Ralph Oswick: Terrace became proud backdrop to square’s regeneration
Sipping my Tiger Lily (rum, absinthe and ginger), my eyes adjusted to the gloom revealing exotic African masks, elaborate filigree lanterns, fringed drapes, artful vases and intriguing glimpses of shadowy vaults.
I was in the aptly named Dark Horse, that bijou basement drinking den in Kingsmead Square.
I was last here all of 50 years ago! It was the height of the Sack of Bath, when historic terraces fell like ninepins to the wrecker’s ball. Against all the odds, millionaire property developer, wide-boy and visionary Charlie Ware had chosen the most derelict row of Georgian houses – Kingsmead Terrace – to be his shining example of what could be achieved. My memory is blurred, it might have been another champion of Bath’s crumbling heritage, architect David Brain who came to the rescue. Whatever.
The terrace, with its boarded-up fronts, crumbling facades and roofs mainly consisting of torn tarpaulins, may have seemed hardly worth the effort, but it acted as a visual foil to the creeping modernity beyond.
Charlie, ardent supporter of alternative projects, booked King Kong Workforce, one of myriad Bath Arts Workshop offshoots, to clear the teetering properties.
I was supervisor and decided we should start at number one and work our way along. And so it was that my King Kong co-worker ceremoniously flung open the attic window, whereupon the whole frame disappeared over the parapet, landing with a sickening crash on the pavement below.
Rushing down the rickety stairs and emerging onto the square, we found a traffic warden, one of Bath’s first, staring at the shattered wood and glass that had landed at her feet. ‘Someone could have got hurt by that!’ she said, nonplussed by her near-death experience.
Half of Walcot worked night and day to complete our contract. And what a task! Each house was completely different. One basement was full of hardened mud. An antique Windsor chair stuck out of the morass, ideal for selling in our fundraising shop. But as we went to extract it, with the merest whisper, it crumbled into powder. So eaten away by woodworm was it that it was just a shell of varnish that kept it standing. A ghost chair!
Elsewhere under the rubble was the skeleton of a vintage motorbike and sidecar. Another cavern produced an ancient cylinder phonograph, which was featured in the Chronicle. A chap wrote in saying his grandparents had lived in the terrace and were famously owners of one of Bath’s first gramophones, and this was probably it!
We realised we couldn’t complete the contract in the allotted time. Yet more hard-hatted hippies from the Hat and Feather were recruited, swarming ant-like across the buildings.
Finally, joy! On opening the very last house, we found it had no floors, was sans-staircase, and like the Windsor chair before, was merely an empty shell. Phew, we had finished!
And there the terrace stands today, handsome and tall, with its pavement cafes and thriving businesses, a proud backdrop to the regeneration of Bath’s busiest little square.
Time for a second Tiger Lily methinks, and to raise a glass to Charlie, or was it David, and the King Kong guys and gals!