Records of Bath City Council and Bath & North East Somerset Council: records relating...

This sub-fonds includes records relating to water supply, sewers, waste disposal, roads and bridges, trams, electricity supply and two major infrastructure projects (the Hedgemead Landslip and the Combe Down Stone Mines stabilisation project).

The Corporation's involvement with supplying water to the city dates back to at least the late thirteenth century, when they joined with the Priory in supplying piped water to the Priory and a small number of city streets. There is evidence of serious investment by the Corporation in the maintenance of the water network from at least the sixteenth century. This supply of water was a significant attraction to visitors to the city, even though it was initially limited to the city centre, with other areas dependent on private water supplies. However, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards the Council took advantage of general legislation as well as promoting private Acts of Parliament in order to purchase and lease new supplies of water and install water mains. By the early twentieth century it provided a water supply to the whole of the city. In the mid-1970s Wessex Water, one of ten new regional Water Authorities, took over control of the city water supply.

Early attempts by the Corporation to provide other basic amenities met with more limited success. Street paving and lighting, watching (police), rubbish collection and the abatement of 'nuisances' - all vital to a growing city with a large number of wealthy visitors - were not matters which the Corporation had the power or resources to provide. In the early eighteenth century, the Corporation obtained several private Acts of Parliament to enable it to provide certain amenities, but these failed to create consistent improvements, and a new solution was put in place in the second half of the eighteenth century with the setting up of Improvement Commissions. These Commissions, again established by private Acts of Parliament, were independent of the Corporation; covering small areas, they had powers to raise a rate to carry out certain specific functions. They provided a useful service until they came to an end in 1851, when they were taken over by the Council under the Bath Act of that year. Records of the Commissions can be found in BC/22.

The 1851 Bath Act marked a significant turning-point in the provision of civic amenities and urban infrastructure, and was prompted in part by a concern for public health. This concern was not restricted to Bath: just three years before, in 1848, the Public Health Act had been passed, setting out a number of powers relating to public health which could be adopted (if they wished) by borough councils or by newly-created local boards of health. Bath adopted most of the provisions of the 1848 Public Health Act by means of the 1851 Bath Act, but also added a number of additional, Bath-specific powers and measures. Among the wide-ranging powers and responsibilities the Council gained under the Act was responsibility for sewers and drainage, waste disposal, paving, cleaning and lighting of streets, and the authority to create certain new streets; they were able to raise money to carry out work through mortgages and bonds, as well as by raising a rate; and they were empowered to appoint officers such as a surveyor, an inspector of nuisances and a medical officer of health (although they did not do so immediately). Subsequent legislation gave the Council further substantial powers and responsibilities with regard to infrastructure matters such as sewers, street development and waste disposal, and by the mid twentieth century the city engineer and city surveyor led substantial departments. Responsibility for sewerage passed to Wessex Water Authority in the mid-1970s.

The Council also generated and supplied electricity to the city from the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth centuries. Streets in the city centre were first provided with electric lighting in 1890, with the Council entering into an agreement with the Bath Electric Lighting and Engineering Company Ltd. In 1896, the Council purchased the electricity undertaking from the Company and continued to manufacture and supply electricity until 1948, when the electricity industry was nationalised. During this period, the enterprise grew from the provision of electric street lighting to a small number of streets and a handful of private properties adjacent to the mains, to the provision of an electricity supply to private consumers across the whole city.

By contrast, while the Council actively promoted the development of tramways, it was not directly involved with their construction or operation: this was carried out by private companies, which provided first horse-drawn and then electric trams between 1880 and 1939. The Council was however very closely involved with the supervision of the construction of tramways and with the regulation of trams; they were also concerned with their impact on street works, traffic and council property.

This description has been compiled using the following sources:
Graham Davis and Penny Bonsall, 'Bath. A New History', Keele, 1996
Trevor Fawcett, 'Bath Administer'd', Bath, 2001
K B Smellie, 'A History of Local Government', London, 1968
John Wroughton, 'Tudor Bath', Bath, 2006
Peter Davenport, 'Medieval Bath Uncovered', Stroud, 2002
Internal evidence from the records

The Records
This sub-fonds includes records relating to:
-Water supply
-Sewers, drainage and waterways (including plans of sewers)
-Waste disposal
-Highways, bridges, vaults and car parks
-Trams
-Electricity supply
-Hedgemead landslip
-Combe Down Stone Mines stabilisation project

Note that it does not include records relating to:
-some major road schemes which were also major town planning/housing projects (for example the East-West Relief Road proposed in the 1970s); these are in sub-fonds BC/8 (Planning and Development Control records)
-public health matters for which the Medical Officer of Health was responsible, such as food quality, registration of slaughterhouses or registration of canal boats; these are catalogued under sub-fonds BC/14, (Records of the Council's Responsibilities for Public Health)

The records have not yet been catalogued in detail. Please contact the Record Office for more information.