Plans to demolish a “rare” part of Bath’s industrial heritage have been blocked.
Travis Perkins Trading Co Ltd applied last May to Bath & North East Somerset Council to demolish a single-storey building at its site on Lower Bristol Road that it considered to be of “limited architectural or historic merit”.
The wider site also includes four large warehouses and a yard for external storage, customer parking and deliveries.
The scheme included constructing a replacement boundary wall to a height of five metres, using stone from the demolished building where possible, and installing an electrical services container.
The planning application said demolition would enable the “constrained” site to operate in a more efficient manner and ensure the retention of 10 full-time equivalent jobs on site.
But it has now been refused. The council’s conservation team said: “The building possesses a high degree of significance as a locally important heritage asset and demolition would have a negative impact on the setting of Bath Conservation Area and further erode evidence of Bath’s industrial past.
“It represents a rare survival of an industrial building in the city, and not least a building that was involved in an historic masonry tradition that Bath is globally renowned for.”
The conservation team said the building appears to retain “much of its integrity and legibility”, despite being neglected and resultant evidence of decay.
