfield, when she accepted delivery from Helen Carless, Lawrences’ Managing Director. “It is very satisfying for an auctioneer to see lots go to the place where they most belong, and we are delighted that Tyntesfield was able to secure the items in our sale. After almost one hundred years, they have gone home,” said Helen Carless.

Do you have a rare treasure? Why not find out by taking advantage of Lawrences Free Valuations, held throughout the South West including Bristol and Bath.

For more information on valuations contact andy.sagar@lawrences.co.uk or phone 01460 73041 Tyntesfield is open to visit every day apart from Christmas Day. For more information visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/tyntesfield

The Linen Yard, South Street, Crewkerne, Somerset TA18 8AB T 01460 73041

lawrences.co.uk

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HOW DO YOU KEEP YOUR SILVER CLEAN? Duncan Campbell HAS BEEN DEALING IN ANTIQUE SILVER SINCE 1986.

A life hack

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Pepper Mill by Gerald Benney, 1965

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charming lady called into my shop the other day to show me her much-loved silver sugar bowl.

The 400-year-old bowl was more or less perfect and, though delicate, was apparently in constant use.

I was thrilled to know that such a rare thing was being both looked after and, better still, made use of. Not only that but the bowl was a fabulous colour – it glowed. The reason it looked so good was that it was being handled and washed often enough to retain that lovely soft shine that silver should have.

I am asked often how to clean silver and my response is always the same. Try to use it as often as is convenient, wash it up or run it through the dishwasher and go again.

Silverware is absolutely made for use. While the idle items just tarnish on their shelves, the useful ones shine like mirrors. Our ancestors didn’t have to suffer the weekly childhood purgatory of achey fingers and black hands – they just ate and drank with the stuff.

I have heard folks complain that a canteen of silver is a pain because when it comes out at Christmas, it has to be cleaned. That really is a pain: I get that. Silver forks and spoons should be kept in the kitchen drawer – there really is no earthly reason to put them away into a fitted cutlery case after use, which must be really annoying. And if Christmas dinner is better with silver, imagine how Tuesday’s leftover supper might be elevated.

Aside from the pure pleasure of use, I estimate that 80% of the damage suffered by silver is through often over-zealous cleaning.

Rubbing away with polish is going to wear the metal away far faster than through using it daily. Cleaning silver is a nuisance, whereas using it everyday is just a great pleasure – that can’t be a hard decision to make.

The only trouble is, once you have converted to eating only with silver, you notice how stainless steel tastes of steel. n www.beaunashbath.com, 01225 334234

Open Monday to Saturday 9am till 6pm 31 Brock Street, Bath, BA1 2LN | 01225 334 234 info@beaunashbath.com | www.beaunashbath.com beaunashbath

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CITY | HISTORY

ARMISTICE AND AFTERMATH As we look to commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War this month, historian Catherine Pitt reflects on the consequences it had on the city of Bath

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uring the First World War fivemillion men served to fight for Britain. In 1914 the population of Bath was around 70,000, over 11,200 men fought in the war, and more than 1,800 were killed in action or died of their wounds.

The Great War ended at 11am on Monday 11 November 1918, although it had been agreed at 5.10am that morning. When the news reached Bath, people flocked to the abbey for an impromptu service of thanks.

Others swelled the streets around the Guildhall where the mayor and his wife were driven through the crowds. At Holloway a carpenter created an effigy of the German kaiser and hung it outside his shop; an attempt to burn it in Saw Close was soon stopped by city police.

On Peace Day the following July (The Versailles Peace Treaty wasn’t signed until then) various trees were planted around Bath including a Peace Oak in Sydney Gardens. In Crescent Field, in front of the Royal

Crescent, crowds gathered to see doves released, although it was discovered that the ‘doves’ were in fact homing pigeons that flew back around rather than away.

A MEMORIAL FOR BATH One of Bath’s main concerns immediately after the war was how to commemorate those who had died. The corporation (the council) was seemingly slow to react. Controversy was over cost, form (whether there was memorial hall or cenotaph) and location.

By the early 1920s many of the local schools, businesses, colleges and churches had their own memorials. In 1923 Bath Abbey created a memorial chapel and also built the cloister vestry (now the site of the abbey shop) as a Great War memorial; but the city overall still had nothing.

Five thousand local people donated more than £3000 to pay for a cenotaph designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, but still the location was debated. People took to the local papers to complain and the matter became political.

Cedric Chivers was re-elected Mayor of Bath in 1924 on the promise of a memorial, even if it was at his own expense.

Chivers commissioned four bronze plaques with names inscribed to be placed on the side of the Mineral Water Hospital that faces on to Union Street. Although a temporary measure it became an unofficial memorial site, with troops acknowledging the plaques on Remembrance Sunday Parades, and people laying wreaths at the site. It also became a tradition for local brides to place their bouquets here once they were wed.

Finally the entrance to Victoria Park was chosen and the Stall Street plaques joined others on the memorial. The official unveiling of Bath’s War Memorial happened on 11 November 1927.

THE AFTERMATH OF WAR Despite peace, deaths from war injuries continued. Adding to these were the victims of the pandemic known as Spanish flu that swept the world. Between 1918 and 1920, 228,000

© Bath in Time

Peace Day Thanksgiving service on 19 July 1919 at the Royal Crescent

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people died in Britain alone and in July 1918 it had reached Bath and Somerset. Very little is mentioned in local newspapers about the pandemic, perhaps to ensure calm; but in 1920 it is reported that local health authorities deemed areas of Bath clear of the disease.

The local and national government took a greater concern over the population’s health after the war. When national conscription came in January 1916 doctors inspecting recruits had noted the poor health of many.

Housing schemes post-war were encouraged as well as the clearance of slum areas.

Although often associated with the Second World War, rationing was in fact introduced during the First, albeit near the end of the conflict. The loss of horses and manpower on farms impacted on agricultural production, and German submarines in the Channel began a concerted effort to starve Britain by destroying food ships heading to our shores.

In 1916 the Ministry of Food was created.

Laws were passed making it illegal to consume more than two courses when dining in public at lunch-time and three courses in the evening. Voluntary rationing began in 1917 but by the summer of 1918 butter, sugar, meat, flour, milk and margarine had been rationed.

The records of Bath grocers Cater, Stofell and Fortt detail the struggles caused by rationing in sourcing goods and meeting orders during and after the war. There are letters to one customer detailing the fact that peel has been substituted in the place of sugar and fruit, and profuse apologies to another that whisky was not available for their hamper.

Local public houses, the staple of many working men’s lives, were also affected by the Great War. Concerns over alcohol consumption nationally saw a rise in the temperance movement and the government restricting opening hours. The Defence of the Realm Act (1914) made the act of buying someone else a drink illegal. The strength of beer produced by breweries was ordered to be reduced and alcohol duty rose.

Post-war, the restricted opening hours of eight hours a day remained up until the 1980s, and in Bath between 1918 and 1938 the number of pubs opening fell by 16 per cent.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN The interest in the drinking habits of women was of particular national and local concern in the wartime period. Local businesses such as Horstmann, Stothert and Pitt, and Bath Cabinet Makers, became involved in the production of munitions, tank and aircraft parts for the war effort. Lots of these positions were filled by women, who joined their male colleagues in a tipple after work, something of a rarity pre-1914.

War created opportunities for women who were needed to fill roles from farms to factories as men volunteered and later were conscripted to fight. In Bath, women became clerks, ambulance drivers, police officers,

tram conductors and munition workers.

Many women took on nursing roles at the Front that led them to the battlefields of Europe. One Bathonian, Miss A. E. Herd, was mentioned in despatches in 1919 for her courageous services in France, and in Bath Abbey there hangs a memorial to Donnett Mary Parker. Between 1917 and 1919 Parker served as a First Aid Nursing Yeoman in France, and was twice feted for her “gallant and distinguished service in the field”.

Soldiers were billeted to the city, not just British but Australian and Canadian troops.

Many women without their husbands and with families to feed resorted to prostitution to survive. Louie Stride, who lived in the notorious Avon Street area of Bath during the First World War, wrote in her memoirs about her mother’s frequent “visitors”. With the cessation of war, prostitution declined, though never disappeared.

The expectation of men after demobilisation was that women would quietly give up the jobs they had been doing and head back to their more traditional roles. Bath City Police used stealth tactics to force female police officers out, setting up a committee to accept their resignations. Bath didn’t see another woman police officer until 1939.

Some businesses were, however, reluctant to give up their female staff since it cost less to employ a woman. Post-war Cater, Stofell and Fortt had a greater female to male ratio of workers because it was cheaper.

Though the war brought mixed fortunes for women, it did bring about some female emancipation. In February 1918 the vote was given to property-owning women over 30 years old. This opened the door for the full vote for all women over 21 in 1928. Post-war youth began to enjoy the freedoms of peacetime and although still somewhat restrained by social convention, a small minority of women in Bath, as in London, began to embrace the new era ahead.

FINANCIAL HARDSHIP Unemployment in Britain rose in the years following the war. Jobs created to support the war effort no longer existed. By 1921, two million men were unemployed, and as food prices rose there was general civil unrest throughout the country. In Bath a number of strikes and Labour protests took place, and there was a general fear of Communism. It was also not unusual to see limbless and wounded soldiers on the streets.

The universal welfare system didn’t exist in 1918. People relied on the charity of others or institutes such as the workhouse. Post-war a number of organisations were set up, with branches in Bath, for soldiers and their families. Bath Council set up a War Pensions Committee and by 1920 over 3,400 disabled men were drawing a pension, along with 254 widows, and 466 parents and dependents. In August 1919 the Bath Branch of the British Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers Society appealed in the local press for any widowed mother “who

© Bath in Time

CITY | HISTORY

Bridal bouquet being given to the Bath War Memorial at the Royal Mineral Water Hospital, 1923 had lost a lad in this war and had to suffer with two or three shillings a week pension” to come forward for support.

Although for some the 1920s was a golden era, it was also an era of austerity. People didn’t have the disposable income they once had. Visitors coming to Bath to ‘take the waters’ dropped despite a number of concerted efforts by the local corporation to advertise the city.

The period of the long-stay resident in Bath for the ‘season’ was on the wane. Local hoteliers were reluctant to embrace the change. At the Empire Hotel, one or twonight visitors had to enter and leave the hotel via the back entrance in case the public got the wrong impression.

HOSPITAL CARE A large change in Bath after the conflict was the eventual closure of the Bath War Hospital.

In 1914 sanatoriums, church halls and other buildings were requisitioned in the city by the military for wounded British, Empire and Allied troops to convalesce. In May 1915 Bath War Hospital opened at Combe Park with 10 huts built to hold 500 men on what had once been a cricket pitch. By 1918 the capacity had almost tripled with tents erected to accommodate a further 800 men.

In November 1919 the hospital was taken over by the Ministry of Pensions, finally closing in 1929 when it was transformed into the Royal United Hospital. During its 14 years as a military hospital, more than 40,000 men were treated. Despite the best efforts of the nurses and doctors here some patients died and plots were made available at Locksbrook Cemetery for their burial.

Bath tried to resume some semblance of normality for the post-war population. On 22 February 1919 Bath City Football Club played their first regular fixture in more than four years, in May 1919 Lansdown Golf Course reopened, and in the same month Bath Races took place for the first time since 1914.

There were times of upheaval and economic struggles following the 1918 Armistice. The emotional as well as economic impact on individuals, families and businesses in the city took longer to fade, but the sacrifices made by the men and women of Bath in the First World War should never be forgotten. n

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BATH @ WORK

Our series of photographic portraits by Neill Menneer shows Bath people at work. View a gallery of Bath@Work subjects at: thebathmag.co.uk

Anthony Mendy

Recycling operative

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ack in the 1940s my parents, together with various uncles and cousins, embarked on a massive trek north to escape the poverty and hardship in their homeland of Guinea Bissau. Some of the family went only as far as Senegal but my folks were determined to make it to The Gambia, a British colony at the time. My dad talked about the journey sometimes and how they had persuaded some fishermen to help them cross The Big River that got in the way.

My dad was a real Anglophile and found work in the many international companies that operated from Gambia. The first was Moralprom Plumbing, a wholesaler distributing pumps and electrical items. After they went bust dad worked for GRT as an exporter of ground nut oil. We were lucky, really, as he had a good job and owned a small house…well it was a zinc hut with a bit of land.

Both my parents were very enterprising. They had to be, as there were five children to feed. My mum did a number of jobs, one of which was to buy fish and sell them at the market, and in the evening she ran her own small bar from the house – with homemade alcohol, naturally, a strong brew made from sugar and yeast, distantly related to vodka. When dad retired things got really tight and there wasn’t enough money to continue with our schooling. I left in Year 5, but my sister Dezier left even earlier.

After school I did various jobs through dad’s contacts. A stint as a building labourer was followed by seven years on a fishing vessel. This was a really great job that provided products for a colourful American called John Miller who was in partnership with a Gambian until they fell out and Miller went back to the United States. Onwards and upwards they say!

Through friends and contacts I found a job as a porter in a hotel in the capital, Banjul. A Swedish chef there trained me to cook. Just basic stuff but a great skill to have as it directly led to my next big adventure as cook to the Gambian ambassador in Nigeria. They tested my cooking before I went, and they survived! This job cropped up at a low point in my life as two of my brothers had died (Louis from a lightning strike). However, although the pay was good I now had four kids of my own to feed and I missed them and wasn’t giving them either enough time or enough money. I had to return to Gambia.

Soon events unfolded to bring me to Bath. A friend, Abraham, was going out with Kelly, a girl from Bath. Her mother saw some pictures of me, liked what she saw and came to meet me.

We fell in love, married and I travelled back to Bath with her.

After various jobs in a cheese factory, ham roasting and at The Bath Press I ended up ‘on the bins’. After seven years I was ‘promoted’ and now spend all my time in the recycling centre.

I love this job. It’s productive, ethical, useful and above all fun. I love being outside and meeting so many different people.

We now recycle 81% of what we receive from the public. That’s what I call a job.

PORTRAIT: Neill Menneer at Spirit Photographic.

Visit: capturethespirit.co.uk, tel: 01225 483151 THEBATHMAG.CO.UK

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HISTORIC | TOUR

MINING AND DINING

Jessica Hope heads to Bath’s countryside, frequents an old mining watering hole before tucking into award-winning dishes on tour company Around and About Bath’s historic dining excursion

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t the height of the Cold War, under threat of a nuclear attack, senior national figures would not have been moved to a reinforced bunker in London.

