Wednesday 16 November 2011

Back to back black

The core of the Bell Inn - a coaching hotel from around 1700 still in use today (not least by me). When I came to Bath, all of the buildings were blackened by Victorian coal fires like this - in fact I cleaned quite a few of them just after the burning of coal was outlawed in the city.

My mother visited Bath as a child before the war, when it was renowned as a retirement area for the elderly and infirm. She hated it, saying the the place was an oppressive jet-black. Nobody really wanted to live here then, after the Georgians had moved on and taken their balls and parties with them, leaving tea rooms hosted by obstreperous and hostile old women that closed their establishments early on wednesdays - for some reason.

The black had a very silky, intense quality to it close up though, like the ink on early photo copies.

11 comments:

  1. Hello Tom:
    Certainly we remember Bath in the 1950s as being almost totally blackened by the soot from the coal fires. When we first came here it was much the same although in recent years many of the buildings have, at least in the centre of the city, been cleaned losing in the process some of that rather appealing Third Man atmosphere.

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  2. Yes, H@@s. It's difficult being the Third Man whilst dressed up as Jane Austen. Oh well.

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  3. I remember crossing the Charles bridge in Prague when it was afflicted with the same decoration...I hear they have cleaned that up too.

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  4. The better paid of Sheffield all lived on the west of the city...towards the prevailing wind.. the poor lived in the east end and were covered in soot

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  5. From so far away, the idea of history being shrouded in soot is kinda nice. I can understand the impetus to remove the stain, but ...

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  6. I love these old buildings Tom and i think the black adds to their attraction - after all the age of coal fires was a long and important part of our history so why should we try to get rid of it all and 'beautify' it?

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  7. Well I suppose because it's fairly easy to do, and it doesn't half lighten up the town, Weaver. You sound like some of the conservation officers that I have to deal with! The other thing is that the sulphur deposits in the soot turn into acid after a while, and this rots the stone a lot quicker than it ordinarily would.

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  8. Black, grimy stone just looks grim. Can't imagine there's anything natural about exhaust fumes and assorted industrial shit deposits on stone buildings.

    I like to see the natural beauty of the stone without feeling like I'm in a Dickens novel or a Lowry painting.

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  9. The exhaust fumes are causing whole new problems about 4 feet off the ground now, Chris.

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  10. The only problem with sand-blasting, is that it takes away ALL patina. It then takes another few hundred years to get it back again; albeit in a lighter colour.

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  11. Don't worry, Cro - there is no sand-blasting done on soft stone buildings. All the cleaning is done with small sprays of pure water over a period of a week or so - very gentle, and it leaves the calcite skin beneath the dirt.

    They have experimented with blasting the walls with frozen carbon-dioxide crystals, and although this is quick, it's expensive and leaves a patchy finish. God knows what it does to the ozone layer too...

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