Learn

A great place to start is listening to our podcast Footprints with over 20 episodes each covering a fascinating aspect of the area and its people.

For primary school teachers and home educators our learning resources includes lesson plans, curriculum links, planning tools for visits and a guide to making your school grounds more wildlife friendly.  Find the resource pack for primary school teachers here.  Or download more of Marian Hill’s beautiful artwork in our resources section or from her website.

In this video local ecologist, Mike Williams, takes us on a tour of a tiny selection of Bath City Farm’s animals and insects.  You can find out more about the history of the Farm and Twerton in this article by historian Kirsten Elliott A Tale of Two Manors: How Bath City Farm Reflects the History of Twerton 

And below a selection of longer reads on a range of topics, thanks to our amazing team of volunteers.

Social history

Suffragettes in Bath (Anne Twitchett)
Sydney Gardens Peace Oak (Sue Palmer & Ann Cullis)
Emperor Haile Selassie in Bath and Reflections of the Exile Years (Keith Bowers & Esther Sellassie Antohin)
Workhouse to Hospital: A brief account of the Odd Down site of Bath Workhouse (John Payne)
Bath Jewish Burial Ground (Ann Cullis)
Restoring Cleveland Pools (Kate Rounce)

Architecture and history

The Story of Ralph Allen’s Estate (Robin Dixon)
To see all of Bath and for all Bath to see Ralph Allen’s House and Gardens at Prior Park  (Robin Dixon)
Newton Park (Karen King)
The Royal Crescent Lawn and The Royal Crescent Ha-Ha (Stephen Little)
Discovering Bath’s Lost Canal – Somersetshire Coal Canal (Derrick Hunt & Liz Tuddenham)
John Wood’s Moon Temple  (Mike Williams)

Geology and landscape

William Smith in Bath – The Cradle of Geology   (Peter Wigley)
The Landscape of Bath (Rebecca Brooks)
The Hot Springs of Bath (Rebecca Brooks)

Wildlife

Bats of the Bathscape (Dan Merrett)
Bathscape Squirrels (Dan Merrett)
Trees of Royal Victoria Park and Bath Botanical Gardens (Antonia Johnson)

Landscape and the Arts

Bath and the Picturesque (Andrew Swift)
Bath in Literature (Sabine Purshouse)

Personal responses to the landscape

From Bright Lights to Starry Skies (Deborah Griffin)
Walking kept me sane in 2020 (Lucy Bartlett)
Rambling up the north side of Bath (Iona Brandt)
Cherry Blossom and the Queen Bumblebee (Indianna Rivers – a children’s story)

For an exploration into Bath’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade we are very grateful to the filmaker Dr Shawn Sobers for allowing us to share the video of his 2018 talk for the Museum of Bath at Work. We also highly recommend this in depth exploration of empire and reluctant heritage, via the trees in Sydney Gardens by Richard White.

You can also take a self-guided walk round some of the key sites, thanks to a project by University of Bath:  Walking Bath’s Uncomfortable Past self-guided walk

As part of the 2020 Bathscape Walking Festival, Dr Amy Frost took us around the grounds of Beckford’s Tower and Lansdown Cemetery.