Perhaps surprisingly, they would have been transported swiftly to the depths of the English countryside in picturesque, quiet Corsham. One hundred feet beneath the village’s chocolate-box cottages is Burlington Bunker, a top-secret underground city, built in the 1950s in the miles of tunnels that were once the beating centre of the quarry industry. Decommissioned in 1991, the site has long been a local secret – and is just one of the remarkable discoveries you will come across on Around and About Bath’s Historic Pubs, Mining and Dining tour.

Providing you with a different experience of the quintessential English pubs and drinks at local inns found in the countryside around Bath, tour company Around and About Bath gives guests a new perspective of the history of the local area. Plus, you will find yourself tucking into award-winning food and sampling some of the best regional tipples along the way.

I recently joined tour guide Jules on this excursion to the country. As with most of Jules’ tours, they are organised to surprise and delight guests along to the way, so you won’t necessarily know where you will be visiting on the next section of the tour. So to allow you to discover it for yourself, I won’t be naming any of the pubs we called upon on during our evening tour.

After being picked up from Bath city centre, we headed straight to Box Hill, which 70 TheBATHMagazine

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Jules tells us was once the largest working quarry in the UK. As we drove up Quarry Hill, you could imagine how this steep road would have been full of horses pulling carts of freshly hewn Bath stone. You can also see how this small village would have, in the late 19th century, been bustling as the home and work base for thousands of people.

The first inn on the tour had unusual beer labels covering the ceilings and quarry tools adorning the walls. This would have been the go-to watering hole for the hard-working quarrymen after a long day’s labour in the dark, sweltering tunnels under idyllic landscape surrounding the pub. While tasting some of the locals’ favourite brews, Jules tells us about how this small village played a significant part in the development of the railways around the world in the 19th century with Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s creation of Box Tunnel. This area later changed, however, when the quarry industry deteriorated in the 20th century and the demand for concrete, glass and steel took precedence over stone.

With our heads full of fascinating stories of the area, we headed to Corsham for dinner. As with all of Jules’ tours everything is covered in the price, so there’s no need to worry about additional costs. And forget any negative experiences with food you may have had on previous guided tours. There are no soggy sandwiches here, that’s for sure. We ventured to a historic two AA rosette inn which has made a name for itself on the food scene. We tucked into dishes such as a delicate cod curry with spiced lentils, pickled

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sultanas, masala sauce and a crispy onion bhaji; cauliflower arancini with cheese crisps and romanesco broccoli; and carrot cake enclosed by a sweet white chocolate dome, burnt caramel sauce and silky ice cream.

And while we admired the high ceilings and majestic coat of arms above the grand fireplace, Jules revealed how this inn was once an impressive country house in the 15th century, before it was taken over by a prominent local family in the 18th century and was converted into an inn.

After taking in the sights of Corsham, we grabbed a nightcap at one final pub. With vintage trinkets and faded photographs hanging on the walls, well-loved leather chairs and even a small shrine to the characters of BBC One’s Poldark (which was partly filmed in Corsham), you can see why this cosy pub was buzzing with friends catching up, former Bath Rugby players, and many locals on a weekday evening.

We may not have access to the secret bunker below Bath’s neighbouring countryside, but there are plenty of surprises to discover about the villages on this tour, courtesy of Jules’ engaging storytelling. Small they may be, but a lively history and excellent food and drink are things these villages can surely can boast about. n The Historic Pubs, Mining and Dining tour is from £175. Around and About Bath is offering readers a special discount code for this tour. Simply enter ‘BathMag’ in the promotion code box when booking to reveal the offer; aroundandaboutbath.com

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FOOD | NEWS

FOOD&DRINK NEWS CHEF AT YOUR SERVICE

Chef Laurent Couvreur is offering a personal chef service with Le Chef Privé, bringing award-winning restaurant quality food to special occasion dinners in the comfort of customers’ homes. Laurent previously ran the French bistro Casanis in Bath. He has found the more intimate process of meeting clients to design a special menu and cooking for them a wonderful way to rekindle his love of southern French cuisine – and having time to interact with all the guests and hear their comments has proved to be an inspiration. lechefprive.co.uk

STAR STILL SHINES AT LUCKNAM

Lucknam Park has retained its Michelin Star for the 14th year running.

Lucknam Park is the home of fine dining in the south west with a culinary brigade that goes from strength to strength under executive head chef Hywel Jones. Dishes at Restaurant Hywel Jones include poached Cornish lobster with new potato mousse and gribiche dressing, roast day boat brill with ravioli of Cornish crab and sea vegetables and Wiltshire honey crème brûlée with gooseberry and elderflower. The five-star hotel and spa is an idyllic Palladian mansion set in 500 acres of lush parkland just outside Bath. Lucknam Park also has a cookery school. lucknampark.co.uk

PAST MASTERS

Koffmann & Mr. White’s, the new French English brasserie at the Abbey Hotel in Bath, has opened its doors to the public. The restaurant is the first venture between the chefs Pierre Koffmann and Marco Pierre White, and serves simple, affordable, French and English brasserie classics. Over 40 years, the culinary giants, who have each formerly held three Michelin stars, have ruled the British food scene in the kitchen as restauranteurs and on television.

STAR AT THE OLIVE TREE

Chef Chris Cleghorn has been awarded Bath’s only Michelin star at The Olive Tree restaurant, set within the Queensberry Hotel.

Chris, who is 33, has been the head chef at The Olive Tree for five and a half years, having previously worked with some of the UK’s top chefs including James Sommerin and Michael Caines. The award of the star is testament not just to Chris’ skills and creativity, but to the hard work, tenacity and leadership he’s shown in the kitchen.

Chris said: “It is almost impossible to put into words what it means to me as a chef to be recognised by Michelin with a star for The Olive Tree, and for us to be the only one in the city of Bath. This has been an incredible journey, but this reward reflects the years of dedication and hard work that 72 TheBATHMagazine

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we have all collectively put in to create our own individuality on the UK restaurant scene.”

The UK and Ireland are home to 180 Michelin star restaurants – 155 hold one star, 20 have two and five hold three. The Olive Tree is now the only restaurant in Bath – and one of 97 found outside London – to hold a Michelin star, and one of only 15 new names to be added to this sought-after list. The Queensberry Hotel owners, Laurence and Helen Beere, have backed Chris’ vision for the restaurant over the past five years.

Laurence Beer said, “We are truly grateful to Chris for his dedication and relentless commitment to the utmost quality and the finest experience for our guests to enjoy.” olivetreebath.co.uk

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VEGAN FARE

For those who are planning a vegan meal this Christmas, Demuths Cookery School is offering a series of day-long courses on vegan festive dishes. Participants will plan and create the perfect main course with delicious side dishes as well as canapés, rich puddings and sweet treats. Recipes include sweet potato chestnut and sesame balls with cranberry relish, festive filo rotolo with roasted heritage carrots, Christmas tofu wreath and chocolate hazelnut torte. The day will include dishes that can be cooked ahead and freezing guides and tips for how to save time in the kitchen. At the end of the day you will be given a pack of recipes to take home so that you can create the perfect stress-free Christmas. Courses run on 18, 23, 24, 25, 30 November and 8 December, £180, 10am – 4pm. demuths.co.uk

The menu boasts a variety of the classic French and English dishes which have made the two chefs so famous. Dishes from the continent include French onion soup, snail à la Bourguignonne and lamb à la Provençale, while the best of English cuisine will be represented by traditional plates of Mr Lamb’s shepherd’s pie and trifle.

Former Blur Bassist Alex James is providing the cheese board selection, while Bath-based baker Richard Bertinet is supplying freshly baked bread to the brasserie every day. mpwrestaurants.co.uk

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FOOD | AND | DRINK

DINNER PARTY DOS AND DON’TS

One person’s chilled, home-cooked meal with friends is another’s exhausting chore as they tease the lumps from the béchamel sauce and wish they were watching Strictly instead. Melissa Blease offers some advice for dinner party hosts and guests

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hether you prefer to call it a dinner party, a supper or a celebratory feast, eating at home with a bunch of other folk is a lovely way to spend an evening – or at least, it should be...

Before planning your performance, consider your audience. As soon as you’ve made the date, double-check if any of your guests have any specific dietary requirements (intolerances, allergies, etc) and, of course, if there are any vegetarians/vegans in the group; these facts are intrinsic to your menu – which, with a bit of careful planning, is going to be a doddle...

MENU, MAESTRO! A few days before The Big Eat-In, plan your whole menu from overture to finale, from which you will make your shopping list. Bear in mind that dishes you’ve cooked many times before and/or can be prepared well in advance avoid soaring stress levels at the stove (especially if space is limited) and, like the outfits in your wardrobe, can be adapted to all manner of occasions. Once you’ve made your main course decision, the accessories suggest

themselves. Curry? That’ll be bhajis, pakoras, pappadoms and pickles to start, and ice cream for pudding. Most Medi-themed main courses need no more than a simple antipasti selection to kickstart proceedings, and a small but indulgent dolci to bring the curtain down. If you’ve chosen a classic theme, soup or pâté and sticky toffee pudding or apple crumble are the classic bookends that bolster a heartwarming casserole (oh okay, call it a boeuf bourguignon if you must). Now is not the time to attempt to serve food in towers, or on plates adorned with artistic smears, foams or gels – when it comes to amateur cheffing in a domestic setting, showing off rarely pays off. But ‘cheating’ is allowed, if not downright encouraged: seeing as your local delicatessen or supermarket are already masters of the art of entertaining, why not invite them (or their nibbles and desserts, at least) to the party?

SET THE SCENE Make time to declutter ‘public’ spaces (i.e. kick loads of junk under the sofa/bed/cat) and stock up on bathroom necessities (most guests don’t expect to have to bring their own loo roll) well in advance of showtime. Remember that low or candle light hides a

TOP TIPS: THE TO DON’T LIST FOR HOSTS • DON’T invite people for dinner because you feel as though you should or because it’s ‘your turn’ – do it because you want to do it.

• DON’T sprinkle the table with novelty confetti, flower petals or fake gems unless you want novelty confetti, flower petals or fake gems sticking to everything you eat off, wear or pick up for the next week (or actually fancy running the risk of choking one of your guests).

• DON’T serve fizz in those ridiculous glasses that don’t have a base (why do they even exist?). Oh, and don’t serve complicated cocktails that take ages to put together and only moments to turn your guests into queasy zombies for the rest of the evening.

• DON’T attempt fiddly canapés that take hours to prepare when ready made blinis are made to be topped with cream cheese and smoked salmon, crème fraiche with avocado and balsamic vinegar, or olive tapenade from a jar.

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• DON’T panic about pudding if pudding’s not your thing – a wedge of good local cheddar, a stack of oatcakes, a jar of farmers’ market chutney, a handful of grapes and a box of top-notch chocs cover all final course basics.

• DON’T serve desserts adorned with a sparklers unless you’re auditioning for Come Dine With Me. • DON’T publicly suggest that one of your guests has had too much too drink, even if it’s patently obvious to everyone at the table – just subtly stem the wine flow and ask if anybody fancies coffee.

• DON’T stress over the washing up while your guests are still sitting at the table/lounging on the sofa. By all means, clear and stack used plates, glasses and cutlery as you go, but leave the big clean up until the next day – unless, that is, you’ve got a very good friend who actually likes doing the dishes. Talking of which...

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FOOD | AND | DRINK

table thinks Adam Ant’s Prince Charming should be heard 17 times.

And if the host starts crying into their wine while misremembering the words to Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt, it’s probably a cue to say goodnight. While we’re on the theme of social intercourse...

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CHOP CHOP! This sounds really obvious, but it’s a biggie: make sure you’ve got all the necessary ingredients you need on hand before you start cooking. And this sounds a bit geeky too, but again, you’ll regret not taking this advice: a ‘to do’ list, including oven temperatures and cooking times for every course, is really helpful. Allow plenty of time to get yourself dolled up (and sip an aperitif, perhaps?) before the doorbell rings – once the show begins, peace will be at a premium.

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multitude of housework sins, and take it from a dinner party pro that flashing fairy lights in the dining room windows have a similarly distracting – sorry, I mean pretty – effect. Set the table before you start cooking, and make sure you have all the crockery, serving dishes and wine glasses you’ll need – remember though, nothing has to match; you’re at home, and home is where the mismatched crockery, weird cutlery and random-sized wine glasses live.

If for whatever reason, a guest gets garrulous or a host turns horrid, just chill out, calm down, and don’t get angry A Trump supporter clashes with a Warren fan; a Brexiteer gets into a heated debate with a staunch Remainer; one of the guests ends up channelling Frankie Boyle while another embarks on the longest, dullest anecdote in the world at 7.30 and is still rambling on with it at 10pm; one of the couples have decided that now would be a great time to revisit that bickering match that started yesterday morning – and please, please will somebody tell the social media addict to put their phone down for at least the duration of half a course...

If, for whatever reason, a guest gets garrulous or a host turns horrid, just chill out, calm down, and don’t get angry; we’re all friends, we're all grown ups, we’re all entitled to make ourselves look silly from time to time... and we’ll all get together again soon.

Your personal invitation to the next dinner party at my house is in the post. n

GOLDEN RULES FOR GOLDEN GUESTS THE FINAL COUNTDOWN White wine/fizz chilling in the fridge? Check. Red wine breathing at room temperature? Tick. Candles lit, music on, nibbles/canapés at the ready? Yes, yes and thrice yes.

MUSIC FOR ALL YouTube, Sonos and Spotify; Alexa, Siri and Cortona: digital music services have changed the tempo of dinner party background music forever – and both hosts and guests need to be au fait with the new guidelines. Of course, not every dinner party is destined to be taken over by an impromptu, ad-hoc jukebox of personal greatest hits, cheesy power ballads and long-since-forgotten (usually for good reason) novelty one-hit wonders, most of them rudely interrupted before the second chorus by a guest desperate to revisit his/her own golden days of chart hits-gone-by... but these days, that’s often the way dinner party soundtracks roll. While ultimately the host is the DJ, everybody at the party needs to remember that one man’s Shaddap You Face is another man’s “I’ll get me coat,” and not everybody at the

• DON’T be late, don’t be early – just be on time. Even if you don’t intend to drink it, taking wine is obligatory: at least one bottle for the table per couple, and one for the host (which, if the dinner really does turn into a party, will of course be drunk) is the acceptable minimum.

