Sunday 24 June 2012

Which insensitive idiot let this happen?


Following on from this post, I was taking a walk through the fair streets and terraces of Bath today, when I came upon this recently laid pavement which runs around the most iconic building of the World Heritage City - the Royal Crescent.

The coarse, riven texture of the surface of the slabs and the incongruously bright colours of the A-typically shaped sandstone pieces can only mean one thing.

The stone was imported from China.

This Chinese stone is stupidly cheap to buy - about one 20th of the price that the original Welsh Pennant now costs, even second-hand.  Which also makes me wonder what on earth has happened to the flags which have been lying in the same position for around 250 years?  I know what happened to about half of the Welsh Pennant which used to form the pavement of another iconic street in Bath, Great Pulteney Street - it was sold under the counter to builders and dealers for about 1/16th of it's real value.  I know this, because I know who bought it, back in the late 1980s.  They were replaced with dirt-cheap, shiny concrete ones which cover dozens of square yards, have to be coated in fake dirt by film companies because they look so awful, and freeze into a skating-rink in the winter, sending many old people to hospital with broken arms and hips.

Why is this Chinese stone so cheap, apart from that everything in China is cheap?  Because - in great part - it is quarried by women and children, dressed in shorts and sandals.  They don't issue steel toe-capped boots to the children in Chinese quarries.

Let us say that I have got this all wrong, and the stone shown above comes from, say, Spain or Portugal (it is certainly not British, and it bears a striking resemblance to the Chinese variety), what the HELL is Bath City Council doing laying it in the Royal Crescent in favour of the expensive Welsh stuff, and WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ORIGINAL?!

The council is currently tarting up their own doorstep outside their chambers right in the heart of the city now (at a cost of £1,000,000 and taking 9 MONTHS using outside contractors).  It will be interesting to see if any of the Chinese stuff finds it's way to their doorstep, or if they treat themselves to the real thing.

I wonder - if they use re-claimed pennant - if it will be recycled....

11 comments:

  1. It's heartbreaking isn't it? But the same crass decisions are being made here in Salisbury. We don't have the magnificent terraces or architecture of Bath but it is medieval cathedral city that has suffered terribly at the hands of poor planning decisions in the past. And the state of the pavements are my current bugbear. The council puts huge floral planters on every corner each summer dangerously obstructing the view of traffic for pedestrians and the pedestrians for drivers. Then each few days a truck with a generator on board goes around the streets watering (i.e. hosing) them so violently that you have to cross the road. How "green" is that? But my point is that the money spent on these tourist trappings could better be spent on repairing the many paving stones/slabs that are cracked and broken and good for tripping on and making ideal ditches for rainwater to pool in. Most repairs that are done are just filled with tarmac instead of paving. So very attractive for a medieval city. The only repaving that is done properly is that after utility companies have dug them up. Presumably because they have to bear the cost. I'm almost wishing for more gas/electric/waterworks near me in the hope of getting nice new paving slabs ( even if they are made in China). Sigh.

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  2. OMG - another rant as long as your arm. So sorry, Tom. Oh well back to watching Eng-er-land lose to Italy...

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    1. That's ok, Elegance, though one or two paragraph breaks would have been nice.

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  3. My town is just 200 years old, but considers itself incredibly historic, in an Irish brawling canal town sort of way. The fathers go to great lengths to preserve the sandstone sidewalks, quarried right in town back then. Talk about uneven, slippery and dangerous.

    Imagine the outrage a couple years ago when the State came through and at the intersections of its State highway replaced some slabs with concrete curb cuts to enable wheel chairs to cross. And everyone else who no longer must step up or down a three inch curb.

    But, the biggest question on the town fathers' minds: What did the State do with the sandstone slabs?

    Well, good luck.

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    1. If they sold them to China, that might have made sense, but I expect they might just have thrown them away.

      We too have lowered the kerbs at crossings to allow for wheelchairs, but what we do is cut all the stones diagonally (takes a bit of working out) then re-lay them at a gentle slope. It works fine, and nobody complains.

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  4. I hope you've sent a letter to them, asking!

    A friend of mine (who I think may live in The Royal Cres) has floor tiles from St Paul's in his kitchen over here. Amazing where stuff ends-up.

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    1. I know someone whose kitchen is paved with upside-down, Portland stone, Victorian grave-stone slabs from a Bristol cemetery which has just received a £500,000 grant for it's upkeep and restoration- the inscriptions on the bottom, of course. Lest we forget.

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  5. Perfidious Cretins and thieves!

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  6. That is just so wrong for Bath. Idiots.

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    1. In a way, it would be better if it were just because of idiocy - at least they could be re-educated.

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