A brutalist Catholic church in a village just outside Bath could soon be demolished to make way for housing.
The church of the Good Shepherd in Batheaston | Image © Google Street View 2023
The church of the Good Shepherd in Batheaston closed during the Covid-19 pandemic and, with declining numbers attending mass, was judged not to be viable to reopen.
Now the Diocese of Clifton hopes to redevelop the site as housing, with worshippers to attend St Mary’s in Bath instead or watch live-streamed mass services.
The diocese has submitted a planning application to Bath and North East Somerset Council to demolish the church and build a four-bed home, two three-bed homes, and a wheelchair-adaptable two-bedroom home on the site.
A rare example of 1960s brutalism in the Bath area, the church was the work of Bath architect Martin Fisher, who was also behind the design of St Peter and Paul’s in Combe Down.
Taking Stock, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales’ project to carry out architectural and historical assessments of their churches, states on their website: “While the exterior has a somewhat forbidding character, the interior is well-lit by large expanses of glass with an effective coloured glass scheme over the sanctuary.”
A heritage assessment submitted with the application stated: “The building’s aesthetic value is perhaps one of the most difficult to assess, being largely reliant upon an individual’s own reaction towards it; the building being an unashamedly contemporary building within a traditional 18th and 19th century domestic context.”
It argued that demolishing the church and building four terraced homes that “more closely align to the character and appearance of the area” would be a benefit and help protect and enhance the area’s “architectural character.”
You can view and comment on the application here.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