• DON’T take beer unless you only drink beer, and definitely don’t take a ‘3 for £10’ wine selection from the local convenience store and then chug your way through copious amounts of the host’s treasured supply of Châteauneuf-duPape.

• DON’T take random contributions, as unbidden ‘extras’ tend to throw the host’s plans off balance and bring chaos to beautifully laid tables – worst offenders include supermarket Tex-Mex dip selections, pre-cooked, fridge-cold cocktail sausages and leftover hummus. An unexpected little gift of flowers and/or chocolates, however, is always welcome.

• DON’T offer to help to prep, cook or serve – you’ll either get in the way or discover all manner of short cuts and private territories that the host didn’t want you to discover, while also running the risk of the host translating your offer as a suggestion that he/she isn’t coping or needs to get a wiggle on.

• Finally, thanking the host – both before you leave and the following day – is de rigueur.

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TRISTAN DARBY Columnist Tristan Darby

provides an insight into two gins for November

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THE US DELICIO GUIDE LOOKING FOR RESTAURANT INSPIRATION? The Delicious Guide to Bath featuring all the fave eateries and foodie treateries is available online at our website www.thebathmag.co.uk

Follow us on Twitter @thebathmagazine

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he gin boom continues to surprise us all, with nearly 60 million bottles sold in the UK in the past 12 months. It’s hard to know exactly where the gindustry is heading post-Brexit and next budget, but there aren’t any immediate signs of a slowdown. So with an ever-increasing number of new product and distillery launches, plus the inevitability that at some point the bubble will have to burst (or at least deflate a little), it’s more important than ever for brands to focus on producing high-quality gin with authenticity, provenance and a great story in order to stand out and connect with customers on a deeper level. This month I’m recommending two excellent and very distinctive gins with great stories, in two very different styles from two very different parts of the world.

Based just north of Bristol in the historic market town of Thornbury, family-owned 6 O’clock gin have been making their classic London Dry Gin since 2010, and growing ever since with a diverse range including a sloe gin, a damson gin, a spiced premium edition called ‘Brunel’, and their latest release, 6 O’clock, Jekka’s Edition (£35 at Great Western Wine). Based around the 6 O’clock London Dry recipe, it’s a fantastically smooth and fresh gin with exceptionally fresh herbs picked by world-renowned herbalist Jekka McVicar at her ‘herbetum’ just a few miles from the distillery in Alveston added to the copper still within hours of harvesting. Jekka worked with head distiller Edward to choose the best herbs for the job, and they settled on Swiss mint, lemon verbena, blackcurrant leaf and rose petals. There’s a fantastic herbal and lightly floral character to this gin, with the aroma of fruity blackcurrant leaf hitting the nose straight off and the refreshing swiss mint evident in the flavour of each sip, providing a cooling minty freshness to the palate. It’s a very smooth and balanced gin that makes a dangerously refreshing and sippable G&T. Serve with Indian tonic and a sprig of fresh mint or lemon verbena to garnish. A go-to gin, perfect for any mood or occasion.

Four Pillars is one of Australia’s first craft distilleries based in the Yarra Valley wine region near Melbourne, founded by wine industry pals Cameron Mackenzie and Stuart Gregor in 2011.

Four Pillars, Rare Dry Gin (£37 at GWW) was their first gin released in 2013, and it’s a masterful award-winning take on a classic dry gin with its own Australian identity. Here classic botanicals such as juniper, coriander seed and angelica are joined by the spicy Tasmanian pepperberry leaf, lemon myrtle, cinnamon, star anise and whole fresh oranges. A neat sip delivers an immediate and dominating sweet orange flavour, with the gin coating the mouth before leading to a wave of mouth tingling and warming spice from the cinnamon, anise and pepperberry. There’s a lovely sustain to the flavours here, and the finish is very refreshing, savoury and herby. Stretched out into a G&T the orange fruit still shines, giving a lovely aroma and a fruity bittersweet taste backed up with fruitcake-like spice, and then that refreshing herbal finish again. Served with premium Indian tonic water and garnished with a simple wedge of orange, it’s perfect for the colder nights ahead. n Join Tristan for a taste of premium gins at Great Western Wine on 21 November. Visit greatwesternwine.co.uk/events for tickets.

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CITY | NEWS

CITYNEWS A STEP UP FOR LOCAL PROJECTS Novia Foundation has recently been established to support projects and initiatives for the benefit of people predominantly in and around the city of Bath.

The inaugural fundraising event saw The Right Worshipful Mayor of Bath and more than one hundred local dignitaries convene at the historic Roman Baths to celebrate the launch of the foundation. Those who gave speeches included Bill Vasilieff, CEO Novia Financial; James Savage, Novia Foundation Trustee; as well as Jamie Luck from local charity Mentoring Plus. The raffle and donations on the night raised approx £3,000, all of which will go to local causes, helping to support and improve the lives of those in and around the Bath area.

Cheques for £1,000 were also awarded to West of England Mentoring, Mentoring Plus, High Littleton Pre School, Cirencester Housing for young people, St Peters Hospice and £1,750 to Great Western Air Ambulance to fund one of their missions. novia-financial.co.uk

A SWIFT JOURNEY Bath accountants Richardson Swift recently took part in a ‘spin showdown’ at Old Bond Street.

The challenge included members of their own team and staff from Mogers Drewett, NatWest, Savings Champion and SearchStar. Each team had 20 minutes to pedal as far as they could on bikes kindly provided by Spin Village, Bath’s new boutique indoor cycling studio.

The five teams pedalled a total of 74 miles, raising £1,080 for Dorothy House Hospice, Richardson Swift’s chosen charity for 2018. richardsonswift.co.uk

PLAYING WITH ROYALTY Mogers Drewett trainee solicitor, England netballer and Commonwealth Gold medalist Eboni BeckfordChambers teamed up with the Duchess of Sussex recently for a competitive netball shootout against the Duke of Sussex at the Coach Core graduation ceremony at Loughborough University.

The Royal Foundation’s Coach Core programme takes young people aged 16–24 who are not in education or employment and trains them to be sports coaches and positive role models in their communities. They competed against Prince Harry’s team which included marathon runner Paula Radcliffe MBE and ex-England cricketer Mark Ramprakash. Although Eboni and Meghan’s team had a strong line up, Prince Harry’s team won the sporting event. mogersdrewett.com

FUN FACT The most popular retail ing category in Bath is cloth with 24% of all visits to the city including a clothing store visit.

A SHARP PROSPECT Sharp Family Law has welcomed Victoria Barnett as the newest addition to its dynamic and fast-growing team.

Victoria is a collaborative lawyer, negotiator and litigator.

She is well known for giving sound and practical legal advice to Bath residents facing divorce or separation.

Victoria has a particular passion for helping her clients find creative solutions to achieve an early resolution whenever possible – in or out of the courtroom. The family firm is dedicated to finding a secure, long-term outcome for separating and divorcing clients. sharpfamilylaw.com

BATH BUSINESS BAROMETER provided by

Credit: placedashboard.com

UPDATE: SEPTEMEBER 2018

High Street Footfall (Month on month % change)

-3.2%

n Bath’s footfall in September dropped a little from August (3.2%). This was in line with the UK average at 3.8%. However, Bath compares favourably with other centres in the south west, which experienced an 11.3% decrease. The fall in tourists has been countered by the return of students towards the end of the month. Approximately 25% of the city’s population are students attending the University of Bath and Bath Spa University.

Looking forward, footfall is likely to spike significantly towards the end of November with the start of the Bath Christmas Market on 22 November – in previous years we have recorded week-to-week footfall increases of over 50% during the market period.

Bath

South West UK

-11.3%

-3.8% Springboard Research Ltd

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CITY | NEWS

CITYNEWS

By Allison Herbert

A WINTER WEDDING The Temple of Minerva in Royal Victoria Park’s botanical gardens, provides an enchanting setting for a wedding celebration.

Heritage Park Weddings is offering a special ‘Minerva’s Winter Package’ for an intimate, cosy, winter ceremony in the botanical gardens with the freedom to enjoy the world-famous Bath Thermae Spa when the celebrations are over. The Temple is licenced for 35 guests for a seated civil ceremony but the triple doors can be opened up and so in fair weather guest numbers could easily reach 100. heritageparkweddings.co.uk

PLANTING GOLD Milsom Place has won gold for the ‘Business’ Category at South West in Bloom 2018.

Jon Wheatley and his company, Stonebarn Landscapes, is responsible for designing, creating and maintaining the award-winning planting scheme. This year saw the first Milsom Place Festival of Flowers which created a colourful floral spectacle throughout Milsom Place.

South West in Bloom is one of 18 competitions that make up Britain in Bloom, the biggest horticultural campaign in Europe. The aim is to improve and regenerate our local environments, through the imaginative planting of trees, shrubs, flowers and landscaping. milsomplace.co.uk

KICKSTART A GAME Former Paragon School pupil Felix Mulder returns to Bath with his fun-filled game, guaranteed to liven up the party season. Drink Drank Drunk started as a project between friends. In 2017 concept developer Felix and illustrator Kimbo Gruff launched a Kickstarter campaign, sharing their vision and future hopes for their enterprise. Thanks to the support they gained, the game has now been successfully launched at £22.99.

The beautifully simple game features 200+ hand-drawn cards overflowing with cunning wit, mini challenges and ridiculous social scenarios.

The colour-popping design perfectly captures the playful style of the game, and brightens the spirits before you even draw a card.

Drink, Drank, Drunk needs no alcohol to be enjoyed and can be purchased from Sixes & Sevens, 8 Abbey Green, Bath, or online: drinkdrankdrunkthegame.com 78 ThEBATHMagazInE

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Chief Executive, Bath Business Improvement District.

BATH AT CHRISTMAS IS A FESTIVE DELIGHT

B

ath is a charming place all year round, but there is something extra special about the Christmas period. The city streets come alive whatever the weather and it seems that there is something exciting and magical to see or do around every corner. The shops glitter, the restaurants and bars put their best foot forwards and of course the Christmas Market brings a rush of enchantments for the gift buyer.

There is so much beyond this for the visitor and resident. The seasonal light displays add heart-warming sparkle and this year we have new things for your delight. At the base of Milsom Street will be the Cycle of Lights, an interactive, pedal-powered display. Come along and cycle and see what happens! Abbeygate Street and Abbey Street will house cheerful chandeliers made from recycled materials by local children under artist guidance. Look out for the trail of trees at city centre entry points. Each Christmas tree will be decorated in the style of a traditional seasonal tune. Your challenge is to guess all ten tunes.

Perhaps the most exciting news is that Santa Claus is coming to town!

He’s not visited the city for a few years (except, of course, on the big day). He is supported by an army of elves from SuperPirates, the locally renowned children’s entertainment company. Book your little ones in at superpirates.co.uk for this magical experience which is open from 10-24 December.

We are delighted to introduce a brand new service in Bath this Christmas. Busy shoppers are offered a luxury gift wrapping service. Visitors can purchase their presents and then pop along to the city centre Gift Wrapping Station to have them expertly presented. Operating from Monday 10 December until Christmas Eve, it will be a free at the point of service with suggested voluntary donations to the homeless charity, Julian House. Customers may bring their own wrapping paper or choose the gift wrap that has been specifically and generously designed for the Gift Wrapping Station by designers SteersMcGillanEves. The paper depicts Bath landmarks in snowflakes. Look closely and you will be able to spot the Laura Place fountain, Bath Rugby posts, the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey windows, Minerva’s Owl and even one of King Bladud’s pigs. There are two versions – black & gold for adults and red & white for children.

The Bath BID is pleased to be able to support these extra attractions, to make sure that Bath remains a truly special Christmas destination for everyone. n To keep up to date with all of our news please sign up for our weekly newsletter: www.bathbid.co.uk/subscribe

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ocl A C C O U N TA N C Y

141 Englishcombe Lane,

A day in the life of...

Bath BA2 2EL Tel: 01225 445507

www.oclaccountancy.com

When should the business owner draw a salary?

Company owner / directors can choose how and when they would like their salary paid but because their overall income can vary each year they may have difficulty deciding what salary to take.

Whilst basic tax planning for owner directors usually starts with a salary just under the NI earnings threshold and then uses dividends to provide the most tax-efficient income, it should take account of income from all other sources (such as rental properties) and any tax relief for payments such as pension contributions, all of which can be hard to predict.

Usually the owner director will have little control over other income and so should consider the company income as the variable, making sure that overall income doesn’t result, unintentionally, in higher rates of tax – not least as it’s not possible to retrospectively undo salary.

The answer can be to delay paying the salary until the last month of the tax year, so allowing other income to be taken into account and the salary to be set at the right level for tax efficiency. Matched with dividend decisions that optimise the funds taken from the company, this approach can make a considerable difference for owner directors who have income from various sources.

As the NI threshold is applied to directors’ NI contributions annually instead of on a weekly or monthly it means a whole year’s salary can be recorded in a single payment with the same NI result as if it had been paid over the whole year; therefore no negative attaching to the annual salary approach.

For tax saving tips contact us – call Marie Maggs, Hannah Pettifer or Mike Wilcox on 01225 445507 for a no-obligation meeting.

We look forward to meeting you - and see our website for more, including FREE download guides.

What our clients say:

“The team at OCL have been both pro-active and excellent in the delivery of their financial and advisory services for our business.We have now implemented the next step in our digital development plans with the support and expertise of our cloud accountancy partners OCL.” “They have advised and successfully transitioned our accounts to a cloud based solution using our preferred software provider.This move enables us to focus more time on our core business….We are now working with OCL on the next phase of our business development with real-time financial insight. (if only all companies could be as efficient!)”

I

n my role, I assist my clients with the management of their finances, finding suitable local care services and overseeing ongoing care needs. But there is no such thing as a typical working day, and - as part of Mogers Drewett’s ethos to go above and beyond for clients and their families – I spend a large amount of my time visiting clients and assisting with their day-to-day needs.

A not so typical day I was driving into work one day and I received a call from the care agency that looks after one of my clients whose house had unfortunately flooded in the night. My client was understandably worried by what had happened.

Arrangements were made for her to stay in a hotel, and I went to visit her there to check she was well. I then spoke with her insurers to help find her a suitable care home to live in temporarily.

After a couple of months in the care home, my client had new experiences and interacted with other residents. So, when it was time to move back into her house, I made suggestions that I thought could make a real difference to the quality of her life and therefore her wellbeing.

