Your mole, emerging from the burrow beneath Bath Spa having just sweated its whiskers out in the tepidarium, heard some enraging news.
Bath resident and socialist film director Ken Loach has made some critical comments of the Somerset city.
In an interview with the Guardian ahead of his lecture tonight for the Festival of the Future City Bath, Loach moaned that Bath is becoming – god forbid – “too clean”:
“Bath was dusty and a little shabby when we moved here. It did look its age and you felt its history in its streets and buildings and little alleyways. The sense of the past was palpable. There were some bad modern buildings but there was a patina of age.
“The problem now is that it has been sharpened up for the tourists. It’s too clean. It’s like an old person with Botox. You don’t get the same sense of the past. It’s too clean, too sharp.”
Lamenting the “destructive” market forces leading to lots of hotels being built in the city, and the “grotesque” plan to expand the Rec rugby ground by 1,000 capacity, Loach advocated preserving “the city in a minimal way rather than try to make big architectural statements”. He complained that there is “too much imitation Georgian architecture”, but would also somehow like the city’s “homogeneity” not to be spoilt by an “eclectic mix” of building styles at the same time.
As the I, Daniel Blake director mentioned the city’s “poverty and gross inequality” and punishing property prices, your mole was a little surprised at his wish to keep the city “dusty”, “shabby” and without big developments or boosts to its tourist industry.
It sounds like he’s putting his aesthetic priorities ahead of the job prospects and quality of life that might – just might – be more important to the local people he describes than the precise level of atmospheric grit on the Georgian architecture.
Content from our partners
Related
