Bath City Farm is to build a new indoor community café at their site on Kelston View after securing £500,000 for the project.
How the new cafe will look | Image © Hetreed Ross Associates / Bath City Farm
The café has been a long-held ambition since the farm opened in 1995 and construction will begin in September with a planned opening in late Spring next year.
Located next to the play area with views across Bath, there will be indoor year-round seating for around 40 people, with two outdoor terraces.
The café will use produce grown and reared on the farm by the charity’s volunteers.
Run as a community business, all the profits from the venture will be reinvested into the city farm.
The project will also provide work experience opportunities for those in catering and hospitality, helping them develop real-world skills.
Funds have been secured over the last three years from several different sources including a grant from the Bath-based St John’s Foundation which paid for architects to be appointed to design the café.
Money has also been secured from the Bath and North East Somerset Community Infrastructure Levy fund, the Power to Change Community Business Fund and Enovert.
Chair of Bath City Farm Trustees, Jo Southwell said: “The Trustees and the team are so pleased that, despite recent delays due to Covid, we have now secured all the funding and we will be achieving our long-standing aim of getting construction of our new, indoor and outdoor café underway.
“Work will start in September and we expect to open the café around late Spring next year.
“We plan to make it a great place for visitors to the farm, a resource for our local communities and an opportunity to show how local food can be produced and cooked.”
The café has been designed by local architects Hetreed Ross Associates and will have a timber frame and wooden cladding on three sides.
The building will be constructed by builders Ken Biggs Contractors. Clive Willcox, General Manager said: “Ken Biggs contractors are thrilled to be appointed as the contractor to build the new café building which will be an asset to the farm and the general community.
“It continues our involvement with the farm which started when the site was purchased and we carried out the initial earthworks and formed the car parks back in 1995.”