The thing she loved about being in the care home was the company and through my contacts with care providers I was able to arrange for weekly companionship visits and trips out.

Going above and beyond for clients Mogers Drewett deals with several care providers and we regularly receive the feedback that ‘no one else does what you do for your clients’.

But, the way I see it is that, if it was my relative and I couldn’t take care of them day-to-day, how would I want them to be treated?

My role is very varied and when I’m in the office, I’m focused on keeping clients and their families updated on their financial situation, ensuring bills are paid and that assets are managed correctly - it’s my job to put everyone at ease and take a weight off my clients’ shoulders, so they can concentrate on living life to the full. www.mogersdrewett.com Kate Norris – Later Life Support team at Mogers Drewett

Call Marie Maggs, Mike Wilcox or Hannah Pettifer on 01225 445507 to arrange a no-obligation meeting THEBATHMAG.CO.UK

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TRAVEL

INSIDE SRI LANKA Set in the Indian Ocean, the island of Sri Lanka has an ancient history and a rich culture. Take some time out from the sandy beaches and visit the Cultural Triangle within the dry plains and rocky outcrops of the island’s northern centre

S

ri Lanka has immense natural beauty and is home to one of the oldest civilisations in the world. Here you can discover a variety of natural, cultural and historical heritages just a few hours away from each other before heading off to one of the beautiful beaches.

This is a country that offers something different as you travel from region to region.

At Sri Lanka’s heart, its Cultural Triangle connects the ancient cities of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Kandy. This area boasts four UNESCO World Heritage Sites, along with national parks, temples and the hill country capital of Kandy, with the added bonus of seeing the elephants at the Minneriya National Park. Here are a selection of unforgettable places to visit...

SIGIRIYA Designated a UNESCO World heritage site in 1982, Sigiriya is famed for the palace ruins on top of a 200-metre high rock formation.

The recognisable rock itself is a lava plug left over from an ancient, long extinct volcano.

Rising dramatically from the central plains, the giant monolith of Sigiriya is one of the country’s most recognisable sights.

Surrounded by a moat and extensive landscape gardens it is one of Sri Lanka’s most incredible attractions.

Ascend the rock to explore the ruins of an ancient civilisation and, perhaps best of all, drink in the spellbinding vistas across the countryside. The walk is best done in either the early hours or later in the afternoon as the heat can be wearisome as the climb is steep. The reward is that the summit of the ancient rock fortress offers spectacular 360° views of the surrounding rolling hills of Sri Lanka’s heartland.

DAMBULLA Dating back to the first century BC, Dambulla is the site of the largest and bestpreserved cave temple complex in Sri Lanka.

Explore the vast labyrinth, home to over 150 statues set among ornate Buddhist murals that adorn the walls and ceilings.

It’s just a short hike up to the caves and you will be instantly wowed by the intricate carvings, paintings and statues. The local guides are hugely knowledgeable and will tell you tales of the history of Buddhism within the country and the important role it plays in the everyday lives of Sri Lankans. In addition to the five

The Sigiriya Rock Fortress

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caves full of beautiful statuary and reclining Buddhas you will find an army of adorable monkeys scampering all over the place.

ANURADHAPURA Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka’s capital for over a thousand years, is excelled in scale only by the the pyramids of Egypt. The ruins of Anuradhapura are one of South East Asia’s most evocative sights. Wander the sprawling complex among enormous dagobas (pagodas), brick towers and temples and see one of the world’s oldest trees, the Sri Maha Bodhi, a sacred fig tree. Today many of the sites remain in use as holy places and temples, yet the frequent ceremonies give Anuradhapura a vibrancy that contrasts to the poignant ambience of Polonnaruwa.

POLONNARUWA Following the destruction of Anuradhapura in AD 993, Polonnaruwa became the country’s second capital, and evidence of this can be found in the assortment of royal buildings, ruined palaces and Buddhist shrines.

One of the most impressive sights in Polonnaruwa is the temple of Gal Vihara

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TRAVEL

Elephants in Minneriya where Buddhas carved out of solid stone adorn the entire cave temple complex, with the statues still completely preserved. One of the most spectacular sights here is the large reclining Buddha statue that can be found in one of the caves, measuring in at an impressive 14 metres long, still retaining its serenity and displaying the expertise of its sculptors.

Kandy Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic

KANDY Kandy, the country’s second largest city, is perched in the cool, misty mountain of Sri Lanka’s tea country. It’s a medley of bustling local markets, colonial buildings and a botanical garden with a beautiful lake as the centrepiece. Be sure to visit the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in the royal palace complex – this sacred Buddhist site houses a tooth relic of the Buddha. In the evening throngs of pilgrims visit, all hoping to glimpse the sacred relic. The beating of the drums and chanting make it truly memorable.

Every August the city also hosts the spectacular Kandy Esala Perahera festival featuring dancers, fire-breathers and lavishly decorated elephants. Charming boutique hotels nestle in the surrounding hills and the renowned Peradeniya Gardens are nearby.

MINNERIYA NATIONAL PARK Offering a refreshing contrast to the historical sights, the forests and wetlands of Minneriya provide a sanctuary for a huge variety of wildlife. Set around an ancient reservoir, deer, monkeys, sloth bears and even leopards call the park home, although the star attraction is the elephant herds, which can be spotted throughout the year but gather in great numbers between May and October.

The park is worth a visit year round, however, as the topography and vegetation still offer great mammal sightings and the elephants are present year round too, just in smaller herds. For game drives, early mornings or late afternoons are the best time to visit, as it is cooler and mammals will be most active. For the elephants the best time is the afternoon as the large herds will be found around the waterholes. For bird enthusiasts, early mornings are best to see the many species found in the park take to the skies. n

Carved Buddha at Polonnaruwa These top spots and tips were compiled with the help of the team of travel experts at Trailfinders. Their travel centre is at 5 Union Street, Bath. Tel: 01225 724 000; trailfinders.com THEBATHMAG.CO.UK

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FAMILY | EVENTS

FAMILY DIARY IDEAS FOR THINGS TO DO WITH THE CHILDREN THIS MONTH CRAFTY KIDS Thursday 1 November, 10.30am–12.30pm n The Pound, Pound Pill, Corsham Get your craft on with a series of preplanned activities. Or, use the tools and materials to create something from your own imagination. Standard price £1.50; poundarts.org.uk

Meet Starter, Main and Pudding at Table Mates at The egg

MARVELLOUS MASKS Friday 2 November, 10.30am–12.30pm n Victoria Art Gallery Make marvellous character masks from the gallery’s latest exhibition. Free. Children should be accompanied by an adult; bathmuseumsweek.co.uk A SQUARE WORLD Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 November, 11.30am and 3pm n The egg Enter a quirky world where three friends redefine the rules of the square world in which they live and soon discover their lives will never be the same again. This non-verbal story uses simple design and object manipulation to create an imaginative world where anything can happen. For ages three – six. Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Adults £9, children £8. Lap seats £1.50; theatreroyal.org.uk REVOLTING RHYMES LIVE! Sunday 4 November, 11am, 2pm and 4pm n Old Theatre Royal Watch as Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes are brought to life in a spectacular and entertaining show. Find out what Little Red Riding Hood is really like, see the wolf through the eyes of a little pig and enter the world of Roald Dahl’s Dirty Beasts with The Pig, The Tummy Beast and The Crocodile.

Suitable for ages four–11. Children £7, adults £8; crescendoconcerts.co.uk FIREWORKS TO MUSIC SPECTACULAR Monday 5 November, 5.30–9pm n Avon Valley Adventure and Wildlife Park, Pixash Lane, Bath Road, Keynsham Get ready for a magnificent fireworks display, a funfair and much more this Bonfire Night. This hugely popular evening is back with a bang, ready to light up the sky. This year you can enjoy a sparkler area in the park. Walk-in tickets £3.50, car entry with parking (up to five people) £15. Tel: 0117 986 4929; avonvalley.co.uk YOU ARE HERE! Friday 9 November, 11–11.30am and

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11.45–12.15pm

n We The Curious, Bristol

Go on an out-of-this-world adventure with this immersive 360˚ full dome planetarium experience. Zoom through Saturn’s rings and voyage down to the surface of Mars as you find yourself dealing with the disappearance of the stars. Suitable for ages five and over. £3.50 per person in addition to standard entry fees. Children must be accompanied by an adult; wethecurious.org THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHT Friday 9 November – 6 January n Longleat This winter, Chinese lanterns will light up Longleat as you embark on a fantastic vogage around the world. Journeying through time and space, you’ll discover wondrous scenes from the exotic to the glacial. Advanced booking is essential. Day tickets from adults £31.45, children £23.55, under twos go free; longleat.co.uk GLOW-IN-THE-DARK MINI GOLF Friday 16 November – 6 January, 4.30–9.30pm n Victoria Park Lighting up Bath’s famous adventure golf course, try something new and play a game of crazy golf in the dark. The fun doesn’t stop there; pop along to the Bath On Ice skating rink next door and get in the Christmas spirit. Adults £6.50, children under 16 £5.50, family tickets £20; bathonice.com

issue 194

MEN BEHAVING DADLY Saturday 17 November, 9–10.30am n St Swithin’s Church, The Paragon Head to the crypt, meet other dads and have some quality time with your little one.

There’s toys, games, toast for the kids and coffee and bacon butties for the dads. £3 per dad. Pre-school children only; musicforminiatures.co.uk.

FAMILY TAKEOVERS Saturday 17 November, 11am–2pm n The Edge, University of Bath Taking inspiration from the current exhibitions and special one-off themes, take part in drawing and making activities in the Resource Room. Drop in for ten minutes or an hour – it’s completely up to you.

Materials are provided, aprons available.

Free. Suitable for four – 12 year olds; edgearts.org TABLE MATES Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 November, 11.30am and 3pm n The egg As six o’clock comes three weary workers return to their cosy abodes. Taking off their coats and pulling on their chefs’ whites, they get to work to cook each other a delicious meal. Meet Starter, Main and Pudding; three cooks who live three very different lives.

Suitable for ages five – 11. Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Adults £9, children £8. Lap seats are available at £1.50.

Tel: 01225 823409; theatreroyal.org.uk

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FAMILY | EVENTS

Make a fairy godmother for your tree at The Holburne Museum

MAKE AND PLAY Thursday 22 November, 10–11.30am n Wiltshire Scrapstore, Lacock Enter an imaginative world and create whatever comes to mind. Different materials will be provided to ensure creativity, exploration and messy play. Enjoy a free goodie bag of scrap to take home. Suitable for ages 18 months – four, younger children are also welcome. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Tickets £5.50; wiltshirescrapstore.co.uk AARDMAN ANIMATIONS WITH PETER LORD AND DAVID SPROXTON

Meet Aardman Animation experts Peter Lord and David Sproxton at St Swithin’s Church

Saturday 24 November, 11.30am

n St Swithin’s Church, The Paragon

Join Oscar-winning claymation experts, Peter Lord and David Sproxton for a behind the scenes look at Aardman Animations in their book An Epic Journey. The creative force behind some of our most beloved animations such as Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep find out about their tough early days and conquering Hollywood. Adults £7, children £4; toppingbooks.co.uk CHRISTMAS AT AVON VALLEY Saturday 24 November – 24 December n Avon Valley Adventure and Wildlife Park,

Pixash Lane, Bath Road, Keynsham Go on a fully immersive and theatrical 60-minute magical journey to the North Pole with Evergreen the Elf to meet Father Christmas or have a tea party with the man himself. From £22; avonvalley.co.uk PANTOMIME SEASON – OH YES IT IS! Saturday 1 December, 12–4pm n The Holburne Museum Enjoy an afternoon of pantomime-themed Christmas creativity. Make a fairy godmother for your tree, a Peter Pan snowglobe and Cinderella’s carriage to decorate your table. Free; holburne.org

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For more information, visit our website or telephone 07577 709597

Thinking of advertising your business Our 2019 media pack can be viewed online

FOR A COPY OF OUR 2019 MEDIA PACK EITHER VISIT THE BATH MAGAZINE WEBSITE THEBATHMAG.CO.UK OR CONTACT US ON 01225 424499 or EMAIL: SALES @ THEBATHMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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• Co-educational day school for pupils aged 5-13 with

dyslexia and other specific learning/language difficulties.

• Located in Wiltshire between Bath and Chippenham.

CReSTeD approved.

• Fully qualified specialist teachers with maximum class size of eight - reducing to one-to-one as required.

Call 01225 743 566 or visit www.CalderHouseSchool.co.uk

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EDUCATION

EDUCATION NEWS CHAMP ATHLETES Prior Park School’s biathlon recently took place at the University of Bath. Prior Park runs the event in conjunction with Pentathlon GB and it allows 450 competitors from over 30 schools to compete at the elite athlete facilities at the university’s sports training village. Categories range from U10 years to U19 years and competitors amass points through their run and swim times. The times achieved will be put onto the rankings list for the British Modern Biathlon Championships and the British Schools’ Modern Biathlon Championships – the top athletes are then invited to compete at the championships finals. priorparkcollege.com

PLAYING BALL Two Millfield School cricketers have been selected to play for England Mark Garaway, Lewis Goldsworthy, Kasey Aldridge, U19 on their tour Sam Young and headmaster, Gavin Horgan to Bangladesh in February 2019. Upper sixth pupils Lewis Goldsworthy and Kasey Aldridge have been chosen, with Millfield Meyer’s XI Captain Sam Young as first reserve. The pupils will take part in ECB training camps in England and Bangalore in preparation for the Overseas Competitive Series in Bangladesh next year.

Lewis plays for the Cornwall Men’s Minor Counties team in their national team; Kasey represents Brislington CC in the Premier League and Sam plays for Bath CC and captained the South and West U17 team in the recent ECB Super 4’s regional competition. millfieldschool.com

NEW MEN Norland College, a specialist provider of childcare training and education based in Bath has recently seen the first male degree graduates in the college’s 126 year history at its annual graduation ceremony at Bath Abbey. Liam Willett, 21, and Harry Pratt, 21, have become the first males to complete the college’s BA (Hons) degree in Early Years Development and Learning. The degree is integrated with the prestigious Norland Diploma, an additional qualification, which runs alongside the degree and for one year afterwards, enabling students to put theory into practice. Norland College was founded in London in 1892 by Emily Ward and has been at the forefront of childcare training ever since. norland.ac.uk 86 TheBATHMagazine

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Beechen Cliff

Sixth Form Applications Applications to Beechen Cliff Sixth Form are now open.

