Let's use gasometer to create something new
A number of years ago a colleague and fellow councillor Mick Ringham and I suggested that an alternative use could be found for at least one of the three Victorian/Edwardian gas holders (or gasometers, as they are otherwise known) located at the Bath Western Riverside site and promoted a concert venue as a preferred first option. We were dismissed out of hand by those without one iota of imagination or vision.
Two of the historic gas holders have now been demolished and the third awaits its fate, or 'decommissioning', as officialdom puts it. Three reasons are given for the destruction of this familiar landmark and they are: (i) prevents Bath Western Riverside from further development (ii) prevents the regeneration of the Bath Press site (iii) is an environmental blot on the landscape.
In Vienna a total of four 102-year old gas holders have been sympathetically converted for residential and commercial use and dubbed 'Gasometer Town'. 'G-Town', as the locals call it, includes 70 shops, bars restaurants, cafes, a multiplex cinema, events hall with seating for 4.200 people, a daycare centre, 615 apartments, 230-bed student dormitory and 11,000 square meters of office space. This highly-imaginative complex opened for business in 2001.
Vienna's gasometers are brick-clad, as opposed to Bath's remaining edifice known as a 'permanent lattice-type frame', and this would obviously present a greater challenge to architects but why isn't consideration given to preserving the sole surviving gas holder, which has been on Bath's skyline for a century or more, and skilfully transform it into a concert venue or, better still, a Museum of Bath? In point of fact, we could actually kill two birds with one stone by incorporating the old Newark Works into the equation and using it as a city museum and archive and utilising the huge gas holder as a theatre and conference centre.
I accept that the old gas works site presents any developer with an ecological nightmare but surely such a proposal is worthy of some consideration before more of Bath's industrial heritage is consigned to the cutter's torch and another drab tower-block emerges to replace it.
Amazingly, these old gas holders survived the 1942 Bath Blitz but now fall victim to 'progress'. It's a funny old world when people rant about these 'eyesores' and 'blots on the landscape' and yet accept SouthGate's Bus Station 'Tower', which just happens to look like a gasometer.
BRYAN CHALKER Heritage Champion Claverton Down, Bath
Comments
by Juneplayer
Friday, February 03 2012, 6:36PM
“Like you Bryan I have always been a supporter of incorporating and thus saving at least one gasometer - which is now of course all that is left! I visualised it as being made use of upto the height of a 5-storey building then leaving the rest of it as is, so that views and nature could still be seen thru' it with having none of the other buildings above that height either. The heights of the tower blocks still could be reduced, if no school were built, making that land available for building extra housing to replace those taken from the reduced tower blocks. As to the school, as I have always said, should there really be the need for it then the back part of the old Bath Press could be used to expand Oldfield Park Infants. This would ensure the future of this excellent school. The proposed Tesco could be reduced in size(aswell as scaling the parking provision right down) and make it a far more community outlet for people to walk and/cycle to. There are afterall 1000's of potential shoppers in this heavily built-up residential area, with the prospect of many more coming due to Riverside Development. The extra land then gained from that could go to some more much-needed, decent sized and designed housing. At least this way the Tesco shoppers can still get what they want, the L.B.Rd will be far less chaotic and polluted, H&S issues will be less of a concern, the impact on Moorland Rd will be lessened and Tesco could still make a profit.”