Beechen Cliff is a state day and boarding school close to Bath city centre. Our large mixed Sixth Form of over 400 male and female students offers an unpretentiously academic curriculum of over 26 A levels and EPQ. Academic results are excellent with a quarter of students gaining AAB grades or better in the core A levels.

A well developed Oxbridge and Medicine programme enables a high proportion of students to gain places at Oxford, Cambridge and Russell Group universities.

There is an unrivalled range of super-curricular, extra curricular and leadership opportunities along with an exceptional careers and higher education programme.

A strong tradition of sporting excellence includes Bath Rugby’s AASE partnership programme.

Applications for the Sixth Form close on Friday 14th December 2018.

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HEALTH & BEAUTY

HEALTH & BEAUTY NEWS Falling in love, a new beauty name on the scene and a men’s release to top them all.

Crystal Rose shares the latest in the sector

DRUNK AND IN LOVE Goodbye overseas shipping costs! Drunk Elephant has finally landed in the UK. Launching in Space NK stores and online, it’s never been easier to get your hands on the Jelly Cleanser and Lippe Balm. Originating from the myth that elephants become drunk after hearing marula fruit, founder Tiffany Masterson fell in love with the concept and Drunk Elephant was born. We’re loving the Virgin Marula Luxury Facial Oil and the JuJu Bar both made with African marula oil... of course!

RECLINED LEATHER Think Chesterfield leather armchairs and trails of wood smoke from the fireplace.

Home sweet home? This reed diffuser from Urban Apothecary London encourages reaching that meditative and calming state.

There are aromas of antique leather, soft suede and saffron combined with notes of verdant vetivert layered with cedarwood.

Perfect for dark, cosy evenings that are heading our way.

spacenk.com; drunkelephant.co.uk 200ml reed diffuser £35; urbanapothecarylondon.com

ELEMIS ENCHANTMENT If there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that one candle is never enough. Just in time for the candle season, Elemis has just launched a few new beautiful aromas to fill your homes. There’s lavender, English rose, orange... the list of fragrances goes on.

All created with the intention of allowing you to reach optimum relaxation, making your home a sanctuary of your own has never been easier.

Joyful Glow, Rose Glow and Soothing Glow; £27.50 each; elemis.com

HUNTSMAN SEASON The first-ever men’s collection from Jo Malone has just launched. This quintessentially British collaboration with Huntsman Saville Row is the perfect pairing of scent and style. The collection has four refined fragrances all tailored to the modern man. There’s one for those laidback days, wild nights and everything in-between.

We’re loving this gold typography on each bottle with a perfectly matched matte burgundy cap. It was about time Jo Malone joined the male grooming market and we couldn’t be happier.

100ml cologne £120; jomalone.co.uk

HELLO, CJ BEAUTY A new resident in Westgate Street has just opened its doors. Michelle, previously from Green Street House, has opened shop in stylish new digs and is offering 15% off for new clients on their first treatment. From manis and pedis to waxing and microdermabrasion, there’s a variety of treatments on offer at CJ Beauty. So, pop down, walk-in and prepare for some you time... you won’t regret it!

CJ Beauty, 19a Westgate Street, Bath, BA1 1EQ. Tel: 07840 864829; cjbeauty.uk

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HeidiReiki

Oneness of self and environment

Is there a sense of joy in your house?

Or maybe life challenges have disturbed the harmony?

Maybe it’s time to have Feng Shui and energy clearing in your home.

Reiki and Feng Shui Bath, Bristol and London Jaime Brain Dip CDT RCS (Eng) GDC 142490

What people have said about Heidi’s work.

“Amazing! Thank you very much… My family’s experience of Heidi’s professionalism, expertise and knowledge is beyond compare. Combined with her kind and caring personality it made the whole process of reiki & space clearing for our home a very positive experience. I only wish we had done it sooner.”

Energetic Space Clearing and Reiki Treatments in Bath For more information, contact Heidi Rearden at: heidi@heidireiki.com • heidireiki.com • 07776 255875

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HEALTH & BEAUTY

A TIME TO SLEEP

Having a comfortable bed and using a blackout blind are named as two of the top tips for getting a good night’s sleep. Emma Clegg visits Frontlinestyle and discovers another

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for at least an hour, a concept that’s pretty relaxing in itself. In this case it’s 85 minutes in a darkened room with your legs and feet resting on a heated Clarins water pillow with chill-out mindfulness music washing around you. Then, as a reviving hot flannel is moved firmly over your hands you’re in ecstasy pretty much before the treatment is underway.

❝

There’s no teeth-clenching deep-tissue massage in this treatment; instead the massage uses a spiral, light figure-ofeight movement called ‘leminskate’

❝

W

e need to sleep to survive, and yet many of us struggle to achieve the length or the quality of sleep required to make us operate at our best. Our lives are dominated by 24-hour lighting; constant interaction with the noise, lights and distraction of technology; and often irregular patterns of sleep because of work or personal demands. So how can all this be combatted? A soak in the bath, herbal infusions and meditation could all play a part, but for a transformative, immediate effect, I’d choose a Clarins Wellness Beauty Sleep treatment at Frontlinestyle.

“The Beauty Sleep treatment is a restorative ‘journey’ for the mind, senses and skin, helping renew the skin and induce a deep state of relaxation.” Alert: marketing hype? It’s true that ‘it’s-too-good-to-be-true’ scepticism would normally kick in at this point, yet having recently been treated to this particular massage, I’m happy to confirm that I’m 100 per cent behind the description.

Those who are faint of heart will be reassured by the fact that there’s no teethclenching deep-tissue massage in this treatment; instead the massage uses a spiral, light figure-of-eight movement called ‘leminskate’. This forms the basis of the wellness ‘touch’ treatment and is specifically designed to regulate energy and promote a deep feeling of relaxation. The leminskate strokes are applied to the face and body with a specific rhythm and level of pressure for a blissful, nurturing effect.

One of the delights of a massage is that when you lay back, you know you’re there

The massage was literally head to toe, from the head and face to the tips of the toes. Using organic, circular and rhythmic moves, my massage therapist, Lauren, described the figure of eight as an infinity movement, by definition comfortingly bringing you back to where you started.

Clarins products naturally had a starring role, known for their high performance formulas enriched with the purest plant extracts and aromatic essential oils. The Clarins body treatment oil used for the main massage had

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essential oils of geranium, petit grain, camomile and basil to help soothe tired muscles and the Eau Ressourçante spray with essential oils of basil, iris, cedarwood and sarsaparilla gives a gently uplifting boost as the massage proceeds.

There were two points where I was left to relax, half way through and at the end of the treatment, leaving me still and swathed in darkness and fluffy towels to absorb the full effects. Lying still while conscious is not something I practise much at home but having dabbled with lying down – at the same time fending off internal debates about whether my son should do his homework with his headphones on or how much the outside light being on all day contributes to the electricity bill – it does come highly recommended.

Once over, I rose from the bed feeling surrounded by a warm, protective glow.

It stayed with me as I left the Frontlinestyle salon and all the way home, too. I even detected it the next morning. This, I felt sure, must be the Feel Good factor. I instructed my family to not irk me or place any demands on me (well that evening, anyway), otherwise they would dissipate the calming effects of the treatment. The professional advice, indeed, is always to have this treatment in the latter part of the day so you can go home and take it easy and prepare for a deep and restorative sleep. n Clarins Beauty Sleep Wellness Treatment, £70, Frontlinestyle, 4–5 Monmouth Street, Bath. Tel: 01225 478478; frontlinestyle.co.uk

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It can be used to target fine lines, wrinkles, dry skin, scarring, rosacea, sun damage and pigmentation as well as problematic skins.

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CHRISTMAS

BEAUTY-FILLED COUNTDOWN For many of us the build-up to Christmas is more of a big deal than the day itself. Crystal Rose rounds up a few indulgent beauty boxes essential for that festive warm-up

Diptyque A carousel that sits atop your candle, a limited edition hand enamelled with gold, giant Feu De Bois scented candle and 23 more little pleasures are all at your fingertips as you count down to Christmas.

Diptyque has certainly not disappointed this year.

No7 This calendar from Boots is so good it even has a waiting list. Full of 24 bestselling treats, the calendar is one of the hottest on the highstreet.

£320, exclusive at Diptyque boutiques; diptyqueparis.co.uk

42, worth £177, Boots; boots.com

Elemis

Cath Kidston

The 25 Days of Beauty box from Elemis is sure to provide all the skincare staples. From a superfood facial to waking up on Christmas morning to a (spoiler alert!) full-size pro-collagen marine cream. Each little drawer has a new surprise.

Not only is this calendar from Cath Kidston beautifully illustrated, it’s full of 24 beauty minis. We’re talking signature scents, special Christmas edition fragrances filled with pine needles, red berries, candied sugar and spice. Could there be a better combination during the festive period?

£150, worth over £345; exclusively to elemis.com

£40, Cath Kidston; cathkidston.com

Marks and Spencer If it’s anything like the last, this year’s calendar from Marks and Spencer is set to be a good’un. Stuffed full with the likes of Philip Kingsley, Stila, Skyn Iceland and This Works (and that’s just for starters), you’re not going to want to miss out on this closet of dreams. £35 when you spend £35 on clothing or homeware, Marks and Spencer; marksandspencer.com

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CHRISTMAS

Debenhams

Charlotte Tilbury

The calls for a men’s advent calendar have finally been answered. This year, Debenhams has released its Christmas countdown for the guys. The Shed Man advent calendar includes shower gels, post-shave balms and moisturiser, plus much more.

The Beauty Universe has everything needed to blow you out of this world.

It includes Charlotte’s iconic magic cream made from a secret formula and adored backstage by models and a tub of mesmerising eyeshadow.

That’s just a hint of what’s to come.

Your Christmas party looks will be better than ever.

£15, Debenhams; debenhams.com

£150, Charlotte Tilbury; charlottetilbury.com

Next The countdown to Christmas is sorted, but how about the period between Christmas and New Year?

Thanks to Next you can carry on counting to the next big day and have something to look forward to after all the festivities are over. £20, Next; next.co.uk

The Body Shop

Molton Brown

Full of iconic and indulgent treats, this is just one of three advent calendars that The Body Shop has to offer this season. Inspired by the thriving wildlife of the forest, the Dani calendar is stacked full of 25 luxurious treats. Goodies include a few bath delights, beauty essentials and – it wouldn’t be Christmas without it – the peppermint candy cane shower gel.

The Opulent Infusions Advent Calendar from Molton Brown is a luxurious tasting cabinet full of fragrance infusions. From a festive bauble to presoirée pampering rituals, every day of the festive countdown will be a tantalising treat. £175, Molton Brown; moltonbrown.co.uk

£65, worth £121, The Body Shop; thebodyshop.com

L’Occitane This year, L’Occitane has collaborated with fashion designer CASTELBAJAC PARIS to create the Classic Advent Calendar. Featuring 24 doors, hidden behind each one is a range of miniature hair and body products. Christmas has come early! £49, worth £85, L’Occitane; uk.loccitane.com

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Footwear

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ucts Nutrional prod

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www.runningbath.co.uk 18 High St Bath BA1 5AJ

Tel: 01225 462555

CJ Beauty Offering a wide range of treatments massage manicure pedicure waxing tinting facials spray tanning hopi ear candles microdermabrasion

Owner Michelle previously Senior Therapist at Green Street House

15% off for new clients on their first treatment 19a Westgate Street, Bath BA1 1EQ 07840 864829

cjbeauty.uk

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View of Glastonbury Tor and Wootton House from the Hood Monument RIGHT: left, Islay relaxing on the giant oak leaf seat; right, looking towards the Hood Monument

INTO THE WOODS

Andrew Swift and Islay, his West Highland Terrier, follow the slopes of an ancient earthwork in Combe Hill Wood. Islay tracks down some excellent smells and her master enjoys some glorious views towards the Quantocks

C

ombe Hill Wood is a 62-acre wood, just south of Street, managed by the Ninesquare Trust for the local community.

Here tracts of ancient woodland and mighty 200-year-old oaks stand alongside more recent plantings and a woodland orchard, while deep within the wood runs a 3,000-year-old earthwork called the New Ditch. Why it was dug is unknown, but its steep sides still present a formidable challenge for anyone attempting to probe its mysteries.

It is the views, though, that are the glory of Combe Hill Wood, views that reveal themselves suddenly as you emerge from dense woodland. The wood lies on a high ridge above the village of Compton Dundon, and from here you look out across the Somerset Levels to the Quantocks, some 15 miles away.

Although most of the paths through the wood are rough and winding, a broad level track, suitable for pushchairs and wheelchairs, follows a three-quarter-mile loop taking in those all important views.

Those looking for something more challenging can follow a graded series of orienteering trails.

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following the edge of the escarpment, others running steeply down its slopes. It also lies on the Polden Way, which can be followed south to Gilling Down, New Hill and Tannager Nature Reserves, run by the Somerset Wildlife Trust, or north to the 33.5 metre high Hood Monument and the National Trust-owned slopes of Collard Hill.

The walk starts in the car park at Combe Hill Wood and heads north along the edge of the escarpment. It is a there-and-back walk, with the advantage of being able to turn round at any time. And, with a succession of spectacular, ever-changing views, having to retrace your steps is unlikely to prove an anticlimax.

Dogs are very welcome at Combe Hill (as long as their owners clear up after them) and, with plenty of scope for sniffing through the undergrowth and following tempting trails, they are certain to enjoy the trail as much as their owners.

There are, however, two caveats. After leaving the confines of Combe Hill Wood, livestock may be encountered, so dogs may need to be kept on a lead. There is also a busy road running parallel to – although generally at a considerable distance from – the path. Although screened by trees and bordered by fences and hedges, it is

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conceivable that dogs who are prone to running off could find their way on to it, so owners need to be vigilant.

DIRECTIONS To find Combe Hill Wood, head west from Bath along the A39. After passing Glastonbury, bear left at a roundabout along the B3151 (signposted to Street and Somerton). Two miles further on, when you come to a crossroads at the top of hill, turn left, and, after a mile and a half, pull into a large car park on the right (ST503329; 51.09, -2.71).

Head along a path on the south side of the car park, by three information boards. After 75m, turn right and right again, and after 150m you come to the first viewpoint, with a woodland orchard on the slopes below.

After another 150m, you come to a Tjunction with some 200-year-old oaks towering above. Turn left to take in one of the most memorable views in Somerset, where a seat in the form of a giant oak leaf, crafted from a tree stump, surveys the scene.

If your dog is keen on chasing balls (and, more importantly, bringing them back) a ball thrown down the path leading off the escarpment here should provide an energetic diversion.

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THE | WALK

View from Collard Hill

Head back past the oaks and after 200m you will come to the New Ditch, whose vertiginous sides might once again prove irresistible to an inquisitive dog. The ‘all ability access path’ you have followed up until now bears right here to return to the car park, so to continue the walk carry straight on, heading down a short flight of steps to follow a path through the wood.

After going through a kissing gate (KG) you emerge into the open. When the path forks, bear right through a meadow with woods on your left. At the end of the wood, carry on along a windy ridgeway where kestrels can often be seen hovering overhead.

After the path re-enters woodland, you will glimpse the Hood Monument ahead. As the path heads towards a gate leading to the road, cross a stile in the fence on your left, and, after going through a KG, carry on through the woods. Just past a crosspath

heading downhill, go through a KG. After another 150m you emerge below the monument (ST495337), raised in memory of Vice-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood. Built of Doulting stone, it was designed by the Bath architect, Henry Edmund Goodridge. It was built by another Bathonian, David Aust, while the naval coronet on top was sculpted

by Lucius Gahagan, who also lived in the city. Completed in 1831, it was the centrepiece of celebrations for William IV’s coronation, when crowds flocked to climb its spiral staircase and admire the view. Sadly, the festivities were marred by a horrific accident, when a Waterloo veteran, ramming a cartridge into a cannon to fire a royal salute, lost both his arms when it exploded.

The monument commands the only eastward view on the walk, with a swathe of woodland cut back to reveal a surprise view of Glastonbury Tor. The trees were cleared, however, not so that the tor could be seen from the monument, but so that the monument could be seen from Wootton House, the home of the Hood family, which lies below.

The broad path leading past the monument soon starts to heads steeply downhill. When it forks, you can go either way, although the right-hand path is likely to be less slippery. A KG at the bottom leads on to a lane where dogs need to be on a lead.

Turn right for a few metres before turning

left through a KG. Carry on through two more KGs on to National Trust-owned Collard Hill (ST490339). The views here are even more expansive, and, after the high ground starts to shelve sharply away ahead, they open up northward, to Brean Down, the Bristol Channel and the Welsh mountains.

On a clear day, this provides a fitting climax to this brisk and breezy walk commanding some of Somerset’s finest views. All that remains is to retrace your steps – and to take in all those views from a different angle. n Andrew Swift is the author of On Foot in Bath: Fifteen Walks Around a World Heritage City and co-author, with Kirsten Elliot, of Ghost Signs of Bath.

FACT FILE Distance Two miles from the car park to the Hood Monument and back; three miles if extended to Collard Hill Map: OS Explorer 141 Information: To find out about Combe Hill Wood and the orienteering trails, visit: combehillwood.co.uk. For information on the Somerset Wildlife Trust reserves, visit: somersetwildlife.org/new_hill_tannager.html

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GUEST | COLUMNIST

KEEPING HISTORY ALIVE Rupert Goulding is lead curator for the National Trust in the south west region.

But what does that mean on a practical level? Here he explains his role in more detail

W

hen I meet someone new and am asked what I do, the response is often fairly similar: “The National Trust… a curator… how exciting, but what do you actually do?” My answer is I do three things: conservation, presentation and interpretation, but I try not to use those jargon words!

In the National Trust, curators work with those who manage properties on a day-to-day basis. All our work starts with conservation, helping make the decisions needed to look after places, inside and out. This is anything from repairing stonework or furniture to tree planting and relaying paths. Then there is the presentation of our properties and what they look like. Sometimes this is arranging a showroom but can often be more prosaic, such as where to put a bin or noticeboard. However perhaps most significant is interpretation, how we make connections for visitors with the histories and stories of our places.

When you come to National Trust sites there is always information: facts, ideas, stories and meanings to be shared, and many different ways to do this. You may have followed a trail, read an information booklet or had a conversation with a room guide. This is not just at our country houses like Dyrham Park, but also gardens such as Prior Park or

BELOW: Rupert Goulding, lead curator for the National Trust BELOW RIGHT: Visitors looking at the mosaic floor in the West Range at Chedworth Roman Villa © National Trust/James Dobson

The west front of Dyrham Park © National Trust/James Dobson even the open landscapes as in the Bath Skyline. Curators research, organise ideas and help find the best ways to share, because none of the looking after and careful presentation means much if we don’t help make connections for visitors.

CHEDWORTH ROMAN VILLA I have worked for the National Trust for ten years, mostly with properties in the Cotswolds. My first major project was at Chedworth Roman Villa near Cirencester.

There we built a new shelter over the fragile mosaics and bath house. Before there were damp sheds where visitors had to peer through windows, which were not very exciting and not great for the archaeology

either. The new building, designed by Bath architects Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios, enables visitors to take suspended walkways over the mosaics and into Roman rooms and sound effects and projections conjure up echoes from the past. It was a challenging project to build a new structure on ancient Roman foundations, and not damage anything during the construction.

At the same time we were able to completely update the story of the villa. I particularly enjoyed creating the characters used to guide visitors. Though you could say Chedworth is the National Trust’s oldest country house, it is also one of the few where we know absolutely nothing about who lived there. Working with scriptwriters and specialist academics, we pieced together fragments of facts and filled in gaps to create plausible inhabitants. For example, a regional governor of the time inscribed his name on a monument in Cirencester – he became our villa owner’s special guest. The resulting audio-guide was enthusiastically described to me as “like an episode of The Archers but in Roman Britain” – it helped make sense of how low ruined walls once contained human lives like our own – with customs, needs and emotions.

DYRHAM PARK More recently I have worked at Dyrham Park.

In 2015 we replaced the roof of the house in a multi-million pound project, achieved with the support of many living locally – often by signing a slate and leaving names for posterity.

The great opportunity here was not just to fix the leaking roof, which was urgent, but to use that moment to fully share our work. Perhaps the crowning glory was the walkway inside ➲

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GUEST | COLUMNIST

ABOVE: Building work at Dyrham Park © National Trust/James Dobson TOP RIGHT: A close up of a pair of Delft pyramid vases

by Adriaen Kocks at Dyrham Park © National Trust/Andreas von Einsiedel BELOW RIGHT: The interior of the balcony room at Dyrham Park © National Trust/Andreas von Einsiedel

ABOVE: A view down a corridor at Dyrham Park with the painting A View Through a House by Samuel van Hoogstraeten © National Trust/Andreas von Einsiedel BELOW: View into the hallway from the drawing room at Dyrham Park © National Trust/Paul Barker

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GUEST | COLUMNIST

The garden and house in summer at Dyrham Park © National Trust/James Dobson the massive scaffold shell built over the house. Up there were the most amazing sights over the stripped back roof, close to the new lead and slates, and views out over the park and garden from vertigo inducing balconies. One of the most important aspects was installing a lift. Our architect Izaak Hudson helped make this possible, enabling visitors to enjoy this once in a lifetime opportunity.

FUTURE CHALLENGES My work at Dyrham Park is now focused upon the inside of the house, to revive the interior decoration and share its stories. Having researched and worked with Dyrham for many years, we know there is much more to say about why it is such an interesting place. And our visitors are always thirsty for more. The house was built in the 1690s

by William Blathwayt. His career included several senior jobs in government and spanned an under-appreciated period in British history. The late 17th century laid foundations for the country we know today, especially in developing military organisation, government procedures and finances.

Our project will unlock these stories for visitors. They help us better understand how Dyrham is both a product and consequence of Britain becoming a globally active country. For example, Blathwayt was the most senior administrator of British colonies across the Caribbean and North America. His colonial position contributed income and even building materials to construct Dyrham Park. When we follow the money for his salaries and financial gifts we find a colonial economy increasingly dependent on sugar plantations and enslaved people. We will properly explore this topic in the house in the future.

The project will revive the interior decoration of the house, undoing some of the modern schemes which were not based on current research.

The lighting will be improved, especially in rooms that don’t even have electricity, helping visitors see the collection. Many come from far and wide to enjoy the Delft ceramics and Dutch paintings. There will be different ways to explore the stories of the house. I am looking forward to making an introductory video to set the scene, and our plans for an exhibition on the life and times of William Blathwayt are taking shape.

An exciting development is to expand our recent tradition of serving 17th-century inspired tea, coffee and hot chocolate recipes, with a dedicated demonstration kitchen – and maybe even gin tastings!

As a National Trust curator my job is extremely varied. One day I may be thinking about the rebuilding of dams at Prior Park, considering the most sensitive design we can achieve or ways to help reach our £100,000 fundraising target. Another day I may be working on an exhibition, such as Prized Possessions, our recent collaboration with the Holburne Museum on Dutch Golden Age paintings. Or I may be giving a talk to our dedicated volunteers on an aspect of Dyrham’s history. I work alongside an extraordinary range of colleagues who all have great passion and expertise to share. Are any two days the same?

Of course they can be, but it’s always stimulating when our mission is to look after such wonderful places and find new ways to learn and share their unique stories for all our visitors. n To learn more about the National Trust’s projects at Prior Park and Dyrham Park visit: nationaltrust.org.uk/appeal/prior-park-dams 100 TheBATHMagazine

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The Palladian Bridge at Prior Park © National Trust/James Dobson

The cedar staircase at Dyrham Park © National Trust/Andreas von Einsiedel

Visitors on the walnut staircase at Dyrham Park © National Trust/Arnhel de Serra

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GARDENING

GRAND DESIGNS

Make the most of the autumn lull by re-arranging your garden in preparation for the year ahead. Take stock and make brave decisions about plants you’re unsure of, because you’ll need to live with your choices, says Jane Moore

N

ovember is a month to really savour as a gardener. It’s when I tend to make those great big, sweeping changes to my garden. Not only am I still fired with enthusiasm from the summer joys and successes but I’m also fiercely aware of the areas that are dull, tired and have never quite worked in the first place. Irritatingly aware, as quite often I’ve been looking at particular plants or patches of border that are wrong, wrong, wrong. And now, at long last, is the time to sort it all out.

Take a step back and evaluate things, but do be ruthless. I know from bitter, regretful experience that whatever you hesitate over and leave to its own devices, you will be living with next year. There are countless times my soft-hearted approach has allowed growing space for some awful specimen that I hope will sort itself out or flourish or finally look as good as it did in someone else’s garden. By next summer I’ll be kicking myself around the garden for having 102 TheBATHMagazine

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allowed it room. Yet again.

So be honest with yourself and get stuck in moving those plants that you may have put in the wrong place or just simply decided you would prefer somewhere else. We all make planting mistakes. I do find that plants don’t always behave the same in my garden as they do elsewhere. That lovely dense little perennial I loved at a National Trust garden can end up a sprawling mess in my slightly shadier plot.

PERENNIALS If you haven’t got much time or inclination or you’ve yet to experiment with moving plants around, then start with perennials.

These have shallower, less anchoring root systems than shrubs and are so much easier to lift and re-plant and so are great for building up techniques and confidence.

A lot of gardening books advise doing this in the spring but I’m always so short of time that I never get around to it. As a consequence I have a positive infestation of

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Aster amellus ‘King George’ which I’ve been meaning to divide for several years. Of course the books are right, spring is better, but autumn isn’t a disaster as long as the weather is mild enough. I may suffer some losses but there’s enough ‘King George’ to go around, believe me.

To divide a perennial, start by digging around the clump with a fork. Then put your fork into the clump and prise off a chunk to plant elsewhere. That’s it. Make sure it’s a reasonably large chunk, about 10–15cm in diameter if possible. And do pick your day carefully. It shouldn’t be too cold or frosty, nor should it be windy – one of those lovely soft, slightly drizzly autumn days is just perfect. Remember this is about the plant’s comfort, not yours.

ESTABLISHED SHRUBS AND TREES I’m just about to set to and dig up an established Cotinus, or smoke bush, that I’ve decided is way too big for my little town garden. I love it and have enjoyed the autumn

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GARDENING underneath, even if it is a little frosted on the top layer, and that’s where it matters to the plants and their delicate, needy little root systems. Planting at this time allows the roots to settle in over the dormant winter period and that’s especially important for bare root plants. These only become available in November as they have to be dormant and leafless before they can be lifted, as the professionals say or dug up as you and I might term the process. Why bother with bare root you may wonder? Well, they’re an absolute must-have for gardeners like me as I can get a wider variety of much larger plants for less money – it’s win, win, win. While I love the convenience and tidiness of a containerised plant when it comes to big things like trees you just can’t beat bare root if you’re on a budget. n Jane Moore is an award-winning gardening columnist and head gardener at The Bath Priory Hotel. Twitter: @janethegardener

colour but now the leaves have dropped so I’ll cut it back hard, dig it up and move it to the garden at The Bath Priory where it can have as much room to sprawl about as it wants.

It’s easier than you might think to dig up and move an established plant. Okay you do need to have some brute force about you as it’s a question of simply chopping a decent sized root ball out with a spade, without worrying too much about chopping through some of the roots. Remind yourself frequently how much plants want to survive, cut the top back to a meagre framework, shove it into a bag and replant it in its new home where it can recover from this abuse quietly for the rest of the winter.

PLANTING AFRESH Handily, November is also the best month for buying shrubs, trees and roses and for planting them in the still warm soil. It is still warm

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INTERIORS | AND | STYLE

Ishino Tables by Walter Knoll, Chaplins Furniture

Caramel with peach or pink is a resonant combination

Roest zinc pendant light by Ka

Spiced Honey, Dulux’s 2019 colour of the year

Crumpet Sofa by Loaf

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INTERIORS | AND | STYLE

HONEY AND CARAMEL

Stand down Heart Wood, Dulux’s 2018 (dusty plum) colour of the year, and make way for caramel – it’s a good foundation hue and combines easily with other colours, says interior designer Clair Strong

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piced Honey, a rich and warming caramel tone, is Dulux’s 2019 colour of the year. The choice was announced in September, but caramel tones have been trending for many months. Indeed, caramel may be set to take grey’s crown as king of the neutrals.

Versatile, timeless and effortlessly chic, caramel is a classic. A warm and uplifting colour, it pairs well with a wide range of other hues. It is a chameleon, changing its personality depending on how it is used. Two rooms painted in the same shade of caramel can look – and feel – completely different. This colour is safe but not boring and conventional with the power to be unique.

PAINT IT, HONEY Caramel is a great foundation hue for living rooms and bedrooms but will also look fabulous in a decadent bathroom with brass fixtures and glorious tiles. Painting an entire room in one shade of caramel may feel a little flat or too brown. However, caramel blends well with so many other colours, so it’s easy to create an interesting and dynamic palette.

Caramel is the perfect colour for experimentation because there are very few colours it doesn’t work with. Once you’ve settled on your colour palette, you can decide whether to paint all walls in one colour and use the others as accents, or play around with exciting painting techniques such as colour blocking or stencilling.

TANTALISING TEXTILES Using textiles is an easy and less labour intensive way than painting to try out this trend. Textiles are often my go-to for quick and affordable interior updates. You can completely transform any space with new rugs, cushions and curtains, or if you really want to splash out, a new sofa. And caramel is such a cosy colour; it lends itself especially well to these things.

For autumn/winter choose tactile materials like velvet and wool to create an inviting, cocooning space. A thick pile rug in a deep amber caramel will give any room a heavy hint of luxury, while draped linen curtains add a touch of bohemian flair. Don’t be afraid to mix and match patterns, especially

those that use caramel as a base; they’ll clash perfectly and will provide depth and interest.

MATERIAL MATTERS Caramel’s only real downside is that it can easily become old-fashioned or frumpy if you don’t keep it fresh and modern. To do this choose your materials carefully. For example, caramel walls and dark wood furniture can feel oppressive and outdated. But caramel walls with a tan leather chair, copper accents and blonde wood furniture looks cool and exciting.

Stick to light (or white) woods to keep things airy and uplifting. Then look to metallic accents like brass and copper for a warm glow. Always avoid overloading a room with accessories, but concrete and glass are great companions to caramel, as are ceramics in dark hues. n Clair Strong Interior Design is a small, friendly, creative business based in Bath and London, providing services for residential and commercial clients. Visit: clairstrong.co.uk or contact: clair@clairstrong.co.uk

CARAMEL COLOUR COMBINATIONS: • For a vibrant, 1970s-inspired space, pair caramel with teal and terracotta • For a calm and dreamy vibe, combine caramel with powder pink and pale blue • For a space with serious grown-up style, mix with rich plum and inky blue

A caramel foundation colour creates warmth and vibrancy (dining chair from Chaplin’s Furniture)

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INTERIORS | MASTERCLASS

PAINT THE GEORGIAN WAY Fancy changing the colour of your walls in your period property? Sarah Latham, creative director of Etons of Bath, specialises in the design and renovation of Georgian period properties, so we asked her for some expert advice...

PAINT: WHERE DID IT ALL BEGIN? Humans have added colour to their homes for more than 20,000 years as early cave paintings confirm. In around 1500BC the Egyptians used ‘milk paint’, mixing milk protein and lime and later adding olive oil, linseed oil, eggs and waxes combined with pigments like dirt and charcoal. In 1868 the first metal paint patent was granted and so began the commercial paint industry. This enabled the bulk production of paint and international shipping – and milk paint was replaced with oil-based paints.

In 1814 two Germans tried to improve a paint colour called Scheele’s Green that contained copper arsenide, which had been invented in 1775 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele.

They created Emerald Green paint, made with arsenic and verdigris, which quickly became popular among artists, painters, and clothing and wallpaper designers. This pigment was later prohibited as those who wore the clothes and whose homes had wallpaper were poisoned by the high arsenic content.

MODERN PAINTS These days paint production is eco-friendly and the toxic substances have been replaced by healthy alternatives: titanium dioxide clay, chalk and lime. It is now a legal requirement that companies state the VOC (volatile organic compounds) content of

Little Green paints; littlegreene.com

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their paints. Another big development is that most modern paints barely have a scent, making them suitable for nurseries and children’s rooms.

Picture Gallery Red from Farrow & Ball; farrow-ball.com

PAINT FINISHES There’s a pretty wide choice of paint finishes – here are our favourites for use in a Georgian or listed property.

Matt emulsion Also known as flat or matte finish, matt emulsion is one of the most commonly used paint finishes. Because it doesn’t have any sheen it doesn’t reflect light so it can be a good choice for period properties. It can also be applied smoothly, making it ideal for covering up any bumps and rough surfaces that you might come across in an old property. It can also be wiped clean so it is a good choice for family homes.

Distemper A traditional finish, distemper is ideal for older buildings and has a lovely ultra matt breathable finish with a good depth of colour. Made from natural plant resins it creates an authentic finish and is wipeable, water-based and environmentally friendly.

if you’d like to create a contrast from flat matt painted walls. You can also use it on front doors as it’s extremely hard-wearing and long-lasting.

Claypaint For a beautiful chalky finish that looks natural, clay paint is a good choice. The high clay content gives a thick creamy consistency that requires fewer coats than normal emulsion. It’s hard-wearing and breathable, both plus points for old properties.

TRADITIONAL GEORGIAN PAINT COLOURS Popular paint colours for this period include lovely light shades of blue and green, plaster tones, greys and dusky pinks. Georgian houses typically included several decorative features such as plaster and stuccowork, elaborate doorways, panelling, gilding or marble effect paintwork. To recreate this look you can choose dirtied colours like Farrow and Ball’s Mouse’s Back, Dead Salmon, Lichen and Picture Gallery Red. Typically these would have had a sheen so Modern Emulsion would be the most appropriate finish to choose. Floors weren’t painted then, boards were bare but covered in thick oriental rugs bought home from oversea trips.

Eggshell These days eggshell paint is water-based and it can be used on all woodwork, metal surfaces and on kitchen and bathroom walls. This finish has a low-sheen and is hard-wearing.

Here at Etons of Bath we love to use Farrow & Ball, The Paint & Paper Library and Little Greene. They all have fabulous ranges that are specifically created for period properties with traditional style finishes including lime washes and distemper. n

Traditional gloss As it says on the tin, this has a high gloss finish that’s great for woodwork, especially

Etons of Bath, 108 Walcot Street, Bath; etonsofbath.com

Limewash Made from lime and water, limewash can be coloured with natural pigments and is ideal for porous surfaces such as stone and limerendered walls. Environmentally friendly, limewash has a matt finish and is good for walls that are prone to damp as it has a very breathable finish.

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HAND-CRAFTED GIFTS

SINE FELT PENDANT WHITE / GREY

BY VITA COPENHAGEN

Porcelain tealights, Verve, from £22

Chopping board, Verve, from £15

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ome of us will already be working on our Christmas lists, others will be begrudgingly admitting it’s time to start thinking about it, and others choose to wait. Whichever camp you fall into, if it’s something a bit different you’re after then we’d recommend a good trawl around Bath’s independent stores this year, as these are the places where you’re most likely to find gifts that are original, hand-crafted, beautiful, practical and surprisingly affordable.

From delicate porcelain tea light holders, linen tea towels, distinctive tableware, cool ceramics, funky copper lamps, silk fabric cufflinks, sensuous candles, handmade jewellery, limited-edition framed prints, the wares of Bath’s indie shops reveal the craft of the many talented individuals that exist right here on our doorstep. Some are successful enough to be making a living doing what they love, but many are juggling their artisanal flair with a day job that pays the bills.

Buying something made by hand means you’re not only buying something truly unique, but also a little bit of the love and passion that has been poured into its making. This is just one of the many reasons for supporting local creative talent, but it’s arguably the most uplifting – you are spreading the love! Buying artisanal products also supports local enterprise and fosters the pursuit of creativity within the community.

So, next time you’re looking for inspiration, think indie.

There’s a great circuit around Bath’s Artisan Quarter that has a rich mix of indies. Up along Walcot Street there’s Avenida, Katherine Fraser, Aqua Glass and Pencil Tree. Then five minutes along the London Road, stopping at Avellinos Italian café on the corner if you need a break, you’ll find Michael Saffell Antiques, The Bath Framer, The Small Shop, Verve and Gardenalia. Back up and along the Paragon will bring you to George Street and hang a right up Bartlett Street for gems like the Bartlett Street Antique Centre and Article. Then back down and across the road to Broad Street with its many offerings including The Salcombe Trading Company, Boho and Magalleria. This retail trail will enthuse, inspire and help reduce the length of that Christmas list.

• Verve, 15 Walcot Buildings, London Road, Bath BA1 6AD. Tel: 07785 332536; verveliving.uk

A pond of Koi fish centrepiece mat, Avenida, £29

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LIGHTING SPECIALIST 8 BATH STREET, FROME. TEL: 01373473555 WWW.FIATLUX.CO.UK TUESDAY – FRIDAY 9.30AM – 5.30PM, SATURDAY 9.30AM – 5.00PM

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CHRISTMAS AT The original CH24 ‘Wishbone’ chair by Carl Hansen & Søn in oiled Oak

S annon

Just until Christmas.

Wishbone chairs at a Special Price £575 (normally £782)

THE POP-UP SHOP Iconic chairs by Hans J. Wegner

7 B R O A D S T R E E T. B AT H B A 1 5 L J 01225 684458

SHANNON-UK.COM

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the directory

to advertise in this section call 01225 424 499

Electricians

Health, Beauty & Wellbeing

Chauffeur/Private Hire

Holiday Rental

We provide Bath Airport transfers to and from all major airports in the uk. We use only Hi spec vehicles and give a near on chauffeur experience at less than regular taxi prices.

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

Airport transfers • City to city travel • Hi spec vehicles 1-8 seat vehicles available • Account work considered • Free Wifi in selected vehicles Card payments taken with Izettle • Prices start from as little as £39 Call or email us for a quote now!

@Romanbathprivatehire

Web: romanbathprivatehire.co.uk Email: Info@romanbathprivatehire.co.uk Tel: 01225 484346

KEIKO KISHIMOTO Health, Beauty & Wellbeing

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

House & Home

Holistic Treatments for Wellbeing

Aromatherapy • Reflexology/Facial reflexology Japanese Cosmo Facelift • Deep Tissue Massage For more information, please visit:

www.keikokishimoto.co.uk 07739 827186 contact@keikokishimoto.co.uk

Trowbridge & Neal’s Yard Bath

IS AVAILABLE TO PICK UP FOR FREE AT

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Own a property in Bath? airready are ready to take on your property Why just host when you can get airready to Superhost?

Bath’s premium holiday letting management service airready is based in Bath and run by established holiday home experts. Rebecca and Deborah at airready take care of everything: from listing your home to offering a 24/7 point of contact for your guests. We ensure nothing is overlooked with hotel standard cleans, luxurious white cotton linen, fluffy towels and a generous welcome basket all ready for your guests.

Our scrupulous attention to detail has earned us our Superhost status for the second year running, which means airready homes have 22% more reservations. Why just host, when you can Superhost with airready?

For more information call Rebecca 07906 507228 or Deborah 077722 422039. www.airready.co.uk

Airbnb property management

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PROPERTY | HOMEPAGE

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toneleigh is a detached modern house standing in good sized mature gardens in a peaceful location. Good schools such as Monkton Combe, Prior Park and Ralph Allen are close by. Decorated in neutral tones, the house offers versatile accommodation over two floors with further scope to convert the loft space (subject to the necessary consents).

On the ground floor there is a spacious sitting room with doors onto the garden and a bright dining room/sun room with a glazed roof and galleried landing above. The generous reception hall also gives access to bright, modern kitchen with utility room and a study. Upstairs there are four evenly sized bedrooms (one with en suite) and a family bathroom.

Parking comes by way of a detached double garage and large block paved driveway. This is a lovely, spacious family home with plenty of character in a sought after area and is sure to appeal.Full details from agents Pritchards.

STONELEIGH, SHAFT ROAD, COMBE DOWN

Pritchards, 11 Quiet Street, Bath. Tel: 01225 466225

Guide price: £1,150,000

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• Modern detached house in sought after location • Spacious accommodation • Four bedrooms • Family bathroom and en-suite • Mature level gardens • Garage and driveway parking

AG SA RE LE ED

pritchards-bath.co.uk

Warleigh, Bathford

Box Hill, Corsham

A truly outstanding, exceptional 4 bed country residence occupying the major wing of this magnificent GII* Listed building with exquisite, light and impressive accommodation. Magnificent entrance hall with library and drawing room off. Impressive kitchen. 2 garages and ample driveway parking. Cellar storage. Enchanting private and landscaped grounds approx 2.4 acres. Int area 4487 sq ft/416 sq m.

Garages: 335 sq ft/31 sq m.

The principal part of an impressive GII Listed country house retaining an immense wealth of character & original features. 6 bedrooms, fabulous reception hall 4 reception rooms, kitchen/breakfast room with AGA. Wonderful landscaped gardens and grounds with pool, in all approximately 12 acres. Exceptional views. Shared driveway, ample parking, coach house with garaging for 4 cars, office and gym.

House 6245 sq ft/ 580 sq m. Garage 1331 sq ft/124 sq m.

Guide Price: £2,500,000

Guide Price: £2,000,000

Farleigh Hungerford

Sydney Place

An impressive detached 5 bedroom GII Listed country house standing in magnificent grounds (approx 4 acres) in a wonderfully private setting.

Almost complete renovation to tasteful & exacting standards with light, airy accommodation. Detached double garage with potential office above & ample driveway parking. House 2645 sq ft/245 sq m. Outblds 1237 sq ft/114 sq m.

An impressive and elegant first floor apartment, forming part of a handsome Grade I Listed Georgian Townhouse in a magnificent terrace just a few minutes level walk from the centre of Bath. The property has recently been renovated throughout with an exacting eye to detail and enjoys a most desirable location. Total internal area: 1038 sq ft/96 sq m (includes separate utility).

Price: £1,650,000

Price: £615,000

11 Quiet Street, Bath BA1 2LB Pritchards November.indd 1

Tel: 01225 466 225

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Prestigious new project in Bath now in progress

“Founded in 2011 by Marcus Spanswick, who already had 20 years’ experience in the industry, Mardan Removals and Storage Ltd is a, family run, professional full service removals and storage company based in Bath. Marcus wanted to build a company that he and his team would be proud of. The key to the company’s success is providing a personalised service, treating each customer as an individual to ensure they get an excellent removal service. Mardan have a fleet of vehicles allowing them to offer; commercial moving, local to international moves and storage”.

We deliver to over 20,000 addresses every month.

But if you live outside our distribution area or would like us to send a copy to friends or family then we are able to offer a mailing service for only £15.00 (6 issues) or £40.00 Euro zone; £30.00 (12 issues) or £70.00 Euro zone World Zone 1 £95.00 World Zone 2 £120.00 To subscribe to receiving the magazine go to our website; www.thebathmag.co.uk and scroll to the bottom of the page where you can click to an instant link Alternatively send a cheque payable to MC Publishing Ltd 2 Princes Buildings, George Street, Bath BA1 2ED or Telephone 01225 424 499 for card payment

Subscription FORM Mr/Mrs/Ms ................Forename ..............................................

Surname ..............................................................................

Address ............................................................................

DOMESTIC & COMMERCIAL MOVERS • PACKERS • STORERS • SHIPPERS

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..........................................Postcode ............................

Daytime telephone No ..............................................................

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St. Stephens Road, Lansdown A superb three bedroom contemporary home that has been finished to exacting standards throughout, benefiting from secure off-street parking, a private garden and a detached office. Situated on the slopes of Lansdown, the house enjoys quick access to Bath city centre and has a range of highly regarded schools on the doorstep.

Rent: ÂŁ2,600 pcm* contemporary open plan kitchen / dining area | substantial kitchen island | granite work surfaces | spacious living room | 3 good sized bedrooms (3 en-suites) | fitted wardrobes | garden office with WC | private secluded garden | gated off-street parking

Reside Bath | 24 Barton Street Bath BA1 1HG | T 01225 445 777 | E info@residebath.co.uk | W www.residebath.co.uk

*An administration fee of ÂŁ420.00 inc. VAT applies.

RESIDE November.indd 1

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[SOUTH WESTERN] LIMITED

Flatwoods Road, Claverton Down

[SOUTH WESTERN] LIMITED

Bailbrook Lane, Batheaston

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Southwinds Farm, Woolverton

OUTSTANDING PROPERTIES BY EXCEPTIONAL HOUSE DEVELOPERS Flatwoods Road, Claverton Down Two stupendous properties beautifully placed on the edge of Rainbow Woods and adjacent to National Trust land and The Bath Skyline Walk.

Prices from £1.45m

Bailbrook Lane, Batheaston Two outstanding contemporary properties with living accommodation on first floor level to enjoy the fabulous views.

Prices from £1.8m

[SOUTH WESTERN] LIMITED

01225 791155 ashford-homes.co.uk

01225 333332 01225 866111 cobbfarr.com

Southwinds Farm, Woolverton Woolverton is a small hamlet within easy reach of Bath.

There are six unique properties within this development, four of which have been released with one having been reserved.

Prices from £795,000

Norwood Dene, Bath This magnificent development of seven luxurious apartments is set in extensive private and mature grounds.

Prices from £875,000

Norwood Dene, Bath

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Why stability is the key to a successful tenancy Peter Greatorex, managing director of The apartment Company

F [SOUTH WESTERN] LIMITED

or a tenant renting a property, the situation can make them feel insecure; there is a certain amount of security that owning a property can bring that renting just can’t. As such, bringing elements of security and stability into a tenancy can have an incredibly positive effect, attracting quality tenants, longer tenancies and, as a result, fewer issues and void periods. But what are we talking about when we say ‘stability’?

The way you make them feel When your property is managed, the agency that you choose to do this can certainly have an impact, positive or negative, when it comes to that feeling of insecurity. From the first phone call to the initial viewings, from the application to moving in day, each step of the process can have a lasting effect. Let’s explain.

We recently had a tenant whose negative experience of searching for a property to rent had scared her a little. From the first call, she felt that she was being treated differently as she was a tenant rather than a buyer, and upon viewing properties she said there was no attempt to reassure her on the benefits of renting a particular property through the agency. This put up red flags, making her think, “What would it be like if something went wrong during the tenancy? I don’t want that stress.”

Tenants need to know that issues will be dealt with swiftly and professionally, and this is a major concern for prospective tenants, many of whom work in demanding sectors and are often commuting some distance or travel frequently for work. These tenants need to know that, should something go wrong, the agency managing their property will act appropriately.

Consistency

Crafting beautiful homes

Bath | Somerset | Wiltshire | Cotswolds | Dorset

01225 791155 ashford-homes.co.uk

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It is often the ‘knowing’ that can provide the reassurance a tenant needs. They know who the agency is that is managing their property, and the person who they need to speak to should they need to.

When this consistency is tampered with, tenants can start to feel nervous and apprehensive, making them wonder whether the property they are renting is really right for them.

Another recent tenant was renting a different property; the agency they were renting from changed hands, and with that the processes changed and things started to feel very different. They went from having a good relationship with their letting agent to one that felt distant and disjointed. They decided to move because of this, such was their need to have some stability.

A little understanding: We believe that by understanding our tenants, as we would our buyers, we can provide them with a high standard of service. Noone likes going through the referencing process, but handled the correct way it can feel less daunting. Our team know our tenants, having this kind of relationship improves tenancies and satisfaction on all sides.

Stability is probably something you haven’t really thought about as a landlord, yet it can have a significant impact on your tenancy if not handled correctly. At The Apartment Company we know how to make tenants feel; we provide the security and consistency that you and they are seeking, whilst treating everyone as individuals. Our lettings department is growing, so come and see the difference we can make to your property portfolio, because successful tenancies provide you with financial stability too!

The Apartment Company Pg@theapartmentcompany.co.uk or call 01225 471144.

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Holburne Park hosts Open Doors Day to showcase final homes available Open invitation to see new 4-bed show home and view the remaining houses in phase 1

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ath’s Holburne Park is hosting an Open Doors Day on Saturday 24th November, welcoming potential buyers to be the first to view the brand new show home in addition to the remaining 2 and 3 bedroom houses which are now complete.

new neighbourhood in addition to envisioning themselves living here by walking between the three remaining properties. It is also a chance to experience the beautiful setting of the development – with no appointment necessary, it’s really easy to just pop along and take a look!”

The Open Doors Day marks the end of phase one development of Holburne Park, and welcomes anyone interested in getting a feel for the new classically-styled homes to walk around the remaining three properties for sale. Each property is different in design and size; with a 2, 3 and 4 bed property still available, potential buyers will have the chance to actually walk inside the house that they would buy – a rare opportunity for new build developments.

Set in a hillside location off Warminster Road and offering expansive views over the surrounding Charlcombe Valley the homes are a short stroll from the picturesque Kennet and Avon canal. Surrounded by greenery and big open skies, yet a short, gentle stroll from the vibrant city centre, the homes honour Bath’s distinct character but are designed for modern living.

The exquisite new Coates 4-bedroom show home will also be open for viewing, really bringing to life the potential of a home at Holburne Park.

When complete, Holburne Park will provide over 200 new homes for Bath, from one-bedroom apartments to six-bedroom detached villas on the open market, together with 81 affordable homes.

Francis Firmstone, director of Hardrock Developments Ltd, said: “With only a handful of homes remaining now is the perfect time to visit Holburne Park and see this new neighbourhood in Bath.”

Vicky Dudbridge, Director at Savills said: “This is a chance for visitors to get a feel for the scale of this beautiful development and walk the

Holburne Park open day will run from 10am to 4pm, The Marketing Pavilion, Warminster Road, Bath, BA2 6SF.

CGI of Holburne Park; living room and bedroom shots from show home; kitchen from a completed four-bed house

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For more information about the development visit www.holburnepark.co.uk or call 01225 302888

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Bear Flat

Andrewsonline.co.uk

Shakespeare Avenue, BA2 ÂŁ825,000

A handsome three storey Edwardian terrace property on Shakespeare Avenue set just below the beautiful Alexandra Park. Five bedrooms, two reception rooms, kitchen/dining room, two bathrooms, front and rear gardens, views.

Energy Efficiency Rating: D

01225 805 680 bearflat@andrewsonline.co.uk

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

Central

Andrewsonline.co.uk

Rockliffe Road BA2 ÂŁ689,995

01225 809 571

Andrews November.indd 1

Rockliffe Road is a fantastic leafy location, lined with attractive period properties. This elegant home has impressive period features, combined with quality contemporary touches. It offers flexible family accommodation and has a 75 ft south facing garden.

Energy Efficiency Rating: E

central@andrewsonline.co.uk

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

23/10/2018 11:47

Camden

Andrewsonline.co.uk SOLD STC

Georges Road BA1 £550,000

A beautifully styled, four bedroom, detached house with garage and parking for three cars, situated in a quiet street with spectacular views over Charlcombe.

Energy Efficiency Rating: TBC

01225 809 868 camden@andrewsonline.co.uk

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

Newbridge Andrewsonline.co.uk

Westhall Road, BA1 £485,000

A beautifully presented Victorian style terraced house built in the 1940’s located in a cul-de-sac within 200 yards of the Royal Victoria Park. Four bedrooms, two reception rooms, and a kitchen with french doors onto the enclosed east facing rear garden.

Energy Efficiency Rating: TBC

01225 809 685 newbridge@andrewsonline.co.uk

Andrews November.indd 2

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

23/10/2018 11:49

HAYESFIELD PARK, Bath

Price ÂŁ979,999

A stunning five-bedroom Edwardian villa brimming with period features quietly located in the family friendly area of Bear Flat, 0.7 miles from the centre of Georgian Bath.

Great location | Edwardian period charm | Two reception rooms | Kitchen/dining room | Five bedrooms | Gardens to front side and rear | Off road parking | Chain free | EPC: E

Fine & Country November.indd 1

22/10/2018 16:50

HIGH STREET, Norton St Philip

Price ÂŁ700,000

A flexible, well-proportioned Victorian family home with six bedrooms and four reception rooms and south west facing gardens set in the heart of the desirable village of Norton St Philip, just 7.4 miles from the centre of Georgian Bath.

Handsome Victorian house in the heart of the village | Six bedrooms | Four reception rooms | Flexible accommodation | South west facing garden & stone store | Very desirable village eight miles from Bath

LINDEN GARDENS, Bath

Price ÂŁ600,000

A detached mews house in a sought-after area, just 1.2 miles from the heart of Bath. The Mews House is deceptively spacious, comprising two reception rooms, two double bedrooms and a useful utility room, together with a delightful south-facing courtyard garden.

Charming mews house | Two bedrooms | Kitchen/dining room | Vaulted sitting room | Utility room/downstairs W.C. | Courtyard garden | EPC: Exempt

Fine & Country November.indd 2

22/10/2018 16:51

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Station Road

£750 pcm

Unfurnished · PRICE RANGE £750 to £950 pcm · Light and airy sitting room · One double bedroom · No Students · No Pets · On road parking · Council tax band B · Available 3rd of December

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Widcombe Crescent

£950 pcm

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Brunswick Place

£1200 pcm

SALES

01225 471 14 4 The Apartment Company November.indd 1

LETTINGS

£900 pcm

Unfurnished · PRICE RANGE £900 to £950 pcm · One bedroom · Top floor apartment · No pets · Central location · Agency fees £420 inc VAT · Council tax band B · Available 7th of December

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Alfred Street

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£1250 pcm

Furnished · Two double bedrooms · Views · Suit professional couple · Parking Zone 7 · Period features · No Pets · Council Tax Band: D

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Russel Street

£1250 pcm

01225 303 870

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Park Street

£1450 pcm

Furnished · PRICE RANGE £1,450 to £1,550 · Two Double Bedrooms · Vault Room · Highly sought after location · Private courtyard and garden · Council Tax Band B

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Unfurnished · PRICE £1,250 pcm · Two double bedrooms · Central location · Modern kitchen · Close to call local amenities · Agency fees £420 inc VAT · Available now

£1150 pcm

Furnished · PRICE RANGE £1,150 to £1,250 pcm · Large Sitting Room · Central location · No pets · No students · Residence parking permit · Council tax band C · Available 1st November

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Marlborough Buildings

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Grade II Listed · Georgian · Ground floor · Two bedrooms · Recently refurbished · Excellent Access to M4 · Council Tax Band B · Agency fees £420 Inc VAT · Available mid November 2018

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Southbourne Mansion

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Unfurnished · Double Bedroom · Spacious Accommodation · Fabulous Views · Convenient for Bus and Train Stations · Close to City Centre and Local Amenities · Council Tax Band C

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Cavendish Crescent

£1300 pcm

Furnished · Two double bedrooms · Bathroom and Shower Room · Courtyard area · Use of Cavendish Crescent Garden · No Pets · Communal vault · Council Tax Band D · Available now

sales@theapartmentcompany.co.uk

22/10/2018 16:53

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Alexandra House

O.I.E.O

£625,000

Modern apartment · Beautifully decorated · Two double bedrooms · Large veranda · Secure parking · Far reaching riverside views · Close to city centre · Approx 1011 Sq ft · EPC - B

O.I.E.O

£550,000

Grade II listed · Georgian apartment · Two bedrooms · Private garden · Period features · Central location · Approx 1580 Sq ft

O.I.E.O

£500,000

Wells Road

Leopold house

O.I.E.O

£395,000

Two double bedrooms · Modern build · Riverside location · Central location · Close to local amenities · Ground floor · Approx 813 Sq ft · EPC - B

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Catharine Place

Paragon

O.I.E.O

£385,000

Philip Street

O.I.E.O

£225,000

Grade II listed · Georgian apartment · First floor · Three double bedrooms · Period features · Central location · Communal garden · Investment/development opportunity · Approx 1109 Sq ft

Georgian · Grade II listed · Private garden · Private parking space · Stunning views · Three double bedrooms · Central location · Period features · Ground floor apartment · Approx 1156 Sq ft

Modern build · Central location · Roof terrace · Close to transport links · Communal roof terrace · Open plan living space · Lift access · Communal bike and bin store · Approx 378 Sq ft

Great Pulteney Street O.I.E.O £375,000

Vineyards

Great Stanhope Street

Grade I listed · Georgian · Ground floor · One bedroom · Wealth of period features · Beautifully presented · Quintessentially Bath · Approx 685 Sq ft

Grade II · Georgian apartment · Double bedroom · Study · Private front courtyard Private vault · Street level access · Approx 603 Sq ft

O.I.E.O

£235,000

O.I.E.O

£210,000

Georgian apartment · Grade II listed · Central location · One bedroom · Gas central heating · Original period features · Great investment or first time buy · Approx 425 Sq ft

www.theapartmentcompany.co.uk

The Apartment Company November.indd 2

22/10/2018 16:54

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